It Could Happen Here - Week of Action to Stop Cop City: A Retrospective

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

A more critical look at the Week of Action and its aftermath. State repression continues as Intrenchment Creek Park is closed just days before clear cutting begins in the Weelaunee Forest. With Cop City construction scheduled for this summer, activist's search for avenues of resistance.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by

an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. This is a bonus fifth episode following my coverage of the StopCopCity Week of Action in March of 2023. This will be a more critical retrospective on the week as a whole, and offer a glimpse into what the movement might look like in the next few months as we are rapidly approaching summer. In the last episode, we talked about the police repression of protests and demonstrations as they happen, talked about the police repression of protests and demonstrations as they happen, but we have yet to mention the various methods of state repression the movement is facing day to day. Repression for the Week of Action started well before the kickoff rally in Gresham Park.

Emails from early February, obtained via public records requests, found that the Atlanta Police Foundation and its contractors were waiting for, quote, indictments to the leaders, unquote, of the Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. To quote the Atlanta Community Press Collective, in a February 3rd email to APF board members, the Director of Public Affairs, Rob Baskin, calls the Defend the Atlanta Forest and Stop Cop City movement a, quote, conspiracy of protesters against the Public Safety Training Center investigated by a consortium of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, unquote. Baskin promised the APF board in an email, quote, that the recent arrests, our receipt of the land disturbance permit, the mayor's announcement that the project will be moving forward, and the continued investigation by law enforcement will dampen activists' efforts.

We will likely see more indictments in the coming weeks, unquote. Back in February, Brasfield and Gorey, the general contractor for the project, planned to mobilize for land clearing around April, but told the Atlanta Police Foundation that subcontractor bidding wouldn't happen, quote, until indictments have happened, unquote. And then, of course, a few weeks later, 23 people were charged with domestic terrorism at a music festival. Matt from the Atlanta Community Press Collective talked about the history of domestic terrorism charges in the movement and how they affected bail proceedings. The domestic terrorism charges go back to the middle of December.

That's when the first of them happened. And up until the week of action, there have been a total of 19 arrests or individuals who have been charged with domestic terrorism. And then of those people, anyone who did not have either a Georgia license or could not prove like Georgia residency, they were all initially denied bond. But everyone who lives here, they were able to to get bond.

Before the bond hearing, we're kind of there. There are discussions that there's no way that they're going to hold 23 people without bond on such flimsy evidence. That's the most people that have been arrested and held in one day in relation to the movement so far. Yeah, it's the largest mass arrest of the movement. So it's kind of inconceivable for 23 people to be held without bond. So we get to the bail hearing. The first person has their mother come on. Their lawyer brings their mother on who swears essentially on like every religious text ever written that her child will immediately go home with her.

And she will personally bring her child back to every court hearing. And her child will have no further contact with the movement and all of these things. And the judge denies the bond. So at that point, it's like, okay, I guess we're going to go back to the old thing. If you can't prove residency, you're not getting out. It was like person number five is from Athens, Georgia, which is about an hour outside of Atlanta. And the judge denies her bond,

not because the judge thinks she's a flight risk, but because she is a threat to the community. And that was the moment where the understanding changed. It was like, oh no, like nobody's getting out of this. This isn't a real bond hearing. At the press conference after the Leaf raid, Kamau Franklin from the community movement builders spoke about the years of state repression against people fighting to stop Cop City. This movement has been repressed by the state, by the city, since its very beginnings. When we first started organizing in 2021, when we had rallies and demonstrations, we would have police break them up, throw people to the ground, pepper spray them, and arrest them.

We had over 20 arrests in our first years of rallying and demonstrating against Cop City. At the time, those folks were charged with resisting arrest, obstruction of governmental administration. And then the police decided to step up their tactics and they started to form a task force, a task force that included the Atlanta police, the DeKalb County police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia State Troopers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security, where they began to talk about bringing charges of domestic terrorism against organizers and activists. And so now we're coming to a point where they're raiding houses, where they're telling organizers and activists that they can't stand on corners and legally give out leaflets. And then the judge kept saying, like, I'm not here to hear anything on evidentiary claims, and I'm not here to engage with the domestic terrorism statute.

Both of those were, I think, very valid things that defense attorneys kept bringing up because they're problematic. Yeah, one of the defense attorneys mentioned that the way people are being charged with domestic terrorism right now doesn't really have any legal basis in the state of Georgia. Because the terrorism law works as an enhancement for other felonious charges. And these people aren't being charged with anything besides domestic terrorism. There's no evidence these people committed any actual crimes. So they're just being charged with terrorism. This like nebulous concept. The judge said that the legal basis of these claims will have to be decided on another day. Similarly, they said that in regards to like actual evidence that these people charged did any crimes, she said that she had none of this evidence in front of her and that evidence is for another day.

One of the main reasons the judge said that defendants were denied bond was due to, quote, a lack of ties to community in Atlanta. But regarding this ties to the community aspect, the judge had this weird double standard. There was this one person arrested and charged who lives with their partner in Atlanta, who also had ties to another state where they had previously lived. So despite them having ties to the community in Atlanta, which was one of the main things the judge considered, for this one individual, they were still denied bond on the basis that this individual also has ties to a different community, thus deeming them a flight risk, even though they currently live in Atlanta. One of the reasons that the judge mentioned, based on the arrest warrants that she was given for why

these people were a threat to the community, is that the state claims that they were in possession of metal shields as they were being arrested. You know, shields, the offensive weapon that shows that you're a threat, you holding a shield. And so, first of all, that's funny on that level. When you and I were coming in on Saturday, along with the march, we passed by a bunch of shields, right? And they were kind of placed near the end of the path, like in anticipation that there might be police presence. And I took pictures of the shields and they are evidently plastic shields. There's no way of mistaking them for anything other than plastic. The plastic five-gallon shields that you see at almost every protest

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

There's this weird thing where, so typically when you do these bail hearings, the defense attorneys waive the reading of the warrant, typically because they have already gone over that with their client and everybody's aware and it just kind of speeds up the process. And it was really notable that these attorneys weren't doing it. And once you started to listen to them, you notice this very repetitive nature of them. And so about halfway through, we get to a lawyer who straight up calls out the fact that these warrants seem like they were just copy pasted. Like every single person. All the way down the line. During the first hearing, only one person was let out on bail, and they were an NLG

legal observer and lawyer at the Southern Poverty Law Center. After the week of action on March 23rd, there were a second set of bail hearings for 10 of the people arrested on March 5th at the Southern Poverty Law Center. After the week of action on March 23rd, there were a second set of bail hearings for 10 of the people arrested on March 5th at the South River Music Festival. In a rare move, the second-in-command of the state of Georgia's Attorney General's Office, John Fowler, was deployed to argue against granting bond. Fowler, along with several top county prosecutors, weaved a complex narrative of a grand conspiracy of protesters dating back to 2019, saying that the quote-unquote organization behind Defend the Forest is responsible for quote, 100 incidents nationwide, unquote. that the Forest Defenders are a well-funded group with millions of dollars hiding behind 501c3 non-profit organizations, and that the so-called Autonomous Zone at the Wendy's, where Rayshard Brooks was murdered in 2020, is a part of the same organization. Fowler also attempted to tie the use of laser pointers in the forest to racial justice protests in 2020, as well as a sophisticated

communication network of prepaid phones, telegram channels, proton mails, and rise-up accounts. Prosecutor Lance Cross stated that the quote-unquote leader of the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement never actually goes into the forest. Okay, so to paraphrase a friend of mine, as potentially dangerous as claims like these are, it will never stop being funny that the state just simply cannot conceive of horizontal organizing as like a real thing that exists, and not just a smokescreen for this shadowy cabal of protesters. Prosecutor Lance Cross claimed that anyone at the music festival is a party to the crime of the direct action that took place around one and a half kilometers away at the construction site. And that after the direct action, individuals left to return to the other side of the woods, crossing over the creek and changing out of their black block.

For the first defendant at this hearing, Prosecutor Cross said that there's police helicopter video of this first person changing out of their black block. But when asked by the judge if the state has any evidence that this defendant did anything illegal, not just change clothing in a forest, the prosecutor was unable to provide any such evidence. This defendant received a $25,000 bond with a stay away from Georgia order and a no contact order with any co-defendants or anyone associated with the defend the Atlanta forest movement. Only one other defendant was granted bond during this hearing, a second year law student who was arrested as they were eating food at a food truck. At the hearing, they presented letters of support from Tibetan monks,

a former mayor, numerous academics, and Charlotte's mayor pro tem was on the call. Bond was also set at 25k, along with having to surrender their passport, wear an ankle monitor, and maintain no contact with co-defendants, nor join any future protests. To paraphrase my friend again, these are old green scare tactics back in action and kicked into high gear. Courts are being used as a meat cleaver to hack off and isolate people from their communities regardless of evidence. This is the type of repression that courts were born to do. Much of the repression we're seeing in Atlanta is a revamped version of the green scare with additional tactics and knowledge the state gained from the 2020 protests, including the targeting of jail support and bail fund organizations.

Another thread in this grand cabal of forest defenders narrative that the state was trying to weave was that prosecutors claimed that having an Atlanta Solidarity Fund jail support number on your person is evidence of criminal intent and that the solidarity fund is quote being investigated as a part of this whole thing unquote the majority of the eight individuals denied bond were not even found to be at the site of the direct action and none of the eight individuals had any evidence against them showing they committed any crime at that location any evidence against them showing they committed any crime at that location, but were still deemed a risk to the community and denied bond. Being held against them is the fact that they had a jail support number on their person. As former communications director at the Southern Center

for Human Rights, Hannah Riley said, it is a gross irony that a jail support number is being framed as evidence of intent to commit crimes, where in fact, it's evidence that we live in a horrifying police state. A defense attorney pointed out that all of the warrants had the same bits of evidence copy-pasted, like this alleged possession of a metal shield, to which the prosecution claimed this was simply a typo, meaning that people were being held in jail based on typos. And also the prosecutor responded by saying, quote, there were 30, 40, 50 shields out there. I can't attest that he was carrying one when referring to a specific defendant. For one individual denied bond, prosecutors claimed that they were an anarchist based on

information provided by Customs and Border Protection, and yet no evidence of criminal acts were presented. Extra scrutiny was put on two defendants who were foreign nationals, with prosecutors wondering how someone from out of country could possibly know the Solidarity Fund jail support number. A defense attorney tried to point out that jail support numbers are often passed out to everyone present at protests by volunteers, and in the case of the circumstances regarding the raid of the music festival, panicked concertgoers were instructed to write down the jail support number as it became clear that police were indiscriminately grabbing people. Deputy Attorney General Fowler argued that wearing black clothes at a protest is akin to wearing a football uniform, indicating a player was part of the team who took to the field during the game.

And even if we may not know they carried the football, we do know that they were on the field. Which I don't even want to get into. But it is still a fact that the majority of people were denied bond because some had black clothing, mud on their shoes, and ran from police. This is what made them a quote-unquote threat to our community. And this is the evidence being used against people who were allegedly engaged in domestic terrorism. Near the end of the hearing, the judge claimed that everyone is

presumed innocent and that the state does have to bear the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt at some point, but not now during this bail hearing. One of the claims was that the reason why people were arrested is because they had mud on their clothes. The night before the festival started, there was a tornado warning in Atlanta. I forgot about that. And there was rain, which makes, I don't know if the prosecutors know this, but when rain mixes with dirt, it creates something called, that we refer to as mud. So when people are, you know, at this music festival in a field full of dirt, they might get mud on their clothes. And yeah, so when you, if you've ever been to a music festival, standing around for a very long

period of time, really annoying. People like to sit down. So my feet were caked in mud, and I sat down a few times. My Doc Martens are still caked in mud. Not to mention the parking lot, completely torn up, covered in mud. And as I mentioned earlier, the person having to fill in mud all along the trails with gravel. So there's mud everywhere. And it is an inescapable fact of just being in both the forest and the festival. At the time of the bail hearings, they very clearly had no evidence linking individuals to crimes.

So the best they could come up with was metal shields and mud. Two things that are completely nonsense. There was no metal shields and oh wow, you have mud on your clothing. This is why you're a terrorist. During the hearing, a defense lawyer alleged that the 12 people who were detained at the music festival but not arrested and were later released at Gresham Park were all from Atlanta. And by releasing these 12 locals, police can claim that the people arrested were from 14 different states, which is obviously part of an attempt to continue accelerating the outside agitator narrative that they've been pushing out since Of the 23 who were charged, only two had the Georgia licenses, the person from Athens and the legal observer. The rest were out of state and two were out of country. the bail proceedings, one of the lawyers says that from what they understand, the 12 individuals who were let go Sunday night all had in-state licenses. So it does appear that APD released people to continue this outside agitator narrative that they have been using for months now, since May, since early summer.

Prosecutor Cross responded to claims that detained local Atlantans were let go by saying that the people released were interviewed, did not have the jail support number on their arm, and quote-unquote knew little about the movement. At a press conference, Marlin from the Solidarity Fund talked about how repression has taken form and concerns of what other tactics the state may try to employ. No evidence has been presented to support any of these claims of domestic terrorism, including on the other 18 people who've been given this charge previously in this movement. Police and prosecutors are not involved in a law enforcement effort.

movement. Police and prosecutors are not involved in a law enforcement effort. They're involved in a political campaign to suppress a political movement, which they find objectionable because as the police, they have a vested interest in the construction of Cop City. From a civil liberties perspective, we find this very concerning. We find it to be an abuse of power. And we're committed to ensuring that all of the activists who are targeted have access to the legal resources that they need, not only to defend themselves from these bogus charges, but also to pursue civil litigation against police who have abused their power and violated people's rights. We are concerned about the possibility that prosecutors may try to use RICO charges against organizers, because RICO is understood as a way of suppressing organizations.

And the narrative that we've seen coming from police and prosecutors is their belief that the broad and diverse Stop Cop City movement is in fact a criminal conspiracy whose members conspire to commit acts of terrorism. This could not be further from the truth. This is like a clear misrepresentation of a broad movement that encompasses all of society. But this is the narrative that prosecutors are trying to promulgate to make it easier to target activists. In the intervening month and a half, five more people were let out on bond. Then on May 3rd, a series of preliminary hearings took place for the last

three people being held in DeKalb County Jail from amongst the 23 individuals arrested at the music festival and charged with domestic terrorism. Before the changes to the law in 2017, the state of Georgia required 10 or more people to be killed for domestic terrorism charges to even be filed. During a wave of anti-protest bills, while citing racially motivated mass shootings to get the bill passed, the state of Georgia removed any death threshold and essentially replaced it with references to property damage. To quote a write-up by the Atlantic Community Press Collective, quote, DeKalb County Magistrate Judge James Altman explained that he decided whether to uphold the charges

based on two criteria. The first was whether prosecutors provided enough evidence to satisfy the conditions set forth in the Georgia domestic terrorism statute, namely the threat to critical infrastructure. The second criteria prosecutors needed to meet was identification or their ability to show that the defendants were each a party to the alleged crimes committed on March 5th, unquote. And it's worth noting that the threshold for probable cause is much lower than the threshold needed to convict someone of a crime. In opening arguments, Assistant DA Lance Cross claimed that Defend the Forest activists are well-funded and, quote, have a pretty good propaganda arm on social media,

unquote, and that doing direct action while chanting Stop Cop City qualifies activists to be charged under the Georgia domestic terrorism statute because it's using violence to advocate change of government policy. Judge Altman found that the first criteria of the domestic terrorism charges were met for all three defendants on the basis that setting fires at the construction site in such close proximity to a power line tower was an attack on critical infrastructure, even if the defendants did not themselves start any fires. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Ryan Long testified that the entire music festival was cover for the direct action against the construction site. Even without evidence of defendants in black block or proof that they engaged in any destructive acts, Assistant D.A. Cross said that everyone at the site was enabling the destruction of the property and as such is party to the crime due to the assertion that the alleged crimes were only possible due to the large size of the crowd. One of the state's witnesses, a sergeant

of the APD, said that he wouldn't be able to recognize anyone who was at the site and that he could not tell if the defendant was even in the crowd of people at the North Gate, let alone through rocks or set fires. Defense argued that mere presence at a location should not be automatic aiding and abetting, but Judge Altman said there was sufficient evidence presented showing the acts of the crowd and that the defendant's presence is at least sufficient for being party to the crime, even by simply participating at the music festival. One of the hearings was for the indigenous person who was tased at the music festival. One of the hearings was for the indigenous person who was tased at the music festival, who was specifically witnessed to be there during the

duration of the direct action. Under questioning from the defense, Special Agent Long said that the defendant was not visible on the helicopter footage of the incident. After initially suggesting that the defendant was identified by a helicopter pilot. Long ruled that back by saying he was unsure if the chopper was able to track the defendant, and then had to leave to go make a few calls to get a more definitive answer, which he failed to provide. But the judge still found that the second criteria of identification was sufficient to find two of the defendants at least party to the actions at the construction site. Special Agent Long testified that there is a quote-unquote command structure in the Stop Cop

City movement, and described the movement as a pyramid scheme created by activists with different names like Stop Cop City and Defend the Forest to act as little different subgroups to attract new subordinate members to operate under leadership. Long asserted that activists pretend to be ecologists one day and then anarchists the next to further their cause, which, once again, we have to point out, is on one hand a dangerous thing to claim, on the other hand, extremely funny. Social media posts were brought up by prosecutors as evidence linking defendants to criminal acts and a conspiracy of terrorism. During the first hearing, Special Agent Long claimed that they knew that the defendant was at the construction site due to street pull camera

footage and social media posts allegedly made by the defendant's friend. In another hearing, Agent Long claimed that on the defendant's social media, there were posts of StopCopCity banners and flyers demonstrating an awareness of the nature of the StopCopCity movement. The state also cited alleged social media posts of the defendant self-describing as anti-capitalist and anti-colonial as proof of criminal intent. Near the end of the last hearing, Judge Altman said that social media posts do not count towards probable cause. However, the framing of social media posts by prosecutors as an indication of guilt is still cause for alarm, and what gets admitted as evidence during trial is still yet to be

determined. When the prosecution asked if a defendant had a jail support number on their arm, the judge noted that, quote, the existence or non-existence of an organization doesn't really seem to me as an element of the crime, unquote. Similar to the March 23rd hearings, Prosecutor Johnson tried to argue that the Solidarity Fund and jail support is an arm of the Stop Cop City movement, to which the judge reiterated that participation in an alleged organization is not part of the crime of domestic terrorism. For one defendant, the judge granted bond on the conditions of $25,000 bail, with the defendant having to turn over her passport,

a no-contact order with other co-defendants, and no participation in discussion of stop-cop city on social media. Bond for the other two defendants was denied. Ultimately, Judge Altman upheld the domestic terrorism charges against all three defendants. On the low barrier of evidence sufficient for ruling probable cause, Judge Altman said that, quote, whether it gets any further than that is not my problem, unquote, and that if the DA wanted further charges brought against defendants, he must use a grand jury as the judge did not find a probable cause for arson or assault on an officer. Judge Altman mentioned that he was concerned about alleged witness intimidation by members of the Defend the Forest movement. Meanwhile, in the adjacent Fulton County, there was also a preliminary hearing for one of the six people arrested at the

protest in downtown Atlanta on January 21st, the Saturday following the killing of Tortugita. downtown Atlanta on January 21st, the Saturday following the killing of Tortugita. Judge Ashley Drake upheld a total of eight charges, including one of domestic terrorism, and the next day the defendant was released on bail. One thing of note from this hearing is that Deputy Attorney General John Fowler compared the Defend the Forest movement to 9-11 by saying, quote, compared the Defend the Forest movement to 9-11 by saying, quote, Protesters were trying to knock out the windows of 191 Peachtree Street. That is a dangerous situation.

That's a Twin Towers, unquote. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors

that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Duda Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that

actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

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

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

at your podcasts. When talking about the various hearings, I mentioned helicopter and street poll camera footage of the direct action on Sunday that both prosecutors and the defense were using to support their claims. And I think it's worth diving a bit deeper into specifically the police helicopter footage, since I like keeping up with the methods that police are using to surveil and suppress protest. I'm going to start by letting Atlanta Police Chief Darren Shearbaum walk us through what was able to be observed via helicopter-mounted cameras based on his testimony during the city council meeting that took place less than 24 hours after the incident. Individuals were seen changing out of the clothes that they were wearing at the concert and were now dressing themselves in all black with backpacks, with items offensive in nature approaching.

What we saw is this group moved rather quickly to the site for the proposed public safety training center. They moved quickly on the group of officers that were assembled there. These officers had been stationary at the site protecting the location. In the first line there are individuals with shields that are forming. The officers attempted to first to de-escalate by repositioning themselves, thank you, repositioning themselves inside of the fenced-in area. The officers again start to reposition because they can tell this is not a peaceful demonstration. You can start to see smoke occurring as fires are set,

Molotov cocktails are thrown, and fireworks are discharged from our air unit that is deployed in the area. You will see individuals that have started to move against the officers. They will start throwing rocks, fireworks, as they are pushing the officers in the area. Where we see individuals, as another group is engaging the officers with rocks, Molotov cocktails and bottles are moving to set fire to the various equipment set in the area. What you see in the left hand of the gentleman with the mask over his face is a Molotov

cocktail. It is being there will be accelerants in his hands that will be used also to attack some of the construction equipment that is in the area. These individuals are masked to hide their identity. This is playing out across the area that had previously been fenced in. There will be generators that will be destroyed, other pieces of equipment that's being destroyed. There you see more accelerant being thrown on to the vehicle that is being set on fire. And what you see here, ladies and gentlemen, is as some of the individuals that had just previously attacked the work site return back into the woods, they start changing back

into the clothes that they were just wearing moments before as they were portraying themselves to be attendees of the event that was occurring in the music. So it was clear today that we saw a repeat of what we've seen in the past, where events that are shown to be peaceful and to be being publicized as be peaceful are being used by individuals as cover to launch illegal and criminal attacks. We had a rapid response from our partners at the DeKalb County Police Department, the sheriff of Fulton County, as well as the Georgia State Patrol. Those officers entered into the woods as individuals were attempting to flee, hide the weapons they had just used, as well as to Georgia State Patrol. Those officers entered into the woods as individuals were attempting to flee, hide the weapons they had just used, as well as to change their clothing,

and we began to make a number of arrests. I spoke with the unnamed forest defender about the surveillance capabilities of the state on full display during the week of action. I find the thermal helicopter video fascinating for a variety of reasons. One, it's interesting to look at the surveillance capacity of the state. It's, to my memory, the first time the APD has ever posted their own thermal chopper footage. It's a very similar camera to the type you would see on a biractor or on some kind of armed unmanned aerial vehicle. What I found most interesting about the thermals is exactly how they were using that type of targeting software to track people.

And I think it's worth people knowing what they were doing with it so we have an idea how to counter it. When you're using a software to track targets on an optical lens, at least during a daytime event, thermals are easier because it breaks the image up into just two colors, white and then like black and gray, so they can track the body heat shapes of people in white and then just click the thermals off, get a snapshot of the outfit they're wearing, click the thermals back on, and track them easier than it is to track them with just a normal camera. This gives them a clear image of what they're wearing before they de-blocked, and then they can go back to tracking that person, follow them to where they're de-blocking, wait for them to de-block, get another picture with the regular camera, and then arrest them.

So that meant that when people were leaving, it was advantageous to be de-blocking under overhead cover, under thick brush, under thick canopy, out of direct line of sight with the chopper, you know, not in the open air. It's definitely a really hard thing to counter the surveillance state's one of the things that i find the most fearful about the police state not like individual beat cops their guns and shit are cooler or whatever but man those cameras they're really something you know i think the portland police bureau just got a new spy plane a new cessna loaded up with surveillance equipment and shit like that all that stuff does so much more to fuck you up than just like a riot team does you can throw mortars at a riot team sorry Sorry, I shouldn't say mortars. Fireworks that are called

mortars. My bad. Don't want to lean into the explosives narratives. Honestly, they're fucking weird about fireworks. But you know, the surveillance capacities are one of the hardest things to counter. One term that's already come up during our coverage of StopCopCity is Foucault's boomerang. And while that still applies here, we're now also kind of getting into some Panopticon territory, as shown by this type of surveillance capacity, specifically at actions. And one of the biggest reasons why the Panopticon works is that people are scared of it. It scares you away from even taking action in the first place. And like, as soon as you overcome that paralyzing fear, the cops become really afraid of you.

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

that paralyzing fear, once you let it pass over you and through you, they're fucking terrified. And if we're gonna win, we need to be their worst nightmare. As state repression against the Stop Cop City movement continues, the coalition against the police training facility only continues to grow. Last month, Angela Davis returned an award proclamation given to her by the Atlanta City Council in protest of Cop City. If the attempts by the Atlanta police to build the largest police training grounds in the country are successful, this will represent a major setback for the movement for radical democratic futures, not only throughout the U.S., but globally as well. As a person who has participated in campaigns against prisons and police for

far longer than a half century, I want to salute all those who are involved in the Stop Cop City movement. And I want to urge people everywhere to find ways to generate support for them. Angela Davis made it clear that she stood in solidarity with force defenders facing repression from the police and the city of Atlanta, and joined in calls to halt the construction of this facility, which will only serve as a tool to advance what she called militarized police racism and repression. Atlanta activists are on the front lines of the abolitionist movement at its crucial intersection with movements to save our forests, indeed to save our planet. The attempt to build a massive militarized police training facility is a

dangerous and ominous development that we have to oppose with all our might. And so I want to join those who are standing strong in defense of the forest against the construction of this police training ground. I urge people everywhere to join the campaign to stop cop city after angela davis's announcement the walter rodney foundation released a statement supporting davis's decision and against the construction of cop city it's it's interesting to see their more mainline um sort of center or center left like organizations that have begun to come on board, even with what happened Sunday, and especially the Thursday march and rally had necessitated a response from the city. So Friday morning, there was actually an organization concerned

black clergy who had a press conference like calling out cop city protesters and so you had this like very state run one of the city council members antonio lewis was there like live streaming it the entire time and so you can tell the efficacy of a lot of things that have happened this week by how the city is reacting and how it is necessitating them going to greater and greater lengths to try to show that the movement is wrong. One way that the city has been working to advocate for the further development of the Cop City Project is by launching a website of their own for the Public Safety Training Center, full of videos of the mayor and police chief walking through South Atlanta trying to convince neighbors that the project is a good idea. In the past few months, the city has also been turning

the official City of Atlanta Twitter account into a hilarious cop city propaganda outlet. About two weeks after the end of the week of action, on March 24th, DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond announced an executive order to indefinitely close Entrenchment Creek Park, also known as Waulani People's Park, claiming that the park was a danger to the public due to booby traps allegedly found in the forest. At a press conference, Thurmond displayed photos of wooden boards with nails sticking out of them allegedly found in the park. The executive order reads that the park will, quote, remain closed until further notice to protect the safety of the families, residents, and visitors and their pets in the area and to county personnel, unquote. A few days after the announcement, DeKalb police led a joint task

force in a raid of the Walani Forest and Entrenchment Creek Park. The land was effectively cleared of all forest defenders, with one person being arrested. During the raid, the memorial for Tortuguita was destroyed by the police, and cement barricades were set up around the entrances and exits to the park. Days later, police and contractors began cutting trees in the Wolani Forest, with no one around to resist the destruction. The Solidarity Fund put out a statement saying, quote, closing down a public park in order to prevent protests from happening in that space is unconstitutional. DeKalb CEO Michael Thurmond is trying to do an end run around the First

Amendment, unquote. DeKalb County Commissioner Ted Terry is pushing to reopen the park through a resolution expected to be introduced in early May. But it wasn't just the park's closure that made forest defense more challenging. After the mass action at the North Gate in early March, security was greatly increased at the construction sites in the Wolani Forest, with massive spotlights illuminating the area to daylight levels 24 hours a day, which made returning to the sort of nighttime sabotage actions in the forest that pioneered some of the movement's militancy in its early days to be much more complicated. During my conversations with forest defenders, there was still a desire to see more of

those small sabotage actions, as the large daytime mass actions seemed to result in more people getting arrested near the site of militant activity. People are angry. You know, like their friend, our friend, was murdered. You can just feel however you want about this, but like a lot of people, and I guess myself included, are just really angry. There's this like kind of blinding rage that comes with it of just like eye for an eye, blood for blood, you know, that the police killed our friend, and that they need to hurt for that one. And they need to hurt for all the people that they've murdered and all the things they're trying to do. And that leads people to take actions that may not be well thought out, but that are very well intentioned and have tangible results that hurt the police state.

But that are actions that do bring harm to themselves or others because there are not, you know, these like middle of the night slash and run sabotage attacks that don't have arrests happen that are safer. And I think we should see a return of that tactic because the level of police presence that we saw at all the actions this week post Sunday, like doing shit at downtown protests. Fuck that. Like, that's not like we're not pulling shit off there without a mass arrest or like everyone's getting gassed. things, but I think people wanted to prove to the cops that like, no, no, no, we could open field fuck them up. And yeah, there were consequences to that, but people fucked them up in the open field. And that's worth applauding. The bounds of the forest is not the only location actions take place. Just about a week after the park closure and when some of the clear cutting began, a report back was posted online that read, quote, on the night of Wednesday, April 5th, we set fire

to three excavators owned by Brent Scarborough Company on a site across from the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. Brent Scarborough is the company and individual responsible for clear cutting the Wolani Forest. Cop City will never be built, unquote. The March 2023 week of action was always going to be a kind of turning point in showcasing what will be seen in the struggle to defend the forest this spring, and how that will then lead into the summer, and what forms of resistance people will choose to take. Whether that be another singular week of action, or take notes from the old Earth First playbook and try to do a whole summer of action. How do you kind of see the movement to stop Caps City, like, changing or evolving in the

next few months? I mean, because all this has kind of felt like it's been kind of very much on the heels of what happened in January. People have tried to, like, you know, just try to find new paths of resistance in the wake of the police killing. How do you see, like, the fight continuing at this stage, where they have some land disturbance permits, there's early construction?

What are the avenues of resistance that people are trying to go down? I think that we have to be very clear in assessing what has worked installing the project and what will work to stop the project because those aren't necessarily the same things I think there are nuances in particular strategies there is a difference between especially in our particular context that's similar between the difference between guerrilla warfare and urban guerrilla similar between the difference between guerrilla warfare and urban guerrilla warfare.

And I say that guerrilla warfare is more so when people have been destroying equipment, you know, at contractors' offices or wherever, or like near the forest, et cetera, and you could just hide off into the woods or just like disappear back into nothingness. Nobody gets touched. What we have to look at with the actions

at the music festival were, it exposed a lot of people because, and this is once again, because the police acted so heavy-handedly, but we also know that the police act heavy-handedly, which is why we're here. So that gets kind of dicey because that's kind of like urban guerrilla warfare where you have the guerrillas just shooting pow, pow, pow, and then running into somebody's grandma's house. People do not fuck with the people. They're just running grandma's house for cover.

Right? house for cover right and that's where things get a little bit dicey because in many ways um a lot of us were looking at means to open up the movement with this week of action and that was what was widely understood for a lot of people and nevertheless when you just uh come in with the boomstick from the beginning that dictates the tone of the rest of the week. And then where you could, you know, for instance, operate from a space of like moral authority, it becomes much easier for people on the fence to justify to themselves, well, what are the police supposed to think, right? I mean, we have to realize that there are several like mental resistances that have been taught to people for them to try to discredit us. And I just, I think there's some important context, right? When Martin Luther King

Jr. was doing like the nonviolent direct action, at a certain point, they had to make a calculated decision to include women and children in the marches, because they had assessed that America had become too desensitized to seeing black men beaten in the streets, right? So that was a tactical decision to bring in more people, right? So there are like calculations that people have to make and assessments that they have to make based on the information that we're dealing with. Through talking with force defenders, I've heard a variety of internal critiques of the week of action format. Because it is such a concentrated time period, the week of action can give police a very concentrated time to over-police and over-surveil. And for activists, it can open up

an expenditure of energy during the week, which then can lead to a lack of energy, leading up to what's been called the week of repression. In the past, every time following a week of action after people from out of town leave, it then leads into a week of repression where police will then do a raid of the forest and have their sort of retaliation the week after. There's been talk of potential changes to some of the week of action format, perhaps doing something more akin to a summer of resistance. So the week of repression some of the week of action format, perhaps doing something more akin to a summer of resistance. So the week of repression is always the week that comes after the week of action where the cops are like, okay, the bulk of your reserves, your out of state support is gone,

we're going to come fuck you up now. There are less of you now you're less ready to deal with us. And that is like a major strategic flaw in the weeks of action, because it kind of creates a activist tourism for people coming out of state. And not that Atlanta doesn't appreciate their support and their solidarity and that so many of those out of state people do stay long term. But it does create a situation where like, yeah, we're having an influx of people for a week, building infrastructure for a week. And then the bulk of those people, a good percentage are going to go home because, yeah, like traveling long term is hard. People have jobs, kids, whatever. You have commitments wherever you are and they have to go home and then the cops just wreck our shit and do raids and like unless people want to get on board with doing some pretty crazy shit those raids are hard to counter it would behoove us to take a realistic audit of what the weeks of action have meant and what they

are actually useful for which the strategic gains of the weeks of action are always now going to be more metaphysical than physical. They bring people to the space, they give them a closeness to the forest that they would not achieve without actually coming here. But as far as tangibly like materially stopping cop city, those kind of middle of the night slash and run attacks, tertiary targeting of contractors, all that stuff. That's how you pressure the money and the money's where you win. Ultimately, it's up to the autonomous actors that make up this so-called movement and how their choices will determine how the fight to stop Cop City will grow and evolve. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter?

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. 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists

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

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,

as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. As I'm writing this just 30 minutes ago, we found out that the clear-cutting at the Cop City construction site has essentially been completed. The overhead photos are devastating. Where there were young growing trees just weeks ago is now a flattened mound of red clay and dirt, as if the ground itself was bleeding. I counted over 100 trees uprooted from the earth. Hundreds of people have dedicated years of their life to defending this

forest, and the sight of sizable destruction has brought out a variety of grieving reactions. If Cop City doesn't get built in the Wolani, the land could be carefully reforested and healed via regenerative permaculture. With intentional stewardship, the forest could grow to be ecologically healthier than it was before. In some ways, the destruction that has already taken place makes it even more vital to try and stop the construction of Cop City. try and stop the construction of Cop City. No one is advocating a defeatist approach, where forced offenders essentially give up and let the police foundation build it, because there are still numerous ways to fight against the construction of this facility. But now is not the time to sugarcoat the dire situation people are in, and there should be time allowed to grieve this loss as well as strike back against the destruction.

It would be a mistake to gaslight each other and act as if we're closer than ever to halting the Cop City project. The fact that it's gotten this far itself is devastating. From the beginning, people have said that even if they do believe that Cop City will never be built, believe that Cop City will never be built, the Atlanta Police Foundation and police will absolutely attempt to do as much damage as they can possibly get away with anyway, both to forest defenders and to the forest itself. The past few months, I've been increasingly hearing the vice versa of that sentiment. If Cop City does end up getting getting built people have pledged that the atlanta police foundation will have to pay for every inch they take even if there is no longer hope to save the entire walani forest then we must do so without hope at least there is always vengeance it is a

long road ahead and there is still much to do to quote my favorite anarcho-monarchist tolkien there is still much to do, to quote my favorite anarcho-monarchist Tolkien. At this moment, the movement will hone its focus to prevent or at the very least disincentivize the physical construction of Cop City. I think it'd be worth thinking of this movement as an almost two-year-old movement that's outgrown the week of action, you know? Why limit ourselves to seven days? Fuck it, do a summer, you know? Do three months of like, we're doing three months of action in Atlanta. Come to Atlanta whenever you want and then go home and do shit at home. There are Wells Fargo's where you live. There are Chase Banks where you live. There are Atlas construction offices where you live. And yeah, you should come to Atlanta and you should come see the space and you should be in the forest and you should

feel like the love and community that's there. We win by fighting on enough fronts that they can't fight us back on all of them. The state dies by a thousand cuts, not by all of us being in one place where they can kettle our asses. Like that's just not how we're going to win. So yeah, if we had three months of like, we're occupying the forest for three months, come to the space whenever you feel like it. But you know, hopefully when people go home, they feel inspired to like understand that they can do just as much hitting those companies where they live as they can here. Because the money's all going to the same place. The CEO at the top doesn't care if you hit their businesses in Georgia or in fucking Illinois or in Oregon or Washington or whatever.

The money's all the same. A phrase I've been hearing a lot lately is cop city is everywhere. Cop City is everywhere. To quote a communique posted on scenes.noblogs.org, quote, We will keep winning not just here in so-called Atlanta, but we must attack all across these so-called states. The money and power that seek to kill us and destroy Wolani are nationwide, and so our movement must be nationwide.

A net of resistance, too vast to comprehend and too resilient to suppress. Reality is the battlefield, but so-called America, all of it is the backdrop, unquote. When Chief Schierbaum gave testimony at city council, even he mentioned the far-reaching manifestations of the fight to stop Cop City. We have been seeing over the last number of months crimes that have been occurring in other cities focused toward the Public Safety Training Center. So we have seen arsons in cities outside of Atlanta. We've seen the destruction of property outside of Atlanta.

And we've seen the harassment of private sector employees outside of Atlanta. So that is the nexus where the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been assisting in this investigation. Like I said in the second episode, the stakes of the movement may soon exceed the balance of the forest and Cop City. And in fact, that process may have already begun. We are seeing Stop Cop City turn into a new mode of insurgency and resistance to modern policing in general, not simply limited to the construction of this one training center. As the police are trying to build a training center to practice quelling future civil unrest,

the site of the Walani Forest and beyond has been a training ground for anarchists and those who fight the ever-growing police state. for anarchists and those who fight the ever-growing police state. The past two years, it's been a dangerous playground for experimentation and liberation. Applications for the lessons learned in the Wolani Forest extend far past the barriers of the woods. As far-right attacks on abortion and trans people are accelerating across this country, but especially the South, perhaps some of the organizing infrastructure that's been developed can take new focus on these battlegrounds. And even just the mere existence of the struggle against cop city in Atlanta has been a deterrent for other cities and states seeking to push forward similar proposals. But as the movement

possibly expands past its original scope, in these next few months people will need to be careful that the idyllic notion of the struggle doesn't eclipse the original and still active goal, which is to stop Cop City. Cop City is indeed everywhere, but the current manifestation in Atlanta is unique to Atlanta, and the corresponding struggle to stop the physical construction of this training facility cannot be overlooked in favor of fantasies of utopian anarchy. To steal an idea from Matt of the Community Press Collective, one interpretation of the phrase cop city is everywhere is the realization that Atlanta is is cop city and it already has been for years without us knowing it and if we don't turn back the tide here cop city will be exported everywhere atlanta

once again because of the atlanta police foundation is uh the most surveilled city in the country because of 2017's operation shield program where they put tons of cameras all throughout the city and essentially made it a surveillance state. Once again crime has continued to go up during this time and that would have significantly more to do with the disparity of wealth and opportunities of black Atlantans that are born under the poverty line, only 5% of them are projected to ever cross that line. At the same time, the average median income of black households is one third that of the average median income of white households in Atlanta.

So that's about $35,000 to $104,000. And so the wealth is just so disproportionately spread. And so much of the labor-intensive economy is predicated on it. That black people are pigeonholed into service economy jobs. And they have very few opportunities here. Now that type of inequality breeds discontent and people looking for other opportunities and the police are ready to catch them at every turn. For arresting a juvenile in the point system that they have for Atlanta Police Department, it's five points. However, you only receive a quarter of a point as a police officer if you answer a service call. So police officers often ignore service calls because that doesn't give them the credit

that they want. So just to put that in context, you get 20 times the credit in Atlanta's point quota system for arresting a juvenile than going where people actually wanted police to show up. And we're supposed to be convinced that this system is made to keep us safe, right? The city of Atlanta and the Police Foundation wants Cop City to be a national training center for police to come and practice militaristic counterinsurgency for export across the country. They murdered someone to further this goal. All eyes must be on Atlanta. Cop City is a symbol of police repression. Cop City is a symbol of the oppression of the people of Atlanta. I want you to look around and see the families here in this park today. These are people who came because they're concerned for their children. These are people who

are concerned because they don't want their city overrun by militarization. The level of repression the movement is facing is a sign that the state feels like this movement is a threat, and the state feels like this movement has the possibility of actually succeeding. So in response, they're increasing repression. And on the flip side of that, during this past week of action, I saw a lot of affirmation that this is going to be successful, and that people believe that they will stop Cop City. A common refrain during the past week of action is that Cop City will never be built, and I believe that we will win. There's been such a unique emphasis on the fact that people believe that this fight is 100% winnable, and that people do have the ability to

stop Cop City, and the people who are participating truly believe that. And I think that is an important part of why it's gotten as far as it has. So we can get everything we want for this city. We can stop Cot City. We've got the power, but we just got to believe, y'all. We got to believe in our power. Because the last thing I'm going to say is this. There's going to be a lot of people telling us about what we can't do.

About what these organizers out here can't do. They always want to telling us about what we can't do. About what these organizers out here can't do. They always want to tell us about what we can't do. But I'm going to tell you, all of us out here, we're organizers. We are in the business of taking that which other people say is impossible, and we make it possible. That's what we do. We've got that power. As long as we believe.

So I just need you to say it real loud. Say I. I. Say I believe. This is interesting to me because in my experience, a lot of leftists and anarchists approach much of their praxis with the concept of them expecting to not succeed, but they're going to do it anyway. Which, there is a kind of fated beauty to that in a certain way, and part of that is taking action even if you don't think it will lead to a decisive victory. But also, I feel that being in that mindset might set you up for that outcome. If you're preparing to fail, that means you're probably going to fail, or at the very least, limit the ways that you do action. And throughout this movement thus far, it's been interesting the degree to which people are convinced that they are going to win. If you're being prepared to fail, you won't take the radical action that

it takes to win. Winning is hard, and winning means doing things that are scary and uncomfortable, that it takes to win. Winning is hard and winning means doing things that are scary and uncomfortable and doing things that put you in danger and doing things that are new and unknown and different and taking new strategies and doing new things. And we in the U.S. and a lot of other places, but this is U.S.-based movement. So there's so much learned helplessness on the left here from so many years of like, we lost at Occupy and and then we lost in Ferguson, and Standing Rock, and in 2020. All of these movements that put big body blows to the state put some hits in, but we're just followed by these waves and waves of repression. We've learned so much helplessness. And for the first time in my life, I'm looking at a movement that I'm like, no, no, we can fucking

beat them. And people are stagnating. We're blinking because of what happened on Sunday. And like, no, no, no. What happened on Sunday proved that we can win. It proved that we can, one, fight them in the open field and beat them, that they are afraid of us, that they will cede territory if we hit them. And it proved that they are so afraid of us that they need to mobilize fucking 10 different police departments to come deal. And then they won't even step like into the actual brush of the forest because they think we're the fucking Viet Cong. That proves we can win more than anything that proves we can win.

And if we do not accept that, what is proved that we can win is like property destruction and to a degree doing violence, we won't win. Those fireworks helped a lot. They pushed the cops out and like we shouldn't balk at that. And I guess I don't classify that as violence. The police classify that as violence, what they consider taking hits, I guess. But yeah, we are so on the cusp of a make or break kind of deal here. And the only way that we win is not this internal debate we're having about the efficacy of tactics.

It's doubling down on what we are already doing because it's working and expanding on it. Do you believe that cop city will be actually stopped? We got to. And here's what I mean by that. This is the line, right? We have environmental racism, Right. We have environmental racism, police militarization and brutality and police and racism. And it's all coming to a head right here in this particular movement. We have to win because what they're doing now is to build capacity to make sure that we can't win. What they're doing now is to build capacity to make sure that we can't win. Right. And so why people are pushing so hard is that, as we've seen over the past couple of weeks, the police have plenty of the city and to build up more capacity to put down any sense of rebellion or pushback against empire

we cannot allow it to happen and i mean there is so much money going to kill people and end life. And if we win right here and make this stand right here, that changes the potentiality for how we view how to keep one another safe and how to reinvest in ourselves and our people throughout this country in a huge way. I think that we are at the precipice of not only winning Cup City, but pushing back the tide of the cult of death that this country has become. The clear cuts in the Wolani Forest at this stage serve a threefold purpose. One, it obviously gets them closer to construction and the mass land grading that is scheduled to start on May 23rd. Two, it's a ploy by the APF to secure additional needed funds from cop city investors.

And finally, it's to demoralize the people who spent years of their life working to stop this project. Everything that police have done is essentially always a reprisal, right? The movement does something and the police clamp down in a reprisal to try to repress the movement. Police always escalate, but they have always been like in response to something. And their goal, of course, is to quiet and chill free speech

and end the movement. But every time this happens, the opposite effect is what comes out of it. And from the domestic terrorism arrest in December, really that's when this even larger groundswell of national support happened and people started to take notice because this was an extreme measure. And then with the killing of Tortuguita in January, that changed so much about the movement,

including people's personal connection to this struggle, where no longer are people doing this simply because they believe it is what's right. They are doing this because they have to, because the state cannot get away with this. This death cannot be in vain. And now people believe that they have to succeed or, at the very least, make the state pay for every inch. And that may mean looking beyond the binary of victory and defeat. According to a construction timeline from this past April, the Atlanta Police Foundation plans to start construction on August 29th, 2023, in order for a quote-unquote soft opening of the facility in December of 2024. One hiccup that the APF has run into is that it seems they have yet to secure enough money

to finish the project and have been forced to ask their investors and the city for more additional money, despite scaling back their plans for the project. As a short clip put together by the Atlanta Community Press Collective explains. The city council will, in fact, have to vote on whether or not to allocate $33 million taxpayer dollars to the construction of Cop City in the very near future. Additionally, the Atlanta Police Foundation budget documents show that current construction plans have been scaled back from what was originally promised. This indicates a failure by the foundation to raise the promised $60 million in private funds. Should the city vote

down this funding package of $33 million, it is difficult to see a path forward for the Atlanta Police Foundation's effort to begin construction on Cop City anytime in the near future. The city council has actually not yet voted to approve the allocation of millions of dollars in city funds to the Cop City project. Through an open records request, we were able to get our hands on emails between the Atlanta Police Foundation and Atlanta's Deputy Chief Operating Officer, LaShondra Burks. In this email exchange, the police foundation expressed a need for the city to provide $33.5 million in funding for the project. Burks responded by mentioning the need for legislative action to provide $33.5 million in funding for the project. Birx responded by mentioning the need for legislative action to secure the funds. The emails state that the police foundation wants to pass this legislation before June 30th because they need the city of Atlanta's money to secure

their construction loan. It's expected that as soon as May 15th, a member of the city council will introduce legislation to allocate public funds to the Atlanta Police Foundation to build Cop City. And a final vote could happen as soon as June 5th. One thing that the movement to stop Cop City has shown us is that no matter what police do, people continue to show up despite what happens, and the movement keeps expanding. As the unnamed forest defender told me. Infrastructure-wise, this week of action was the biggest infrastructure I've seen doing a week of action. I thought that the infrastructure we put together for week one was pretty big, but I mean, it doesn't even compare. It's not the same ballpark as what happened for week five.

Just from how the medics were set up and how food was handled, there was a shuttle bus program. There was a welcome table at a church at one point. There was like 24-7 clinic spaces. There was 24-7 ride programs and medics on standby and like all these things that were ready to support everybody. Like there was all this infrastructure set up to make sure that people were as supported as possible and to make it as easy as possible and lower the barrier of entry to the movement as much as possible, more than there has been in any other week of action so far. I feel like the way that we continue, that is to take

lessons learned from what's happened this week, from the problems with the infrastructure, the issues that it had, expand on it, and then fucking do it for way longer. Like we could do this for an entire summer. I am fully of the belief that the infrastructure I saw on display during the fifth week of action, we could do that for a summer. I believe in the kind of people who put it together. And I believe in the people who did it to do that. We just have to kind of look at what went wrong, what went right and fix it. All the things that existed in this week of action, as far as there being food, rides, medics, and like group supplies, all these things existed during weeks of action one through four. It's just grown, it's gotten more logistically intense. There are more and more people filling

those roles. There's more and more stuff coming in, like the amount of supplies that we just got sent in or people brought with them from out of state has just so vastly expanded since the first week of action. It's just gotten more, I don't know, like not professional, but more polished. It's become a much more polished setup system as time went on from the first camp that we had during the first week of action to now, you know, almost two years later. And that's a huge part of why I think we've outgrown the week of action. We have these types of thought processes and logistics to do this for a summer or for a month. We just need people and resources. We need more people to be willing because I don't want people to get tired. Just last month, another week of action was called for June 24th to July 1st, directly leading into what's being called the Wolani

Summer, with locals in Atlanta calling on supporters and forced defenders everywhere to come to Atlanta for the week and stay for the summer. With Entrenchment Creek Park still closed and there being ongoing efforts to have it be reopened, what the week and following summer will look like is still very unknown. We always are going to need more people. People are our most important resource always. The way that we limit burnout is by having more and more people so that the burden falls less and less heavy on small groups of people and so that people can take breaks. And that's another problem I have with like the week of action as a strategy is you're just going non fucking stop for a week. If you had three months,

you're like, I'm going to chill for a couple of weeks, I'll be back, you know, because I have all this time and it frees up people from out of state to come in have times to work it out in their schedule more. There will be more work it out in their schedule more. There will be more information put out in the coming weeks. You can keep up to date by following Stop Cop City on Instagram, Defend ATL Forest on Twitter, or by checking out stopcopsitysolidarity.org, ideally with a VPN and Tor slash Brave browser.

If you were at the music festival and you're just a normal person, you weren't involved with the movement before this, and you were at the music festival and you're just a normal person, you weren't involved with the movement before this and you were at the music festival and you kind of saw why we're fighting for this. You saw that space and then you saw the type of violence that the police were willing to output to do it. Let that move you to get involved further. You don't have to join an organization. You know, I don't want to speak for other people. I'm a hard anarchist. Fuck organizations to a large degree, but like have an affinity group, get your friends together. If you guys want to be helping out with the food people, help out with the food people. You want to be medics, go join a medic collective, like find whatever thing calls to you and just go and do it because we need people and there's no barrier of entry to join the movement.

There's no test you have to take. You just have to show up. I will end this week of action retrospective with a promise from Forest Defenders. See you on the other side. We will burn it! If you build it, we will burn it! If you build it, we will burn it! If you build it, we will burn it! If you build it, we will burn it!

Music Festival Audio, courtesy of Unicorn Riot. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right.

An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

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And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, to the destruction of Google search. Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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