![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/06/25/4.jpg\")
The Municipality of Lajeado after the waters of the flood receded.
\nIn the first days of May 2024, the territory known as Rio Grande do Sul in so-called Brazil suffered the biggest climate catastrophe in its history. More than a week of intense rain caused several rivers to overflow, wrecking dozens of cities and destroying everything in their path, before flowing into the Guaíba River, causing the biggest flood ever recorded in the Greater Porto Alegre region. By June, 171 deaths had been confirmed. Thousands of people lost everything; 614,000 were rendered homeless; over two million were impacted. The force of the waters erased entire cities from the map. More than 90% of the industry of the state of Rio Grande do Sul was flooded.
\n\nThis is the greatest economic and structural damage a climate event has ever caused in Brazil. Reckoning by the number of people affected and the material damage, the tragedy already surpasses the destruction that Hurricane Katrina inflicted on New Orleans in 2005.
\n\nThe state and the capitalist mode of production are directly responsible for the devastation of the planet. They have cut down forests to make way for cattle, monoculture, and mining, degrading the soil with urban expansion. They are producing more and more catastrophes like the one that struck Rio Grande do Sul. Amid all the horror, we see the complete failure of the ruling class to care for our lives and our environment.
\n\n The Municipality of Lajeado after the waters of the flood receded.
\nAt the center of this tragedy, anarchists, Indigenous communities, quilombos, and social movements have been organizing solidarity efforts as they try to rebuild their lives and their territories—soliciting and distributing donations, calling for joint efforts for cleaning and reoccupying affected properties, and organizing new occupations of empty buildings to house those who lost their homes.
\n\nHere, we explore how capitalists and the state have taken advantage of the catastrophe and how grassroots movements have responded to it, and present an interview with anarchists impacted by the flooding.
\n\nIf you are dismayed or inspired by what you read here, please considering supporting anarchists in southern Brazil here as they address the ongoing impact of the floods.
\n\nA video about the flood by the Antimídia collective.
\nWhenever a “natural” disaster strikes, we see once again that the priority of the state has never been to protect our lives. For decades, the Brazilian government ignored warnings about the dangers of environmental destruction and climate change and failed to take effective measures to prevent catastrophes like this. On the contrary, it played an active role in the destruction—sometimes at a slower pace, sometimes devouring the land voraciously. This contempt for life and hatred of nature was blatant in Bolsonaro’s neo-fascist government. But even social democratic regimes, including progressive governments involving parties like the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party, or PT), contributed heavily to global warming, relying on the automotive industry, oil extraction, and other energy sources with a high environmental impact to boost economic growth. In 2015, during the tenure of the PT’s Dilma Rousseff, scientific reports warning that climate change would cause floods were shelved as “too alarmist.”
\n\nAt the state and municipal levels, the government’s continuous negligence has an immediate impact on our lives. Despite threats from one weather system after another, the governor and mayor did not develop adequate evacuation plans or warnings. They did not even invest in the most minimal steps to protect the population. The current governor, Eduardo Leite (from the right-wing Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, Brazilian Social Democracy Party, or PSDB), shredded the state’s environmental legislation in order to favor businesspeople and reduced investments in Civil Defense during his government. Confronted by journalists, Leite tried to justify this by claiming that “There are these studies that, in some way, warn, but the government also has other agendas.”
\n\nIn Porto Alegre, the dam floodgates that protect the city failed due to lack of maintenance and closing errors. This became even more serious because the last administrations of Porto Alegre city hall had scrapped the DEP (Department of Storm Sewage), the body responsible for the system of dikes, floodgates and pumping stations that protect the capital of Rio Grande do Sul against floods, which imposed further demands on the DMAE (Municipal Department of Water and Sewage). According to experts, the city would not have flooded if the system had been properly maintained and managed.
\n\nMaking matters worse, the mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastião Melo, only decreed water rationing after 85% of the city was already without access to drinking water. The populations of some neighborhoods were only notified that the pumps that prevented the flooding of their homes had been turned off after the fact, giving them no time to evacuate.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/06/25/1.jpg\")
\nThe capitalist mode of production is the cause of climate shifts that threaten all life on earth. At the same time, the corporations and executives that profit from it are doing very little to mitigate the suffering of the population. In this case, if anything, they have made the situation even worse.
\n\nThe capitalists failed to keep the supermarkets that were still operating stocked. Since they were interested in making a quick profit on people’s despair, they allowed those with money to buy up all the available water and supplies. At the same time, dozens of stores were flooded while they were still filled with food, water bottles, and other essential items for the population, which had been locked inside under the protection of police and security guards armed with rifles—who had formed paramilitary groups to prevent hungry people from accessing food or other resources destined to rot in water. The corporations and the state were more interested in protecting these goods than saving the lives of those who needed them, even if the items were bound to be discarded and compensated for by insurance companies.
\n\nA civil police officer shoots in the direction of a person suspected of looting a supermarket in Porto Alegre.
\nWhile people volunteered to rescue tens of thousands of dogs, cats, and horses from rooftops and organized spaces to welcome them with veterinary care and food, pet stores abandoned fish, birds, and mammals in their cages inside flooded facilities, while moving electronics to safety. Animals sold as objects were abandoned to drown, highlighting the logic of this system: for capitalists, life is just another commodity to be compensated for by the insurance company.
\n\nThe little support that big companies offered was derisory. Grendene, one of the world ‘s largest footwear producers, suggested that its workers should donate items from their own food baskets to people affected by the flood.
\n\nThe beverage industry Ambev, the largest brewery in the world—which turns an annual profit equivalent to twice the budget of the city of Porto Alegre—packaged drinking water in aluminum cans—more of a marketing campaign than a form of real solidarity.
\n\nFederação das Indústrias do Rio Grande do Sul (FIERGS), an entity that represents industries in Rio Grande do Sul, asked the federal government for R$100 billion (US$20 billion) in aid for companies affected by the flood. When businesspeople talk about “small government,” it is only where that concerns the interests of ordinary people. When it comes to defending the interests of the elite, they want a massive state.
\n\nDefenders of capitalism praised the actions of billionaires and businesspeople who donated paltry portions of their fortunes to help flood victims. This is when the good deeds were not complete lies, like the image that would show a helicopter belonging to billionaire Luciano Hang rescuing stranded people, which was actually an image generated by artificial intelligence.
\n\nMeanwhile, ordinary people, including some who lost everything, were much more supportive and willing to help, donating proportionally much more of their resources than the super-rich. A live show by a rock band raised more money than the donations that the United States government and egocentric billionaire Elon Musk sent to Rio Grande do Sul, all combined.
\n\nNot to mention that capitalists profited directly from the catastrophe, such as the large supermarkets that sold all their stocks of bottled water to desperate people, often at abusive prices, and still had record sales with the generosity of ordinary people who bought items for donate to those who lost everything. And they will continue to profit while the people affected and those who sympathize with them are fighting to rebuild what was lost.
\n\nSolidarity between those impacted by the disaster has proved essential for survival. Without it, the situation would have gotten much worse. Yet the city of Porto Alegre tried to hinder volunteer groups that organized donation centers and ran mutual aid hubs for weeks—the authorities made agreements with the property owners so that they could take over the operations, excluding and criminalizing the volunteers who had been organizing them up to that point. In another case, on May 20, the Military Police seized a truck that people were using to distribute food to those affected by the floods. Not coincidentally, the truck was from Cozinha Solidária da Azenha (the Azenha Solidarity Kitchen in Porto Alegre), linked to the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST). The police claimed that the truck was unlicensed, but it was not possible to obtain licensing as the systems were down throughout the state due to the effects the rains.
\n\nIn the vast majority of neighborhoods, assisting those impacted by the flood was left up to the community itself and other volunteer groups that worked together to guarantee supplies of water, food, and warm clothing. This was the case for incarcerated people isolated in prisons in the region, who were left with no access to water, food, or hygiene items. It was left up to families—who were also affected by the floods—to organize to take them these basic items.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/06/25/3.jpg\")
The Azenha Solidarity Kitchen, organized by the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST) in Porto Alegre.
\nIn Porto Alegre’s Sarandi neighborhood, the Quilombo dos Machado organized these operations for weeks with the support of other urban quilombos in the city, without any assistance from the state. As Luiz Machado, a resident of the Quilombo dos Machado, said,
\n\n\n\n\n“this welcoming that the state should be doing, we—the community—are doing for ourselves.”
\n
When the Quilombo community asked Governor Eduardo Leite of the PSDB for help, he responded that “the state and public authorities do not have the structure to cover all spots”.
\n\nThe governor’s words reveal a Brazilian form of necropolitics and environmental racism: a system designed to fulfill the economic demands of the rich, guaranteeing profits and votes rather than allocating resources to save lives—especially the lives of the poor, Black, and Indigenous, the demographics most affected by the floods. This is not just a question of inaction or failure. These situations are part of an ongoing extermination project.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/06/25/7.jpg\")
A call for donations for anarchist and autonomous occupations affected by the floods in Porto Alegre.
\nMunicipal and state governments are building temporary cities for the tens of thousands of displaced people to live in until their neighborhoods are rebuilt or new housing is built elsewhere. But this is unnecessary; it only wastes materials and energy. In Porto Alegre alone, there are more than 100,000 empty homes already. Fully 30% of the homes in the city center are unoccupied. That’s ten times more than the total number of temporary homes planned. This is simply another way to channel funds to construction companies while politicians seek popularity through populist measures that do not touch the roots of suffering and inequality. Worse, it is an attempt to move the poor and Black population away from areas that the government and the construction companies covet, in order to pave the way for construction companies and other predatory projects to appropriate people’s homes.
\n\nNew building occupations are emerging in response to the problem of homelessness. An autonomous movement of homeless people occupied an old abandoned hotel in the center of Porto Alegre in order to house 45 families. The National Movement for the Fight for Housing (MNLN) occupied another building, now called Ocupação Rexistência, dedicated to housing dozens of families of people affected by the current crisis. Members of the movement emphasize that they do not want the construction of a “temporary city” for affected families, but rather that empty properties be immediately used for housing. On June 8, the MTST occupied an abandoned 25-story building owned by the National Social Security Institute (INSS), also in Porto Alegre, to shelter families left homeless by the floods. Social movements employing direct action have been more efficient than governments when it comes to sheltering the 160,000 people who lost their homes.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/06/25/2.jpg\")
\nFor politicians and businesspeople, rebuilding the city is an opportunity to make a profit. Massive amounts of materials are needed to rebuild infrastructure and homes destroyed by water, and capitalists will profit by producing and selling these materials. Companies will compete hastily placed bids. And, as always occurs here when the government works directly with capitalists, there will be delays, corruption, overpricing, misappropriation of funds, favoritism.
\n\nLet’s not deceive ourselves—no government is going to attack capitalism. That goes for supposedly left-wing governments like the federal government of the PT too. No matter which party rules, be it the center-left PT or the lunatic far-right of Bolsonaro, the Brazilian state is structured to enrich an elite, bargaining away the future of life on this planet in exchange for power.
\n\nSo the tragedy that devastated the territory occupied by the state of Rio Grande do Sul was not simply an inevitable natural disaster. This is just the latest in a series of extreme climate events that are happening with increasing frequency and intensity as a result of decades of destruction and exploitation of the planet, as the authorities ignore warnings from scientists and repress the self-determination and resistance of social movements and traditional peoples in the name of economic growth. In this brutal system, the state and capitalism converge to plunder the land and exploit our bodies while preventing measures that could reduce the impacts of these events on our lives.
\n\nThese are the local consequences of a global problem. The same system that causes floods in Rio Grande do Sul causes fires in the Pantanal and the Amazon; it promotes genocide in Gaza to control natural gas reserves and oppresses students who rise up to stop that massacre; it contaminates water, violates Indigenous territories, and sinks entire neighborhoods to extract coveted minerals from the earth. It destroys forests, oceans, mountains, and deserts to guarantee profit for a handful of people while condemning billions to misery.
\n\nIf, on the one hand, the politicians and capitalists have shown once again that they are not concerned with the well-being of the population, on the other hand, we see that solidarity still emerges spontaneously and we are capable of supporting each other, even overcoming serious ideological differences.
\n\nThousands of people took the initiative to organize rescues with their own resources, risking their lives to save others, human or not. People have created shelters and support points including donation distribution centers and solidarity kitchens; every day, these produce thousands of lunch boxes for the displaced, which are transported by volunteer drivers. All this is maintained by a massive network of solidarity, extending outside the regions affected by the disaster, spreading throughout the territory occupied by the Brazilian state and other countries as well.
\n\nWhen the disaster struck, the majority of the population quickly set aside meritocracy and individualism and dedicated their time to helping other people, never asking whether they deserved that help, never expecting a reward for it. People paid out of their own pockets to ensure that others had something to wear and something to eat. In the midst of the catastrophe, many people had the chance to realize that we are all in this together and that money is of little help when there is no more water to sell on the market.
\n\nCapitalists and the state will do everything in their power to take over and centralize self-organized solidarity actions, whether by forcibly seizing control of operations, requisitioning properties, coercing people to return to their jobs, or institutionalizing the aid organizations that remain. Our self-organization and unrestricted solidarity are a real threat, as government and capitalism depend on our disunity and our indifference to others’ suffering.
\n\nWe need to continue mobilizing and coordinating if we are to prevent capitalists from using this catastrophe and ones to come to advance their destructive projects. It is up to us to organize ourselves to occupy abandoned properties and ensure that they are used for the benefit of our communities. Make sure church buildings are used to support people in need and not to spread hate and intolerance. Fight so that no one profits from the tragedy, so that resources are distributed to those in need. If we are forced to rebuild our lives and our cities, let’s make sure we build something better, something fairer.
\n\nIf what is called humanity has a future, that future will be collective. Otherwise, it simply won’t be at all.
\n\nOkupa dos Mil Povos is a squat with almost twenty years of history in Porto Alegre. Located in one of the neighborhoods most affected by the flood, the territory was submerged for 24 days. Among the inhabitants are children, dogs, and cats. They still suffer from the effects of the water, mud, oils and chemicals that remained after the flood, in addition to the effects of the high-impact cleaning products needed to restore the space.
\n\nIn this brief interview, we spoke with participants in the occupation about the solidarity work and fundraising to recover the space and resume life after the tragedy—now that climate catastrophes are no longer a future threat, but part of the present experience of surviving capitalism.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/06/25/9.jpg\")
A discussion during an event at Okupa dos Mil Povos.
\nTell us a little about the Okupa dos Mil Povos and how the May floods affected the space.
\n\nThe Território Okupa dos Mil Povos was born as an autonomous collective at the beginning of 2021. Comprised of several people from different parts of the world, this anarchic collective emerged within a squat that started in 2005 when people expropriated capitalist real estate speculators to build a real alternative to the inert life of prevailing neoliberalism. In these few years of life as a collective, the collective has given free rein to the accumulation of knowledge that the Anarkopunk Movement built over decades, also following the rebellious and combative heritage of many generations of anarchists who gave their lives to build the present struggle that we carry out today through self-organization and direct action. We have been an active part of the Teia dos Povos (Web of The Peoples) in struggle in Rio Grande do Sul, creating and maintaining a forum for the dissemination of theoretical and graphic material for two years, bringing people closer to the ideas of autonomy of the Web that is expanding throughout Brazil.
\n\nTogether with Indigenous and quilombola villages, we built the 5th People’s Assembly in 2022; we carried out health days with Warao Indigenous people who immigrated from Venezuela; we held raffles and sold screen-printed t-shirts to finance the healing and prayer house for the Kaingang community in the reclaimed Indigenous land in Canela, Serra Gaúcha—not to mention many construction days, vegetable gardens, murals (2022), conversations, and discussions. We were part of a propaganda and mural-painting collective that met at the Ateneu Batalha da Várzea (2021-2022). In this social center, in 2022, our collective held a series of discussions about the struggles in Latin America that we call “Latin America in Flames,” that drew participants from Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile.
\n\nWe held open calls for street demonstrations, in support of the Colombian people in 2021 and denouncing the persecution and disappearance of Yanomami Indigenous people in 2022. We visited, accompanied, and promoted the recovery of ancestral territories alongside Kaingang, Xokleng, and Guarani Indigenous peoples. We wrote on the walls of the city of Porto Alegre a thousand times, day and night, during demonstrations or in the dark of night.
\n\nThe May floods only confirm that the fight against capitalism and governments around the world is increasingly essential and vital. Our house, along with the community space, was underwater, under mud, chemicals, and contaminating oils, for more than twenty days. We will continue cleaning and we will continue building autonomy and anarchic popular rebellion, without leaders or parties, until we destroy the last pillar of prison society.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/06/25/6.jpg\")
A glimpse of the Okupa dos Mil Povos, “Occupied Territory of a Thousand Peoples.”
\nHow have mutual support actions been organized, one month after the floods?
\n\nNow, after the first month since the flood, there is no way of donating left that is not institutionalized or bureaucratized with social and personal records. In this context, it is very difficult for us to raise funds from these platforms. Our only inflows of money, so to speak, are from supportive companions and people we know who know about our situation and help us with something. We are still in great need of basic things like beds, a proper kitchen, and refrigerators. These are things that we do not have access to due to lack of economic resources; with our jobs we cannot cover the costs of things like these. In the beginning, lots of help arrived and, although it was not enough in the face of everything we lost, we were very happy to feel and see the mutual support of people, especially from anarchic circles, which is where solidarity is most seen in a moment of loss like this.
\n\nWe also see a consistency in the generation and accumulation of data by most NGOs and delivery institutions.
\n\nWhich occupations were affected and how has the collaboration been between radical social centers, occupations, and other movements?
\n\nIn Porto Alegre, there are several squats with left-wing tendencies, all very different from each other, and others that are also anarchist, with queer/gender dissent and the like. In our experience as a house, I believe that support between these centers has been almost zero—it is sad but true. There is a social center that made a bridge between these anarchist spaces: the “Esp(A)ço” ran a big campaign where they managed to buy some collective tools which, in a sense, was the link to a minimum of dialogue and communication. It is important to note that personal relationships of affinity also involve this flow of communication that is not so visible, but exists. At the end of the day, we all know how our companions from other spaces are doing through this sort of word of mouth.
\n\nOther donation delivery channels are usually very limited and precarious, as well as bureaucratic. In general, we receive little and dedicate ourselves to contributing to other spaces of resistance, despite not being so close in terms of thought and action. We see the urgency of the need for minimal coordination of anarchic spaces and also in the construction of horizontal collective bodies.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/06/25/5.jpg\")
A glimpse of the Okupa dos Mil Povos.
\nHow can people from outside Rio Grande do Sul—and also from outside Brazil—help with the reconstruction work in occupations in Porto Alegre?
\n\nTo answer the last question, we would like to say that we see anarchist solidarity from several points of view.
\n\nThe first is material: without a doubt, this is often urgent for daily life and subsistence. In this sense, we still have open channels to receive support from anywhere on the planet.
\n\nWe believe that combative solidarity is also very important. Continuing to strengthen the frontal struggle against all power structures is part of the tool called solidarity.
\n\nAnother important dimension we see is communication beyond Instagram or Facebook. Direct conversation is important to bring different realities closer together and generate future affinities.
\n\nFinally, we would like to thank everyone who still believes that anarchy is possible, that building it is a daily task, everyone who strives to live their ideas of freedom more concretely every day!
\n\nAn embrace for everyone!
\n\nFrom the occupied territory of los thousand pueblos,
\nJune 8, 2024, Porto Alegre
-Organized individualities and anarchic collective of los thousand pueblos
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/06/25/8.jpg\")
A satellite image shows the flooding in Porto Alegre on May 6.
\nAt first, it appeared to be an ordinary forest defense campaign aimed at discouraging Atlanta city government from pouring money into an unpopular police training facility. But over the past two years, the fight against Cop City has escalated into one of the fiercest struggles of the Biden era, pitting a wide range of courageous people against a united front of politicians, prosecutors, and police.
\n\nIn setting out to stop the militarization of police, activists have discovered that they are challenging the state on a point that all of its representatives consider non-negotiable. Police and prosecutors have pressed trumped-up domestic terrorism charges against almost every defendant arrested since last December; they have killed one forest defender; they have charged those engaged in legal support for the arrestees. The situation is tense ahead of a sixth Week of Action in support of the movement, scheduled to take place June 24 through July 1.
\n\nIn the following account and analysis, participants in the movement in Atlanta trace its trajectory from the fifth Week of Action that began on March 4, 2023 through the City Council vote of June 5. For background, consult these articles:
\n\nYou can read other essays by participants in this struggle here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/2.jpg\")
A sixth Week of Action in support of the movement is scheduled to take place June 24 through July 1.
\nSince March 2023, the movement to defend the Weelaunee Forest and stop the construction of Cop City has confronted new and difficult challenges. The consecutive waves of repression against the movement are turning this struggle into a historic confrontation. While forest defenders, lawyers, activists, anarchists, and local residents continue to pressure contractors, organize legal support, and host cultural and educational events, repression is taking a toll.
\n\nThese attacks are not unique to the movement, despite the authorities’ attempts to single it out. Across the country, we are seeing a systematic clampdown, including the banning of books, an assault on trans people and reproductive freedom, and open attacks on “the left.” And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
\n\nAs we head into the mid-21st century—which is shaping up to be an era of wars, ecological crises, pandemics, mass displacement, and social conflict—police are more fundamental to governance than ever. No one who wishes to hold state power can do without their backing. That explains why the Democratic Party has doubled down on unqualified support for police even after the largest protest movement in United States history erupted in response to police violence. Efforts to reform police through institutional channels have all run aground, leaving grassroots direct action campaigns like the one in Atlanta the only hope for change.
\n\nAround the world, governments are relying on police to keep an increasingly volatile situation under control. This gives the police themselves outsize influence and access to state resources. Years before the French police initiated their latest wave of violence against protesters, it was clear that they have disproportionate leverage on the French government. Colombia, Iran, and many other countries have experienced their own equivalents of the George Floyd Rebellion because police have come to play the same role everywhere, using brute force to preserve racialized power disparities.
\n\nSo in the fight against Cop City, people in Atlanta are taking on the institution that is most central to the functioning of the state in our time. No wonder it has become such a pitched battle. What happens in Atlanta will set far-reaching precedents.
\n\nThis chapter of the story begins in the wake of the final police raid on the forest occupations, during which Georgia State Patrol killed forest defender Manuel Teran, known in the forest as Tortuguita.
\n\nDuring the final week of February 2023, Atlanta police escorted heavy machinery owned by the Brent Scarborough Company into the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. Subcontractors working under contract with Brasfield & Gorrie hastily erected new fencing, put down thousands of pounds of gravel, and felled trees. The Phase 1 Construction Plan, originally slated to begin on May 1, 2022 but halted by the third Week of Action, finally got underway. In this phase, the Atlanta Police Foundation intended to initiate “erosion control” and to clearcut all the trees. Forest defenders had continuously resisted this for two years.
\n\nAnticipating a new phase of resistance, the Mayor’s office announced the formation of a new, supplemental, community task force. This organization, the “South River Forest Public Safety Training Center Community Task Force,” sought to integrate the South River Forest Vision with the construction of Cop City. The Task Force included local bureaucrats, businesspeople with ties to Cop City, nonprofit personnel within the governmental clientele regime, bigots, and “former” CIA agents. Despite this roster, the Task Force was intended to function to coopt dissent, providing a semblance of community involvement. That strategy faced immediate setbacks, however, as the Mayor called for their first meeting to be held behind closed doors.
\n\nOrganizers and groups from around the country converged in Atlanta on March 4 to begin a fifth Week of Action. Tensions were at an all-time high. On the one hand, the authorities were prepared to stop at nothing to force the unpopular Cop City project through. On the other, a new model for autonomous politics was drawing the support of thousands, many of whom were eager to participate in the movement for the first time.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/22.jpg\")
A map from the Atlanta Police Foundation depicting the planned Cop City facility on the site of the old Atlanta prison farm. Running through the middle is the power line cut, at the top of which sits the north gate, where participants in the protest of March 5 burned construction equipment. The forest on the right (i.e., eastern) side of the cut remains untouched as of now, but all the trees on the left side of the cut have been destroyed. This 85-acre clearing is where they intend to build Cop City. The city’s original plans would have destroyed all of the trees on both sides of the power line cut.
\nIn the weeks leading up to the fifth Week of Action, autonomous groups and organizers from around the country put together a schedule of events that was both culturally and politically diverse. A local church offered to serve as a convergence center. Ahead of the week, Ryan Millsap placed a single A-frame board at the entrance of Weelaunee People’s Park, claiming that the music festival, scheduled to begin on March 4, had not received proper permitting. This was a step back from the concrete barriers he had illegally installed ahead of the fourth Week of Action in summer 2022.
\n\nNobody could stop what was coming, and no one tried.
\n\nThe forest was empty. Following lethal and authoritarian collusion between Dekalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, all the encampments in the forest had been vacated. If the movement was to use the forest as a site of action and convergence, it would be necessary to retake the park. Toward that end, nearly 500 people gathered at Gresham Park around 10 am on the morning of March 4. At that time, this was the largest rally that had taken place in support of the movement.
\n\nChildren, clergy, local organizers, bicyclists, and autonomous activists from around Atlanta and the United States mingled in the park, sharing food and coffee while listening to fiery and heartfelt speeches. Despite the relentless efforts of locals to mobilize Atlanta residents in the weeks prior, perhaps half of those gathered were from out of town. Very few of them were from the large nonprofit organizations that had endorsed the movement after the killing of Tortuguita. Around the United States, popular support for the movement came chiefly from the most risk-tolerant and dedicated layers of activists, the same people who have resisted street-level fascist violence, the separation of families at the US-Mexico border, extractive industries, and racist policing over the past several years. The absence of people from larger formal organizations illustrated one of the limits that the movement was confronting.
\n\nAround noon, this crowd marched through Gresham Park to a paved bicycle path. This path crosses from Gresham Park beneath Bouldercrest Road directly into Weelaunee People’s Park. As the crowd proceeded, activists with reinforced banners and shields gravitated to the front. The possibility of a clash with police seemed high; those in the front were determined to ensure the safety of the others.
\n\nIn the end, police did not confront the parade, which succeeded in re-opening Weelaunee People’s Park. Upon arriving in the parking lot area, which had been destroyed by Ryan Milsap, everyone chanted in unison “I will defend this land.” People shared food and water and small teams prepared infrastructure for a mass encampment.
\n\nDiscussing Beethoven’s 14th piano sonata (the “Moonlight” sonata), composer Franz Liszt described the playful and upbeat second movement as “a flower between two abysses.” Whereas the first movement is brooding and morose and the final movement frenetic and dark, the jovial and light sequence in the middle of the composition playfully escorts listeners between the two. The power of the second movement derives in part from its relationship to what proceeds and follows it. The South River Music Festival played a similar role in the unfolding drama.
\n\nDuring the fourth Week of Action in late summer 2022, organizers had brought dozens of bands, DJs, and performers into the forest for two live music performances—one at the beginning of the week, one at the end. On the final day, Ryan Millsap and one of his hired goons showed up at Weelaunee People’s Park with a tow truck and attempted to destroy the gazebo in the parking lot, only to be driven away while their truck was destroyed. The South River Music Festival built on this legacy, but with a much greater ambition and scale.
\n\nThis time, organizers secured several popular artists including Zack Fox, Father, Ethereal, Raury, and Faye Webster. There was also considerable excitement about the bands from the do-it-yourself underground.
\n\nAfter re-taking the park, people erected a hand-crafted stage in the RC Field clearing. This stage was adorned with two banners. One banner, hanging behind the performers, read, “In the eyes of the state, all who resist white supremacy, colonialism, environmental racism, gentrification, and police militarization are domestic terrorists.” Another banner on the stage read “Love is my sword, truth is my compass,” a quote from Assata Shakur. Flanking the stage were a concessions area and multiple tables distributing free food and educational zines, posters, fliers, and booklets. By the time the music began, hundreds of people were already gathering in the area while others set up tents. By nightfall, some 1000 people danced, moshed, and swayed to the music, enthusiastically chanting “Stop Cop City!” and other slogans.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/19.jpg\")
“In the eyes of the state, all who resist white supremacy, colonialism, environmental racism, gentrification, and police militarization are domestic terrorists.” A banner hanging on the stage during the South River Music Festival.
\nMany of the most creative, hopeful, sincere, and dedicated people in metro Atlanta participated in this historic unpermitted festival in a highly contested terrain. In contrast to the rally and march earlier in the day, the majority of those who attended the music festival were not activists associated with the left. As the entertainment came to an end around 3 am, many of those who attended the festival retired to their tents, but the majority went home for the night. A helicopter circled above the trees for about an hour to intimidate and surveil the hundreds who remained.
\n\nThe next morning, the park teemed with conversation, food, and activity. Thanks to the morning light, it was possible to see that tents were pitched across the forest in every direction, more than ever before. During the third Week of Action, the perhaps 200 people who camped in the forest were spread out on both sides of Intrenchment Creek. This time, all of those assembled stuck only to the east side, in Weelaunee People’s Park. This could distort the perception of how many people took park in the encampment compared to previous convergences, but it was likely twice as many people as before. The composition of those assembled was more diverse than previously, judging by age and ethnicity. Perhaps half of the people in tents had arrived from out of town at the invitation of local organizers.
\n\nAfter lunch, music began again in the RC field, as more attendees began to return to the forest.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/1.jpg\")
A flier distributed at the South River Music Festival.
\nAround 3 pm on Sunday, March 5, someone in a balaclava announced to the hundreds of music festival attendees that a march was going to meet in the RC field behind the bounce house. This demonstration intended to stop Cop City “directly.” Everyone was encouraged to attend, but only if they could conceal their identities and cover all identifying tattoos and markers. Perhaps 500 people were gathered around the stage listening to music, and more were arriving continuously.
\n\nAn hour later, a crowd began to assemble in the RC field at some distance from the stage. Practically everyone in this crowd was masked. Many were dressed in all black, others in all camouflage, others in a mix of both. After about 45 minutes, this crowd was more than 200 strong. They walked around the perimeter of the music festival, waving and inviting others to join as other festival goers cheered and clapped. Perhaps 400 people remained for the music. As the crowd departed the RC field toward Constitution Road, a group with makeshift shields joined the front.
\n\nOn Constitution Road, some participants in the procession moved about a dozen tires from the roadside, laying them across the road to block traffic in both directions. At the southside “cut” in the tree line, near the entrance of Blackhall/Shadowbox Studios, the crowd entered the Old Atlanta Prison Farm.
\n\nThe long stretch of grassy clearing between Constitution and Key Road is almost completely uphill. This forced the crowd to walk slowly, although the entire action seemed to depend on the element of surprise. Halfway up the hill, the march reached the erosion control silt fencing constructed by Brent Scarborough Company. Participants began to pull up and slash the fencing. Dozens of yards of silt fencing were destroyed on both the north and south sides of the cut. Further on, they also slashed and destroyed chest-high orange netting. When the crowd reached the final hill, a helicopter finally came into view and the group stopped. Many people carrying shields moved to the front of the crowd, while others carrying projectiles stepped behind them. Only 50 yards ahead, atop a hill, stood a chain-link fence behind which several police officers were visible. Beyond them, the crowd could make out a trailer, porta-potties provided by the United Rental company, multiple excavators, and other police vehicles.
\n\nThe crowd surged forward, tossing fireworks and stones over the fence at the handful of officers on the other side. The police fled to their vehicles, which subsequently were targeted with projectiles. At the same time, the gate was broken open and hundreds of masked people surged into the construction zone. Dozens ran ahead to the north gate at Key Road, tossing stones, fireworks, and Molotov cocktails at the officers staging across the street or in the road. This enabled others to close the large gate, preventing police from initiating a comprehensive response.
\n\nWhile they were securing the gate, perhaps a hundred people set about decommissioning the construction site—toppling and burning the floodlights, smashing and burning the police vehicles, damaging and then torching the excavators and a front-end loader, overturning the porta-potties, wrecking and then setting fire to the operations trailer. This lasted no more than fifteen minutes. With no arrests, no detentions, and apparently no injuries, hundreds of people disappeared into the forest.
\n\nDespite the insinuations of the police statement and some carefully-worded corporate news articles, no one has been arrested for participating in this action. To this day, no one is facing charges associated with confronting the police at the work site, for damaging materials, or for burning equipment.
\n\nUntil the 2023, the movement sought to defend a position within Weelaunee Forest while isolating the forces seeking to build Cop City from the contractors, insurance companies, and banks they needed to work with.
\n\nAfter the killing of Tortuguita on January 18, the movement and the police found themselves on the opposite sides of this dynamic. The police raid of December 13, 2022 broke what had previously been a balance of force; afterwards, the forest encampments ceased to be a zone of meaningful defense. The local administration had succeeded in building the will and means to use lethal force against the encampments, and the movement was not capable of defending the area indefinitely as long as authorities could continuously attack it from elsewhere in the city.
\n\nIn March 2023, as the Police Foundation sought to carve out a position within the forest for their contractors, the movement conducted a raid on them, turning the tables.
\n\nIf it was true that the contending forces were mimicking each others’ previous strategies, then it could be anticipated that the authorities would undertake a pressure campaign seeking to identify the movement’s support structures (such as bail funds or media personnel) and isolate them from each another. The movement, by contrast, would need to call on a wide array of allies and forces to encircle and delegitimize the project, framing Cop City as the unrealistic fantasy of a group of dangerous fanatics, the same way that the government had been attempting to discredit the movement since spring 2021.
\n\nAround 6:30 pm on March 5, roughly one hour after the raid on the Cop City construction site, police began to assemble nearly a mile away from the site, in the vicinity of the music festival. Several dozen vehicles belonging to Georgia State Patrol, Atlanta Police, Dekalb County Sheriff, the Sandy Springs Quick Response Force, the Department of Homeland Security, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, and other agencies showed up at both West Park Place and Constitution Road.
\n\nAt the time, nearly 700 people occupied Weelaunee People’s Park, perhaps more. They were concentrated in the RC field, where performers were still playing at the festival. Officers began exiting their vehicles and entering the forest. Badly outnumbered and apparently without a plan, they began tasering and tackling people, seemingly at random.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/18.jpg\")
Police tackling and arresting festival attendees at random on the evening of March 5, including a legal obvserver. It later came out that the Atlanta district attorney opposed charging the legal observer, but Georgia’s Attorney General pushed the charges through regardless.
\nSomeone in a mask ran up to the stage, shouting that their friend had just been arrested and encouraging others to go support them. Unfortunately, the intention was not particularly clear aside from their repeated exclamations to the effect that police had arrived and begun grabbing people. Rather than assisting those arrested, several hundred people began making their way to their cars, most in a mild panic. A few minutes later, after three or four hundred people had already decided to leave, someone else got on the microphone and stated “Hey guys, don’t leave. We aren’t doing anything wrong. We are sticking together; we are here to listen to music. Come back to the stage. We will be safest if we all stick together to protect one another.” About a hundred and fifty or two hundred people returned to the stage, where musicians continued to perform, despite the panic elsewhere in the forest.
\n\nIn the weeks following the raid, the most common story in sympathetic news media and within the movement implied that police randomly attacked helpless music festival attendees on the evening of March 5, an hour after the raid on the construction site. This narrative, which is more or less accurate, has garnered the arrestees many people’s sympathy, rendering it more difficult to demonize the movement.
\n\nYet in the context of this narrative, some journalists and politicians have implied that the repression of the music festival was the responsibility of the masked activists who attacked the construction site, implying that they were cynically exploiting the festival. This spin enables the government to shift responsibility for its own tyrannical overreach back onto the victims.
\n\nIn their own statement on March 5, the police alleged that “a group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center [sic] to conduct a coordinated attack.” Ironically, this phrasing implicates the police in attacking festival-goers that they themselves considered to be “peaceful.” But it also shows that the police, too, wish to draw a rhetorical distinction between the music festival attendees and the people who destroyed the construction site, even though they chose not to make any distinction between them on March 5th.
\n\nCounter-insurgency strategies dictate that the repressive force must identify a target that can be isolated from the rest of the population. The police have not succeeded in doing this—they have pressed the same “domestic terrorism” charges against virtually all the people they have arrested in relation to the movement, however randomly—but they still wish for the public to imagine that there is a distinction between “peaceful protesters” and “violent agitators.”
\n\nIn fact, the story of what happened at the music festival after the march is more interesting than any of these constructed narratives.
\n\nAfter the first few arrests in the RC field, people confronted the police in the parking lot of Weelaunee People’s Park. Using stones, shields, and fireworks, scarcely two dozen festival defenders drove the officers out of the parking lot. A few minutes later, officers drove police vehicles into the lot and jumped out, hoping to secure the zone in order to continue their attacks on the festival. People with shields and masks confronted the officers again, this time on the section of bicycle path where Ryan Millsap had torn up the pavement, and just outside of the RC field on a dirt path leading to the Living Room. These people prevented the officers from moving freely into the area.
\n\nAt the same time, hundreds of people were escaping in every direction, including down the bicycle path behind the lines of rock-throwers. It is likely that at least dozens more people could have been detained or arrested if not for the actions of those who confronted the police around the parking lot. Some of those defenders may have been among the hundreds who had raided the construction site an hour earlier, while others were probably just courageous people willing to act boldly to defend each other from police violence. If another group had confronted the police who were approaching through the other parking lot area closer to Constitution Road, preventing them from accessing the area, the entire police operation might have ended differently.
\n\nOn their third attempt to enter the forest en masse, the police brought an armored Bearcat into the parking lot and fired tear gas. This time, they managed to push the festival defenders back onto the still-paved section of path near the Living Room. Some people were still throwing stones and shooting fireworks at officers in the area. Random officers, still without a plan, pointed guns randomly at park-goers and campers, screaming “Get on the ground!” and yelling “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Video footage shows an Atlanta police officer yelling “Come forward with your hands up or you are going to get shot. I don’t know how else to put it, you’re going to get hit with a bullet.” This sort of behavior was not limited to any particular one of the agencies involved.
\n\nFootage from Weelaunee People’s Park on the evening of March 5 captures a police officer shouting “Come forward with your hands up or you are going to get shot. I don’t know how else to put it, you’re going to get hit with a bullet.”
\nFollowing their limited success in the wooded area and parking lot off West Park Place, the police who had attempted to approach through the Living Room repositioned themselves closer to the RC field, where they had a better line of sight. In the process, the Bearcat temporarily got stuck. Having experienced considerable pushback in response to their initial attempts, they were no longer trying to charge in arresting everyone in sight. They focused on isolated individuals, including people attempting to leave the music festival alone.
\n\nThe sun had begun to set. At this point, perhaps 80% of the festival-goers had safely vacated the forest. Officers walked up to the bounce house in the middle of the RC field and pointed rifles inside of it, seeking to terrorize children or their caretakers. A helicopter hovered overhead; drones whirred above the tree line.
\n\nIt is likely that anyone who stayed in the RC field near the stage or who left the field via Constitution Road did not know about the clashes in the parking lot or in the forest itself, on account of the volume of the music and the division of the terrain effected by the tree line. While a few acts had to cancel due to the police blocking road access to the park, several performers finished their sets while continuing to lead chanting with the crowd. This detail appeared later in courtroom proceedings, cited by assistant prosecutor Lance Cross to argue that everyone assembled there was complicit in the crimes of the movement.
\n\nEventually, many officers approached the stage, some wearing riot gear; they were accompanied by an armored vehicle. The remaining festival attendees, some of whom also may or may not have been among the hundreds who raided the construction site almost two hours earlier, remained united. When the officers came close, everyone present linked arms and sat down on the ground. They began chanting “We have children!” and “Let us leave.”
\n\nFestival attendees link arms near the stage and demand to be released together on the evening of March 5.
\nA commanding officer took to a megaphone, asking the crowd to select five representatives to negotiate. Law enforcement also selected five representatives. In a cinematic display of mutually recognized force, the two groups of representatives slowly approached each other. Both the group representing the festival and the group representing the police moved with their hands above their heads, in a sign of non-aggression. In a short conversation, the negotiators agreed that those remaining would not be split into groups, they would not be detained or have their IDs checked, and they would not be arrested. Anyone who needed to retrieve necessary supplies from their tents (such as insulin) would have five minutes to do so. Those responsible for sound equipment or instruments would also be allowed time to break down gear and pack it into their cars. In the end, the solidarity of the musicians and the crowd represented the safest strategy.
\n\nBy the end of the police operation, police had detained 34 people. Of the detainees, 11 with local addresses were permitted to go free. The police approached repression chiefly as a means to craft a press release—a cynical attempt to legitimize the discourse about “outside agitators” perpetuated by local authorities and their corporate media mouthpieces. This left just 23 under arrest, 21 of whom were in possession of out-of-state IDs.
\n\nTo date, no one has been charged with crimes specifically related to the physical defense of the music festival.
\n\n\n\n\n“If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we will be utterly ruined.”
\n\n–Pyrrhus of Epirus
\n
The march on the construction site was the most audacious action against Cop City in two years. As such, it has been among the most polarizing events and has produced some of the most confused analyses. Nonetheless, large swaths of the movement have endorsed the action as legitimate, even if they have reservations about the details. No one can deny the courage that attacking the construction site must have demanded.
\n\nIt is worth engaging with some of the most commonly expressed reservations about the events, in order to discuss challenges that future movements may also face.
\n\nSome analyses of the events of March 5 are built on a logical fallacy: mistaking consequences for causes. This error plagues human beings across all disciplines. In politics, it often leads people to reject entire strategies on account of the outcome of a single event. To put it simply, it is a mistake to assume that police repression is the direct and proportional consequence of the actions that immediately preceded it. The timing and form of repression are determined by many factors, including the means at the disposal of the authorities and the pressures bearing on them from a variety of directions. Likewise, repression does not always achieve its objective.
\n\nIn the aftermath of March 5, some dedicated and thoughtful people drew hasty conclusions, such as “Because of the repression, the time for direct action has passed” and “It is not possible to directly attack the police.” These conclusions are like the reports of a meteorologist attempting to extrapolate the entire climate of Earth from a single day’s weather.
\n\nThose who accept this line of argument could arrive at a similar fallacy: If activists refrain from further acts of sabotage, they will escape further acts of repression. If they are peaceful, they will be safe. Again, this seems intuitive, but it does not conform to the historical record.
\n\nWhen Ryan Millsap showed up at the end of July 2022 aiming to destroy Weelaunee People’s Park, then fled after his truck was burned this did not result in a police raid or charges (though if it had, some people would surely have described that as “inevitable”). When police raided the forest in December 2022, they arrested people on domestic terrorism charges simply for camping in the woods. Practically all effective resistance, regardless of the particular tactics involved, eventually draws repression from the state and its proxies; but that repression is rarely systematic or rational.
\n\nIn this particular case, the state is seeking to build a facility to militarize police and train them to suppress social movements. If this occurs, social movements of all kinds will face more dangerous repression in the future, and even those who do not participate in such movements will be at greater risk from ordinary police violence. In the long run, preventing the authorities from building Cop City will be safer than withdrawing from the fight.
\n\nLikewise, in a thriving movement, it is possible to maintain the kind of solidarity and organizing necessary to support those facing the courts and prison system. The most dangerous thing that participants in this movement could do would be to stop organizing now, giving the authorities a free hand to carry out retaliatory attacks against isolated targets.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/8.jpg\")
Police lining up on Constitution Road, preparing to raid the South River Music Festival on March 5, 2023.
\nAs a tactical or strategic framework, defense alone is rarely sufficient to succeed on its own terms. This is important when we consider whether the events of March 5 somehow undermined the possibility of maintaining an encampment in Weelaunee Forest.
\n\nLong before March 2023, the administration of mayor Andre Dickens, the Atlanta Police Foundation, and the corporate interests steering the Cop City project had escalated to scorched earth tactics, abandoning any pretense of restraint. Their desperate violence is the consequence of two factors: first, the fact that channeling resources towards the police is a fundamental rather than incidental goal for them, and second, the fact that the movement has been so effective up to this point, largely as a result of strategies that made space for offensive actions.
\n\nIt is a mistake to imagine that the administration would have indefinitely tolerated an occupied autonomous zone within the territory of metro Atlanta. This should have been foreseen in May 2022, when the first serious raid on the forest occurred; it became crystal clear in December 2022, when the police carried out a more intensive raid and prosecutors introduced the first domestic terrorism charges.
\n\nThe reason that it took several months for the authorities to mount the raid of December 2022 was not that the movement was avoiding confrontation during that time, but rather because the movement had demonstrated so much strength in both defense and offense. The only way to prevent that raid from occurring would have been to defeat the effort to build Cop City before December—which would have demanded considerably more offensive effort. Even if the movement had triumphed, the police would probably still have targeted the occupation of Weelaunee Forest, as occurred in France after the defeat of the airport planned for Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
\n\nOn January 18, the day the police murdered Tortuguita, it became inescapably evident that the movement could no longer defend territory in the forest, at least not by means of its existing tactical repertoire. But there is more to say about the problem of defense.
\n\nThe encampments established in Spain and Greece in 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the self-described “autonomous zones” established in several cities at the tail end of the 2020 George Floyd rebellion all showed the benefits of creating a space of encounter where people can gather. At the same time, all of them demonstrated how difficult it is to continuously defend an urban encampment. These examples are pertinent to the movement to stop Cop City, because Weelaunee Forest is located inside the perimeter highway of a major metropolitan area.
\n\nMost of the mass urban encampment experiences of the past decade and a half—regardless of their size or popularity—conform to the same pattern: sudden growth, police encirclement, slow attrition, internal decay, eventual defeat. The ones that do not conform to that pattern—the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt in 2011, the Maidan uprising in Ukraine in 2014—ended in revolutions that toppled the governments. In other words, urban encampments can serve to bring people together and create vibrant connections; under the right circumstances, they may even help to catalyze sudden social change on a massive scale; but they cannot hold out indefinitely against better-equipped adversaries. Every day that passes without securing victory is a day closer to the eviction of the camp.
\n\nPerhaps the most promising recent example of a movement occupying urban public space took place in Portland, Oregon in summer 2020, when protesters faced down Donald Trump’s effort to show that he could suppress urban unrest by sending in federal agents. Crucially, however, the movement in Portland was not trying to hold specific space continuously, but rather contesting it on a nightly basis.
\n\nThere is an older historical model for defending autonomous urban space: the squatting movement that established social centers like Ungdomshuset and Rigaer 94 across Europe. Setting aside the fact that these movements had their origins during an era of relative social peace—and in a completely different real estate market, in which the property in question was much less essential to the functioning of capitalism than Atlanta politicians consider Cop City to be—the important thing to understand about the historic squatting movement is that it was a side effect of much larger struggles. It was only by keeping the authorities tied up in battles far from their homes that the squatters were able to retain their autonomy.
\n\nIn the case of Ungdomshuset, for example, squatters carried out a series of offensive occupations for a year, experiencing one defeat after another, before the city government permitted them to take over the initial location of Ungdomshuset as a compromise intended to broker social peace. Seventeen years later, hoping that the squatting movement had lost steam, the city government set out to evict the building—and eventually succeeded, only to be forced to relinquish another building to the squatters after another full year of riots and other protests.
\n\nIn other words, as participants in the George Floyd Rebellion argued in regards to “cop-free zones,”
\n\n\n\n\nEven if our goal is simply to hold a particular physical space, we have to prioritize carrying out offensive activities throughout society at large that can keep our adversaries on the defensive, while investing energy in the activities that nourish movements and spaces rather than focusing on defending particular boundaries. We should understand occupied spaces as an effect of our efforts, rather than as the central cause we rally around.
\n
Victory, and thus real safety, does not come from establishing impregnable defensive positions or security plans. It does not only depend on keeping open supply lines, garnering public sympathy, and drawing massive and diverse participation. It also depends on overextending the adversary, outmaneuvering their logistics, overwhelming their personnel, outpacing their communications.
\n\nLikewise, if a movement aims to maintain territory somewhere, it must make sure the battle lines are elsewhere. Even if the goal is simply to broker a peace treaty with the authorities—an optimistic venture in a time when it hardly appears that anyone is in a position to compromise—it will only be possible to do this if the movement can wield leverage offensively. Safety derives from agility, not brute strength. It is determined by what happens on the front lines, not inside the castle.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/7.jpg\")
Demonstrators at the Cop City construction site on March 5, 2023.
\nLike many movements before it, the movement to defend Weelaunee Forest initially relied on a strategy of deterrence. In the warmer months, the forest encampments benefited from dense canopy cover, which created an unpredictable terrain for police incursions. Indeed, until March 5, 2023, police had practically never ventured into the forest at night. This is why the forest occupations lasted for over a year, considerably longer than any of the aforementioned urban encampments.
\n\nAt the same time, for the first year and a half, participants in the movement assumed that there would be limits to the violence that police used against them. The murder of Tortuguita changed this.
\n\nIf the police do not depend on popular support, if the city government can take popular support for granted because their far-right Republican competition is even less popular than they are, then it is a mistake to rely on public outrage to discourage police violence. As the film industry and electric car manufacturing relocate to Georgia, many urban areas and suburbs are filling up with wealthy liberal transplants from the Northeast and West Coast, pushing poor people out into the Atlanta exurbs and changing the electoral leanings of those municipalities. Consequently, Georgia is on the brink of becoming a “swing state” in federal elections. This gives local politicians considerable leverage, which they will likely use to pressure their colleagues both locally and nationally into supporting them no matter what they do.
\n\nEven if it is possible for the movement to counter this by exerting leverage of its own, this will only come about as a consequence of establishing deterrence on a new footing after the murder of Tortuguita—for example, by inflicting significant material consequences for it, or by making the entire Cop City project too expensive to be worthwhile even to its foremost advocates.
\n\nSeen through this lens, the shortcomings of the March 5 action did not result from it being gratuitously offensive, nor simply from poor timing or inadequate defense alone, but rather from inadequate offense.
\n\nSome people have stated that they do not object to the march on the construction site, only to the timing. The strongest version of this argument suggests that the march could have happened at the end of the week or after the music festival. If the march had taken place at a different time, the argument goes, it might have had less of a negative impact on other tactics, activities, or groups.
\n\nThe Week of Action, as an organizing tool, allows for large numbers of people to converge in specific places during a specific period of time. This density of participation makes certain actions possible that would otherwise be impossible. For instance, the re-taking of Weelaunee People’s Park on March 4 was facilitated in part by the hundreds of people in the front of the crowd with shields, banners, and masks. The arrival of hundreds of participants from outside of Atlanta was crucial to enabling a few hundred locals to camp in the forest—something few were prepared to do otherwise after the killing of Tortuguita.
\n\nAlthough there is no way to know, it is conceivable that many of the visitors from out of town who arrived for the music festival of March 4 and 5 already planned to leave by Monday. This would have matched the pattern of previous Weeks of Action, during which the crowds during the opening and closing weekends have been much larger than the numbers present mid-week. The final weekend of the March 2023 Week of Action had been organized around a Food Autonomy festival, at which farmers and naturalists were scheduled to discuss their food-related projects from around the country. If anything, that would have been a worse time for a march on the construction site.
\n\nIf all this is so, then the march on the construction site might not have been possible at any time other than March 4 or 5. In that case, it is not a question of when it should have happened, but of whether it should have happened at all.
\n\nThis does not negate the criticism that the action occurred at a bad time. In some ways, there is no good time to carry out an offensive action that pushes a movement to its limits.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/11.jpg\")
Even though there is daylight footage of the March 5 protest, authorities released thermal imaging to depict the action as militaristic and instill fear.
\n“Separation of time and space” and diversity of tactics have been guiding principles for this movement. The general idea is that events inviting different degrees of risk should take place in different locations or at different times, in order that participants in the movement can be aware of the kinds of actions they are taking part in. Ideally, this framework should enable more risk-tolerant groups to use their preferred tactics without fear that others will bear the consequences.
\n\nAt the same time, the movement to defend Weelaunee Forest has always benefitted from the weaving of different tactics and strategies into a symbiotic whole. The music and chanting on the final night of the fourth Week of Action were more meaningful in the context of the burnt-out wreckage of Ryan Millsap’s truck; the support of various music scenes has bolstered the numbers of people prepared to fight against Cop City. By making it impossible for the police to distinguish between “peaceful protesters” and “violent agitators,” this approach enabled the movement to hold off the construction process for almost a year.
\n\nAs long as there was a balance of force between the movement and the police, the risk tolerance of some participants in the movement contributed to the safety of all. This only shifted in December, when Atlanta police managed to bring in a wide range of repressive agencies from around Georgia in order to go on the offensive.
\n\nAs of 2023, the administration and police agencies no longer perceive the movement against Cop City as a protest movement. At least some groups within the government have shifted to treating the situation as a domestic insurgency, bringing military actions and strategies to bear: counterattacks, spoiling attacks aimed at disrupting assembly points and logistics, collective punishment, political prosecution and punitive charging, show trials, lethal force. This makes it difficult to maintain a separation of time and space between different risk levels. Police have begun to respond even to the tamest legal actions as if they are the work of “domestic violent extremists.” When even posting a flier could result in being charged with felony “intimidation” and “stalking,” there is little advantage to opting for tactics that would ordinarily be less risky.
\n\nThe greatest danger, in this situation, is that continuous escalation will thin the movement out, depriving it of the inclusive character that has been a source of strength. Yet unilateral de-escalation is also impossible, as the police are chiefly responsible for the pattern of intensifying violence and danger—and it is difficult to speak of de-escalation when a large part of the forest has already been reduced to dunes of exposed clay and dirt, forcing white-tailed deer and other creatures out of their home into the inhospitable subdivisions nearby.
\n\nAfter the events of March 5, the path forward seemed uncertain. If actions are best judged by the horizons of possibility that they create, the march on the construction site did not increase the frequency of subsequent direct action or sabotage, nor inspire a new wave of countrywide solidarity actions. Facing so much repression, it is crucial to innovate new strategies and tactics before the movement is trapped in a blind alley. The best approaches don’t just actualize the plans and desires of the participants, they also broaden the imagination of the movement as a whole.
\n\nFor all of these reasons, the events of March 5 should be considered neither a defeat nor an unqualified success. Rather, the framework of “Pyrrhic victory” probably best describes what occurred. The march on the construction site succeeded in striking another blow against the plan to build Cop City—ratcheting up security costs, honoring Tortuguita’s memory, and setting new precedents for resistance—but an attempt to repeat that model any time soon would probably destroy the movement.
\n\nThe 23 people arrested during the music festival are all being charged with Domestic Terrorism under Georgia’s HB 452. None of them are accused of throwing stones at riot police. None of them are accused of shooting fireworks at armored vehicles. None of them are accused of using Molotov cocktails to protect protesters, nor of setting Earth-destroying equipment on fire. Instead, they are accused of wearing black clothing, of having traces of mud on their shoes, of wearing camouflage, of running from officers, of being out of breath, of having wet clothing, of possessing a mask. The warrants for all 23 are identical, listing the same general actions for all of them, without reference to specific evidence or witnesses.
\n\nAll of them—both detainees and arrestees—were brought to Gresham Park for questioning by the Georgia and Federal Bureau of Investigations. Among the interrogators was at least one man pretending to work for the District Attorney’s office, who misleadingly implied that detainees could trust him. One of the lead interrogators is an agent named Ronald C. Sluss, who afterwards appeared as the sole witness at the magistrate and pre-trial hearings. He and four other undercover agents had also attended the January 21 protest in plainclothes, and later attended the May 15 City Council mobilization.
\n\nUnfortunately, many of those detained and several of those arrested did offer information to law enforcement. The consequences of those conversations are not yet fully known.
\n\nSome worried that the consequences of the March 5 raid on the construction site or the subsequent police raid on the music festival would crush the movement. Indeed, the costs of repression were stacking up higher and higher. In addition, many feared that charges based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act would be brought against activists, based on information the District Attorney’s office had conveyed through back channels ahead of the Week of Action.
\n\nNonetheless, while the repression of the movement did not end on March 5, the Week of Action did not, either.
\n\nFor the next several days, at least 100 people camped in Weelaunee People’s Park. Many of them had stayed there the very night of the raid. Gathering around campfires and stoves, activists continued to discuss movement strategy, to coordinate actions, and to give guided tours and walks. Others hosted spiritual ceremonies and prayers. Police did not enter the encampment again, although they did send drones and helicopters to surveil the scene several times a day. Across the river, the Cop City construction site was a pile of ash. Across the world, radio coverage, news headlines, and memetic video footage reported the attack on the facility. Organizers of the South River Music Festival denounced the repression while refusing to condemn the march on the construction site. At the same time, other actions continued across Atlanta.
\n\nFor the rest of the week, dozens of people met downtown during the day to plan actions. They marched into the lobbies of Cop City funders, picketed outside office buildings, and distributed fliers to the public. Senior citizens disrupted a Brasfield & Gorrie jobsite, demanding they boycott the APF. Banners decrying Cop City appeared over interstate highways and major thoroughfares throughout the week.
\n\nThe police remained on edge. When one group of predominantly older activists assembled on Peachtree Street to distribute fliers about Cop City, dozens of police vehicles, including an armored vehicle, mobilized alongside police in riot gear to confront them. Atlanta police chief Derrick Shierbaum himself commanded them to disperse into smaller groups. This took place in the middle of the afternoon on the busiest street downtown.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/16.jpg\")
Canvassers encircled by police vehicles for passing out fliers on March 6, 2023.
\nOn Thursday, March 9, several hundred people gathered at the King Center in Old Fourth Ward. At that time, this was the largest protest that had taken place outside of the forest. They assembled at the historic site in the pouring rain. Twice as many people might have come if not for the persistent downpour.
\n\nThe event was organized by Black organizations in Atlanta committed to stopping Cop City. For weeks prior, the Mayor’s office had exerted pressure against their clientele structures in the local left, sending former Democratic Socialists of America member and State Senator Vincent Fort to the meetings of nearly every local Black nonprofit and organizing group. Mayor Andre Dickens sent Fort and others to the Labor Council and to meetings of abolitionist groups, social justice groups, and housing rights organizations. He sought to make the case to all of the entities he works with, awards grants and contracts to, and appoints to positions that they should boycott the Defend the Forest/Stop Cop City movement, and that they should stay away from the protest scheduled for March 9 in particular.
\n\nThe specter of a large, predominantly Black mobilization loomed large in the Mayor’s office. Opponents of the movement in the local government and the police department, as well as neoliberal centrists and the grassroots university-educated far left, all tend to justify their opposition or indifference to the historic movement by alleging that it is composed chiefly of white people from out of town. The mobilization of March 9 could jeopardize that narrative if it foregrounded the participation of Black Atlantans, as the Morehouse action had previously done in January.
\n\nPredictably, the final effort of the city government to obstruct this demonstration came in the form of an overwhelming police response. Police in riot gear, in armored vehicles, in helicopters, in cruisers, on bicycles, on foot, and in unmarked cars encircled the demonstration for several blocks in every direction. This mobilization can only be compared to the way police respond to national-scale security events. There were even more officers than typically staged around the CNN Center during the 2020 George Floyd rebellion, perhaps owing to the fact that National Guard were not serving as an auxiliary force to support local police outside the King Center for this protest. The chief intended audience for this police mobilization were the corporate executives and white, wealthy Buckhead secessionists who might have been cowed by the events of March 5.
\n\nFrom a security standpoint, the presence of the police was completely gratuitous, as event organizers had already proclaimed far and wide their intention to hold a non-combative gathering. They had even organized their own security for the event—though regrettably, that security sometimes stood with their backs to the police, facing the crowd rather than protecting them. In any case, the event was fierce, and proved that large numbers of people were still prepared to take the streets.
\n\nAs the crowd assembled, speakers from organized groups spoke one after another on the urgent need to stop Cop City. They spoke about issues facing Black residents of Atlanta and Black people more broadly. Tortuguita’s mother, Belkis Teran, addressed the crowd, encouraging them to do everything they could to protect the forest and stop the project. She told those gathered that the blood of her child now runs in the veins of the movement. A speaker from the Muscogee Creek Helvpe ceremonial grounds in Oklahoma spoke alongside militant abolitionists, Black nationalists, and other Black organizers. One organizer spoke at length about the need to develop infrastructure, skills, and materials to support “our warriors.” Judging by the inflection in their voice, the cadence of their delivery, and the timing of the event, they were referring to those who engage in direct action, including the actions of March 5. The crowd was jubilant, despite the weather. After the speeches, organizers announced to the crowd that they were going to get behind some banners, that they were going to stick together, and that they were going to march to the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters. This was an incredibly bold decision.
\n\nAs the crowd gathered behind the banners and took the streets, they chanted militant, anti-police slogans. Helicopters circled overhead, and red pickup trucks—likely undercover agents—circled in the vicinity of the demonstration. Remaining in formation, the crowd eventually reached Peachtree Street, arriving at the APF headquarters in the tower at 191 Peachtree Street, which is owned by Banyan Street Capital. The building was totally boarded up, as were some of the adjacent banks that had been vandalized during the demonstration of January 21 in response to the killing of Tortuguita. Riot police lined up in front of the entrance, holding sticks. The crowd faced them. The atmosphere was tense, but the crowd of nearly 600 remained unified, chanting “stop Cop City” in unison as well as the now-popular “Cop City will never be built!”
\n\nFollowing fierce and fiery speeches, the group departed without incident. Sticking together, everyone made it back to the King Center and dispersed, being careful not to allow police to grab anyone on their way home.
\n\nThis event was subject to a near media blackout. Aside from one article in The Guardian, almost no outlets reported on the protest, nor on the massive mobilization of police opposing it.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/15.jpg\")
Participants in the March 9 rally at King Center and march to APF headquarters.
\nOn the morning of March 10, helicopters circled above the Lakewood Environmental Arts Foundation (LEAF). On the ground, dozens of police officers with rifles drawn raided the homestead owned by the non-profit organization. The officers smashed windows, detaining residents and destroying their belongings.
\n\nThe search warrant—which the police reportedly refused to share during the raid—was signed by a Fulton County Judge. The officers claimed to be seeking materials associated with “Domestic Terrorism,” such as “boxes of nails” and “planks of wood.” Even with this absurdly broad warrant, no such items were found.
\n\nSome had thought of this house as the “safer” location. It was described as a space offering housing during the week of action for people who were especially risk-averse or had needs that other locations could not accommodate. Police arrested one person there for an unrelated parking ticket, an offense that does not lead to arrest in most states but for which Georgia residents are routinely incarcerated. This was a serious escalation, confirming a new strategy: the state had begun aggressively targeting what the authorities perceived to be the support structures of the movement.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/atlanta_press/status/1634652818979037185\n\n\n
On March 10, hours after the raid on LEAF, protesters began assembling in East Atlanta Village at Brownwood Park. This crowd was organized by the coalition of educators, young schoolchildren, and their parents that had repeatedly organized events in the forest as well as protests. Over 100 people attended this event, which drew enthusiastic support from neighbors and motorists.
\n\nLater that day, a crowd gathered at the Dekalb County Jail, where arrestees from January and March were still being held. Over 100 people marched along the sidewalk banging pots and pans and chanting slogans expressing solidarity with the captives within. Wishing to contribute to the situation, some prisoners began breaking their windows from inside the jail. This was not the first time that this had occurred at the notorious facility. Once the glass was broken, some began throwing hand-written notes to the crowd on the street below. Others waved shirts and rags to get the attention of the crowd. When police and guards came out onto the sidewalks to look up at the commotion, prisoners inside lit objects on fire and threw them down at the officers, to the merriment of the crowd.
\n\nAfterwards, imprisoned forest defenders reported that the legacy of the noise demonstrations outside of this facility over the past ten years is folkloric to some of those inside, who understand them as the initiative of “the anarchists.” Some prisoners possess printed fragments, paper clippings, scrawled letters, and other archival documents passed down hand-to-hand in the facility from one cell to the next, detailing the history of those events and their meaning.
\n\nOver the weekend, as the Week of Action was wrapping up, a few hundred people gathered in the forest—more or less an entirely new cohort. This new group was the Food Autonomy Festival. For the next two days, small growers, urban farmers, naturalists, gardeners, and others from across the country hosted fireside conversations, workshops, walking tours, and shared meals in Weelaunee People’s Park. Despite the helicopters overhead and the occasional attempts by police to intimidate those in attendance, the weekend continued without difficulty. Reportedly, several hundred fruit-bearing plants were transplanted into the forest at various locations. As of early June, nearly 70% of the transplants had survived and were showing signs of growth.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/21.jpg\")
A gazebo built by forest defenders for the Food Autonomy Festival in Weelaunee People’s Park.
\nThe following week, in mid-March, the city government began imposing gratuitous fines and code violations on the Park Avenue church, which had allowed protesters to use the facility as a rendezvous point in early March. Attendees of at least two separate do-it-yourself punk rock shows, one at a local community arts space and one at a house, were surveilled by police via drone and helicopter. On police scanners, officers referred to the young show-goers as “protesters.” Both of the events were fundraisers for those facing charges from the March 5 arrests.
\n\nThe coming months were poised to be extremely difficult.
\n\nOn March 13, the first day after the fifth Week of Action, Tortuguita’s family and their lawyer released the horrific results of an independent autopsy report. The report indicated what many had already suspected: Tortuguita had not fired at police. They had not “ambushed” officers, as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation claimed, nor “engaged in a firefight,” as the New York Times alleged. Despite the rhetoric of a few militants, they had not carried out an armed attack on the state, even though such an action could be understandable in the current climate. Instead, the autopsy suggested, they had been murdered while sitting on the ground.
\n\nThe report states they were likely seated with their legs crossed. They had both of their hands in the air with their palms facing them. Tortuguita’s mother Belkis claimed that this is the position their community uses for meditation. They had succumbed to 57 entry wounds, including some at close range from multiple angles. In short, they had faced a firing squad.
\n\nMost damning of all, this autopsy found that there was no trace of “gunshot residue” on their hands. Any residue on their hands could easily be attributed to the close-range shots aimed directly at them, including into both of their palms, like stigmata. Aside from local outlets, most of which are owned by Cop City backers, national coverage of the January 18 killing no longer includes the claim that Tortuguita fired upon patrolmen, which officials have still offered no evidence for fully five months later.
\n\nFor many, this report was vindicating. For others, it was shocking proof of brutality. Others still did not believe what they heard, crediting neither the analysis of the movement nor the reports of the authorities. The results of the independent autopsy were reinforced by the findings of the official Dekalb County autopsy report, which was not released until April 21.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/13.jpg\")
Belkis Teran spreading the ashes of Tortuguita at the location of the murder, March 13, 2023.
\nThe rest of March was challenging for local authorities and activists alike. Mayor Andre Dickens faced pressure from the movement, but also from powerful forces in the state government and Police Foundation. In the final weeks of March, local news outlets repeatedly depicted Dickens at civic events, shaking hands with volunteers, attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and playing with small children. They sought to manage Dickens’ public image in order to distract attention from his clampdown on popular protests—especially after the March 13 autopsy report.
\n\nIn court appearances, prosecutor John Fowler painted a picture of a vast conspiratorial network coordinated by a well-funded leadership. Prosecutor Lance Cross argued that the attendees of the music festival were party to the destruction of the Cop City construction because they chanted “stop Cop City” between songs. At the same time, activists labored to support the accused and those still in jail. Across the country, people organized support committees and began releasing statements to local press about out-of-state arrestees. They also got to work spearheading fundraisers, conducting outreach, and organizing local solidarity actions. For all of March and most of April, the movement appeared in national and local news every single day. The coverage skewed positive, thanks in part to the tireless efforts of activists who continued to work with journalists and editors to clarify facts and provide quotes.
\n\nOn March 24, DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond held a press conference. He announced his plans to close down Intrenchment Creek Park (i.e., Weelaunee People’s Park) in order to address “safety concerns.” He claimed that his employees had discovered “boards of nails” and other unsafe debris in the forest and that he had to close the park for the safety of the residents of southwest DeKalb County. This is straight out of the playbook of Kasim Reed, the former mayor of Atlanta, who ordered police to erect 10-foot-tall fences around Woodruff Park in order to crush the Occupy Atlanta movement on “public health and safety” grounds. The images that Michael Thurmond showed to television viewers featured random pieces of trash and planks of wood that had previously been part of the treehouses that DeKalb police had helped to destroy. As of mid-June, the park remains closed.
\n\nClosing the park enabled the Atlanta Police Foundation to begin clear-cutting the Prison Farm without fearing that protesters or media would mobilize across the creek.
\n\nWith no on-the-ground encampment and an apparent downswing of nocturnal sabotage, the clear-cutting of Weelaunee began on March 31. Brasfield & Gorrie contracted Brent Scarborough Company, a co-operative enterprise that donates to Governor Kemp and the Police Foundation, to destroy the trees. It remains unclear what happened to Atlas Technical Consultants, a firm that typically does clearing and grading but which had faced dozens of actions across the country.
\n\nFor a week, felling of trees continued around the clock at the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. Police were deployed throughout the area on a massive scale, with multiple police vehicles parked at every intersection of Key Road and Fayetteville Road. Police routinely established checkpoints on Constitution Road. Around the forest on all sides, suited men inside unmarked vehicles pointed cameras at every vehicle driving by. Drones hovered above the zone by night. The costs of this security are not yet known, but they are likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/20.jpg\")
Police standing guard in the wasteland, enforcing the destruction of the forest.
\nThroughout the month of April, the clear-cutting proceeded unchecked. Surprisingly, no serious effort materialized to defend the forest. One group reportedly burned three machines belonging to Brent Scarborough Company, the tree fellers, at a different location. Activists were licking their wounds and reorganizing for the next phase of resistance. Repression was beginning to have an impact on the imaginations and nervous systems of those who had contributed to the encampments and to on- and off-site direct action since 2021. Inability to directly stop the destruction of the forest any longer represented a serious limit in the movement.
\n\nBrent Scarborough Company cut down 85 acres of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. All of the woods near the North Gate, all of the forest near Fairie Top, Vengeance Village, and other named sites—from Constitution to Key, nearly everything west of the powerline cut was destroyed.
\n\nSome fell into despair. Others sought to develop new strategies. Many didn’t know what to do. Others, whose participation in the movement has not revolved around the forest, continued forward more or less unimpeded by the felling of the trees. The fact that their strategies had never been centered in the physical defense of territory had made some forms of activity impossible for them, but this made other things possible—as was about to become clear. A weekend of solidarity events and actions was announced to coincide with Earth Day and Tortuguita’s birthday.
\n\nIn honor of Earth Day, April 22, and Tortuguita’s birthday, April 23, people organized dozens of events, including fundraisers, presentations, performances, and protests. In some cities, events occurred every day of the week. Thanks to persistent nationwide efforts, the movement was solidifying a foothold in the imaginations of millions across the country. Organizers no longer had to request time on microphones or stages to say a few words about Cop City or the defense of the forest. Performers, bands, presenters, academics, and public figures across the country were speaking about the movement, declaring their support for it, sharing updates about it with their respective audiences.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/14.jpg\")
Participants in the March 9 rally at King Center and march to APF headquarters confront a massive police presence.
\nAfter Earth Day, coordinated actions broke out on campuses across Atlanta. Students rallied and protested against Cop City at Agnes Scott College, Georgia State University, Emory University, Georgia Tech, Morehouse, Spelman, and Clark Atlanta University. At Georgia Tech and Emory, students initiated encampments.
\n\nThis represented an escalation for students, many of whom had struggled to establish a basis for collective resistance on campus over the preceding two years. Many students had doubtless participated in the movement, but campus-based actions had been scarce. Decades of budget cuts and austerity had contributed to passivity and hesitation.
\n\nHundreds gathered on the Quad at Emory, building an encampment including tents and chairs with folding tables for amenities. This was the same location at which students organizing to support Sodexo workers fighting for a living wage had established an encampment in 2011. Then, and once again this April, the administration deployed a large cordon of police in the middle of the night to clear the encampment.
\n\nThe crowd that assembled at Georgia Tech was significantly smaller, where protesters numbered only a couple dozen. Nonetheless, they built a small encampment on the Tech Green. Throughout the night of April 24 into the early morning of the 25th, Georgia Tech police drove their vehicles near the encampment and heckled those assembled. The encampment lasted through the night, but was dispersed the following day.
\n\nThese efforts illustrated the ways that encampments and crowds in open fields are vulnerable to police aggression. To be effective, student protesters will likely have to experiment with mobile demonstrations, strikes, walkouts, occupations of classrooms or administration buildings, or other forms of disruption.
\n\nWith repression reaching a fever pitch, the dynamics of the struggle have begun shifting once again. The emerging phase seems to pit larger swaths of society against the City government, the Atlanta mayor, and the Atlanta Police Foundation. The confrontation between contractors, funders, and the movement is on the back burner for the time being—though this could change at any point, as Nationwide Insurance has come into focus as the most significant insurer of the Atlanta Police Foundation, without whom they could not hold contracts for work. The confrontations between forest dwellers, tree sitters, and police have also ended, because it became impossible to hold terrain for long periods following the killing of Tortuguita, leading to the deforestation of half of the Prison Farm.
\n\nAt the same time, the figure of the forest defender has been pushed outward into society at large, with reciprocal effects. Just as the movement has influenced the politics of tens of thousands of people, the subject of the movement has also transformed, the way light bends and fragments through the lens of a kaleidoscope.
\n\nOver the last two years, the movement has managed to build a strong base. A part of that process has involved making a virtue of necessity by taking advantage of repression to mobilize more people against Cop City. Up to today, police have landed scarcely a single clean blow against the movement. Over and over, they have discredited themselves—attacking pedestrians in Little 5 Points, shooting pepper balls at tree sitters, arresting park goers, raiding a music festival. All of these attacks have undermined the narrative that the authorities seek to spread while drawing more people into the movement.
\n\nIn May 2023, the authorities made a few more serious mistakes. Those mistakes have polarized millions of people against Cop City, bringing more of them closer, step by step, to direct confrontation with the project.
\n\nOn May 2, three individuals were arrested in Bartow County, Georgia. Their alleged crime? Posting fliers. The three people were booked for felony “Intimidation of a Law Enforcement Officer” and misdemeanor “Stalking” for posting fliers including the names of six Georgia State Patrolmen cited in an internal memo between police departments. These Patrolmen constituted the firing squad that assassinated Tortuguita. As a result of these arrests, many people came to understand that the administration is embracing openly authoritarian tactics against the movement.
\n\nAnyone who has lived in the forest, engaged in direct action, or stood at the front lines of the clashes with police over the previous two years already knew that. But now everyone is beginning to see it.
\n\nIn April, independent researchers with the Atlanta Community Press Collective had showed that, despite their claims to the contrary, the City Council had the power to determine the fate of Cop City. For the Police Foundation to secure New Market Tax Credits and a loan from Cadence Bank, the city government would have to allocate $16.2 million by June 30, 2023, and an additional $17.3 million the following year. Atlanta City Council would have to approve this allocation, which was to be introduced on May 15 with the final vote taking place on June 5.
\n\nOn May 15, catalyzed in part by mass outrage to the May 2 arrests, some 500 people flooded the Atlanta City Hall.
\n\nThe mobilization of May 15 was the largest protest of local residents to date. Exactly five months earlier, a crowd of 250 people had marched in East Atlanta to denounce the “Domestic Terrorism” charges levied against six people. From December to May, repression did not discourage participation in the movement—it doubled it.
\n\nInside the atrium of the City Hall, hundreds of people chanted “Cop City will never be built!” and “Stop Cop City!” When police approached protesters or barked orders at them, the protesters chanted “Viva, viva Tortuguita!” This last chant conveyed defiance: “You murderers have no right to tell us what to do.”
\n\nThe City Council public comment section began at 1 pm. By that time, 288 people had signed up to speak. Over 100 people who were still in line to sign up were rejected. The crowd surged forward, pounding the doors and walls. Police confronted protesters, threatening to call the fire marshal to clear out the building. A number of people who were in the City Hall chambers to speak came out and asked the remaining people to be quiet so that they could speak. The crowd tentatively agreed to this.
\n\nInside the chambers, the comments were fierce. For eight hours, residents from all walks of life chastised the Councilmembers, with some residents even going so far as to repeat one of the slogans of the movement: “If you build it, we will burn it.” Someone else told the Councilmembers, to much applause, “Some of us may go to jail for this, but some of y’all are going to hell for this.”
\n\nNonetheless, the politicians passed the motion and sent it on to the finance subcommittee. At the meeting of the finance subcommittee a week later, several dozen police officers staged a counter-protest in the City Hall atrium, intimidating the few dozen residents who came to observe.
\n\nThe public comment section of these meetings is designed to facilitate this kind of contention: to channel the wild resistance and contagious self-activity of the public into official politics so that the activity of all those who are affected by the decision can be replaced by the cowardly and opportunistic decisions of fifteen elected officials. If the movement can send the government into a downward spiral, that may vindicate the decision to engage on the terrain of local politics. If ordinary people end up subordinating their own free initiative to the will of politicians, however, the movement is bound to be defeated.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/12.jpg\")
Demonstrators outside Atlanta City Hall on May 15, 2023.
\nJust when it seemed the situation could not become tenser, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp ordered the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, in conjunction with the Atlanta Police, to arrest three activists associated with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. On May 31, dozens of agents and officers clad in military equipment and carrying rifles broke in a door on Mayson Avenue in Edgewood. The three activists within were longtime activists associated with a variety of mutual aid projects. One of those projects, the Solidarity Fund, was founded in 2016 ahead of a protest against a Ku Klux Klan rally on Stone Mountain.
\n\nThe Atlanta Solidarity Fund is among the most popular grassroots organizations in Georgia. This organization supports protest movements by helping to pay the bond, legal fees, lawyer fees, and sometimes the commissary of people who experience repression as a consequence of political activity. The members of this group are not participants in the movement to defend Weelaunee Forest, per se. Rather, they maintain an infrastructure that serves a wide range of movements. Fundamentally, they defend free speech and the right to protest. Nothing about their activity is illegal or especially controversial.
\n\nWhy did Governor Kemp step into this situation? Were the assurances that the Mayor offered to the Police Foundation not good enough? Two days before the raid, the Press Collective announced that taxpayer liability for Cop City was actually double the stated amount. Autonomous organizers in Atlanta announced another Week of Action. People across many tendencies began promoting the June 5 City Council meeting as a day of action.
\n\nWhatever the reasoning behind the raid, the ham-fisted action of the Governor created political cover for the Georgia Democratic Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof to denounce the repression of the Solidarity Fund. They had said nothing up to this point. Some state representatives denounced Cop City outright. Multiple members of the City’s new convoluted Task Force called for the project to be canceled. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People demanded not only the cancellation of Cop City, but a US Department of Justice investigation.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/17.jpg\")
A banner hanging at an abandoned hotel overlooking I-85/I-75 in Atlanta, spring 2023.
\nWe should not mistake the maneuvers of political opportunists for something more than they are. But it is worthwhile to identify which forces are positioning themselves to attack our movements and look for opportunities to drive wedges between them. The unity of Georgia’s Democratic mayor and Republican governor in favor of Cop City represents an obstacle to the movement.
\n\nIf the fight against Cop City had occurred under Donald Trump’s presidency, it is likely that it would have drawn more participation and support from the left and liberals. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp derives considerable advantage from positioning himself as a Republican outside the orbit of Donald Trump, because this gives Georgia Democrats political cover to collaborate with him. Together, Kemp, Dickens, and their cronies represent a centrist political project that can use the threat represented by Trump to legitimize their own less overtly authoritarian activities.
\n\nIn the 21st century, political centrism no longer represents a compromise between two extremes the way that it did for much of the previous century. The rule of bureaucrats struggling to maintain social peace and class reconciliation is more or less behind us. In the 21st century, centrists represent a political pole unto themselves. Rather than “reaching across the aisle” to split the difference between right and left, they have adopted a partisan position in favor of their own technocratic rule, using the threat represented by the far right to terrorize everyone else into submission.
\n\nPretenses to majoritarianism are out the window. For example, French president Emmanuel Macron does not have the support of the majority of voters in his country; he has hardly even sought it. Taking advantage of the well-founded fear of Marine Le Pen and the far right, he can keep his enemies even weaker than himself. In this context, he has his hands free to use more and more violence to force through his policies, however unpopular they may be. The draconian state of emergency constructed by Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele epitomizes this strategy in an even bloodier context.
\n\nThese reference points will help us to understand the unity between Kemp and Dickens in favor of Cop City. This is why they have not hesitated to force through a project that is so unpopular. It remains an open question how the movement against Cop City could create or exploit fault lines in the halls of power. This is important context if the movement is to continue shifting focus to those in elected positions.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/9.jpg\")
Opponents of Cop City inside Atlanta City Hall on June 5, 2023.
\nAtlanta City Council was slated to vote on June 5 on whether to channel $67 million to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Some people correctly anticipated that the protest could draw twice as many participants as had showed up on May 15.
\n\nOn June 4, the city government announced that City Hall would close all functions the following day. To spread confusion, they worked with local media to suggest that the City Council meeting was moving online alongside other City Hall functions, with the implication that public comment would not be open. On the morning of June 5, the Mayor’s office apparently smuggled a small number of Cop City supporters into the building early and signed them up on a secret list to speak first. Throughout the day, City Hall, the Atlanta Police, the fire marshal, building security, and clerical staff maintained the maximum of confusion within the building in order to limit participation in public comment and to minimize the possibility that opponents of Cop City could shut down the proceedings.
\n\nProtesters began arriving around 9 am. By midday, at which point 615 people had entered City Hall, the fire marshal blocked further access. Several hundred more stood outside, where some erected gazebos and folding tables laden with food and water. The atrium inside was packed, with protesters waiting in a gigantic line winding around the building for the chance to sign up to speak. Another fire marshal sought to limit access to the second story, where the sign-up sheet was kept just outside of the Chambers. When confronted, the agent admitted that there was no specific limit for how many people were allowed on the second story; her boss was making it up on the spot. In the meantime, some people gave speeches to those waiting in line, while others shared their thoughts with those beside them. The energy outside was more charged.
\n\nAround 1 pm, the 200 people outside began chanting “if you build it, we will burn it.” It is possible that a sort of unintentional selection bias caused the unrulier participants to accumulate outside of the building, and the more organized activists inside it. In any case, those outside stood behind a banner reading “Cop City Will Never Be Built” and began pounding on the glass doors. Occasionally, they managed to push the doors open, only to have them slammed shut again by officers inside. After several minutes of this, some people inside realized what was happening, and entered the small security vestibule inside the entrance, chanting “let them in, let them in.”
\n\nThe situation was becoming unpredictable, with fewer than a dozen officers left alone to control the two crowds on either side of them. More police came down to the atrium from upstairs. If those outside had managed to push through the front doors, the situation could have exploded—perhaps similar to the 2010 mass occupation of the Wisconsin state house in Madison, where tens of thousands of people camped out to prevent the passage of anti-union legislation. At the least, this would have made it difficult to hold the vote that day.
\n\nAt the last minute, an activist from inside the building came out and explained the fire marshals’ rule to some of the people outside, asking them to be patient. Once the crowd outside was quelled, the inside group was quickly calmed via the same method. Having avoided a stand-off, the police inside returned to their positions on the second and third floors. Protesters resumed their seats in the atrium or their places in the line. Around this time, the sign-up process was closed. 367 people had signed up to speak, roughly one third of the number of people who had come.
\n\nUpon the closure of the sign-up process, screams and boos of protesters filled City Hall. Hoping to appease those assembled in order to maintain peace for the Council, Councilmembers introduced and passed a number of motions to allow more people to sign up to speak after this initial list was concluded—roughly 13 hours later. This maneuver allowed the City Council to silence more than 500 people. If people had been able to sign up immediately, they could have left to work or rest and then returned before their time came. The politicians knew that few people were likely to stay and wait inside, especially given that the building locked its doors around midnight.
\n\nThe first ten and a half hours of the Atlanta City Council meeting of June 5, 2023.
\nFor over thirteen hours, one speaker after another denounced Cop City. Each was limited to two minutes, though speakers were permitted to yield their time to each other, enabling a few to speak for four or even eight minutes. Besides the first couple speakers that the politicians had put at the front of the queue, every single speaker opposed the project, with many emphasizing “Cop City will never be built.” Others recounted their personal experiences of police brutality or institutional neglect. Some speakers highlighted all the things that the money could be used to accomplish in the field of social services, such as libraries or public healthcare. Others flatly declared that the facility would be burned or destroyed if it were built. Several speakers addressed themselves to the movement or to society in general rather than to the elected officials. One person told the Council that if he had fifty-seven bullets—the number of entry wounds identified in Tortuguita’s autopsy—he would be able to allocate three for each of the councilmembers, leaving him with two to spare.
\n\nAs the hours passed, the crowd slowly thinned, but the atmosphere remained convivial in the atrium and vitriolic in the chambers. The public comment section ended around 3 am. At that time, the politicians set aside 45 minutes for those who had waited fifteen hours or more for the chance to line up and speak. After 45 minutes, the Council attempted to proceed with their meeting, despite the fact that some people had still not been permitted to speak. The chambers became rowdy. People began shouting and banging on chairs. In response, the politicians allocated time for the rest of those present to speak. When comment was finally finished, the politicians began their meeting. The first agenda item was a motion to reorganize the meeting so that the vote on funding Cop City would be the very last item. At that moment, their intentions became clear.
\n\nThe Council hurried through hundreds of agenda items and motions, mostly to approve various rezoning claims and gentrification efforts across the city, as they normally do. Around 5 am, the time finally arrived to discuss Cop City. Councilmember Amir Farokhi announced a number of small reforms and changes to the funding package that no one had asked for. The council approved a motion to appoint two City Councilmembers to the Board of Trustees of the APF, ostensibly to create more transparency within that entity, as if City Council were a transparent or trustworthy source of information. If anything, the further entanglement of City Council with the APF can only be a bad thing.
\n\nAs the final agenda item approached—the vote on funding Cop City—police entered the chambers in large numbers, taking up positions by all of the doors and behind the City Council.
\n\nThe vote took place at 5:30 am. Eleven Councilmembers voted to pass the funding, with four opposed. The four opposed—Liliana Bakhtiari, Jason Dozier, Antonio Lewis, and Keisha Waites—had already been opposed to funding the facility before the events of June 5. The other eleven—Jason Winston, Amir Farokhi, Byron Amos, Alex Wan, Howard Shook, Mary Norwood, Dustin Hillis, Andrea Boone, Marci Overstreet, Michael Bond, and Matt Westmoreland—represent constituents further away from the Weelaunee Forest. None of them were swayed by the three mass mobilizations at City Council meetings of the past two years. The three mobilizations at City Council against Cop City have been the three most-attended Council meetings in Atlanta history at any time, for any purpose.
\n\nImmediately following the vote, the chambers exploded, with protesters screaming at the officials. Lines of police quickly replaced the 15 councilmembers, who were all shuttled out a back door. It was all over in a few minutes. Outside, protesters screamed, argued, and cried, some blaming each other.
\n\nIn the end, this attempt to intervene in official politics—the third of its kind—was a failure. If it accomplished anything of value, it was chiefly to offer a venue for opponents of Cop City to pledge aloud to each other that they were committed to fighting the project. If the majority of Councilmembers are already bought-and-paid-for supporters of Cop City, and the fundamental role of City Council is to enact a kind of political theater to give the actions of the government a veneer of democratic legitimacy, then it could make as much sense to shut down such meetings as to participate in them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/10.jpg\")
Opponents of Cop City inside Atlanta City Hall on June 5, 2023.
\nMany activist campaigns involve mobilizing people into institutional spaces, processes, or elections that the organizers themselves have little faith in. The hope is that, if nothing else, the experience will radicalize the participants, inspiring them to withdraw their faith from the prevailing institutions and invest it in counter-institutions instead. This is a risky wager: by itself, disappointment often paralyzes people rather than energizing them.
\n\nBecoming disillusioned with the authorities or developing a nuanced analysis of power structures has little impact on the world unless it gives rise to concrete actions. The role of revolutionaries is to join practical critique with critical practice. Without the first, the second is aimless. Without the second, the former is worthless.
\n\nThe movement to defend Weelaunee Forest and stop Cop City did not begin with a long slog through the institutions. On the contrary, it began with a wave of nocturnal sabotage actions. From the outset, it was a bold, confident movement that sought victory by means of grassroots direct action. It was never guaranteed that large numbers of people would join the movement, and the participants did not wait for them to.
\n\nThat was how this movement originally earned the attention of the public. This movement is not popular despite its militancy; it is popular because of it.
\n\nIn September 2021, the Stop Cop City Coalition coordinated 17 hours of public comment to denounce Cop City, but Atlanta City Council approved the project all the same. This is widely known. So why pursue this same strategy again? Perhaps the killing of Tortuguita, the blanket use of Domestic Terrorism charges, and the arrests of organizers associated with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund were not enough to discredit the project? Perhaps two years of militant direct action and nationwide cultural mobilization had not radicalized enough people?
\n\nWhatever the rationale behind the mobilizations of May 15 and June 5, their meaning will be determined by what comes after them, not by what preceded them. That is up to everyone.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/3.jpg\")
\nIf the movement cannot reestablish a balance of force with its adversaries, all strategies will ultimately result in defeat. Seeking the consent of the government is a doomed venture when the authorities have repeatedly shown that they are prepared to disregard laws, precedent, public opinion, and common sense to build Cop City. The decision of Atlanta’s Interim Municipal Clerk in late June to obstruct efforts to petition for a referendum on Cop City is only the latest evidence of this. This is why direct action has been central to the movement and must remain so if it is to succeed.
\n\nRepression has effectively brought the previous phase of the movement to a conclusion. If the movement is to continue, the participants will have to find a way to turn all this repression into a liability for the ones involved in building Cop City. It is not going to end any time soon. The sooner activists can accord it a central role in their strategies, the better.
\n\nIt will not suffice to publicize the fact that the repression taking place in Atlanta is outrageous and unprecedented; as argued above, Georgia politicians have little to lose. Rather, every act of repression must create a more unpredictable environment, bringing new groups and tactics into play. Perhaps arrests, police surveillance and harassment, court dates, and other occasions could become opportunities for new forms of action. People should mobilize across the country, especially in the hometowns of those accused of “Domestic Terrorism,” recognizing that prosecutors in Atlanta are attempting to set precedents that will be imitated elsewhere if they succeed. Courtroom strategies cannot be allowed to determine the course of the movement as a whole. People should seek fault lines and weak spots within the halls of power. Similar strategies have succeeded against previous efforts to repress social movements.
\n\nAt minimum, when activists are arrested, when doors are kicked in, when the accused are called into court, when bond is revoked, when conditions are tightened, there should be a national response. According to classical military doctrine, space and time mitigate technological advantage: the further from the forest that activists can take action targeting those who seek to build Cop City, the safer they will likely be in doing so. The longer the project takes to advance, the more people will be able to mobilize against it, and the greater the skepticism of the financiers behind the project will become. If the funders, insurers, backers, and firms associated with the project face consequences for the attacks on activists in Atlanta, they might even exert their own pressure against the Police Foundation and against Georgia prosecutors.
\n\nIf it is to survive, the movement must confront repression directly, using this as an opportunity to regain its footing.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/6.jpg\")
“Make the best out of a bad situation by turning coal into a diamond.” Artwork in solidarity with the fight against Cop City elsewhere in the South.
\nAssembled from publicly available reports.
\n\nFebruary 17: Graffiti and vandalism at a Bank of America in Sonoma, California.
\n\nFebruary 18: In Washington, DC, activists protest outside the homes of Georgia State Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, demanding they stop Cop City.
\n\nFebruary 19: On the southern border of the Weelaunee Forest, in a parcel owned by Shadowbox studios that had not been actively defended by the movement, clearcutting is disrupted by the sabotage and burning of an excavator, bulldozer, and front-end loader. The “Autonomous Tortuguita Revenge Committee” claims responsibility for burning an ANDRA transmission pylon near Bure, France. In solidarity with Atlanta forest defenders, a skypod blockade and hunger strike is established in Humboldt County, California to protect redwoods from clearcutting.
\n\nFebruary 20: According to a report, an Atlas Technical Consultants office and vehicles in Hartford, Connecticut are spray-painted, bicycle-locked shut, and have their locks glued for contracting with the Atlanta Police Foundation.
\n\nFebruary 21: Activists visit the office of Atlas Technical Consultants in Westminster, Colorado. Forest defenders in Miami demonstrate outside a Brasfield & Gorrie office. In Philadelphia, protesters rally outside the offices of the law firm Greenberg Traurig, the owners of which sit on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation. The Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee (CSAC) is abruptly cancelled.
\n\nFebruary 22: An interfaith coalition announces their participation in the movement. A banner drop takes place in Portland, Oregon.
\n\nFebruary 27: Mayor Dickens announces the formation of a new “civilian” task force to “supplement” the Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee.
\n\nFebruary 28: A banner drop takes place in Eugene, Oregon. Someone damages the ATMs and windows at a Truist Bank. High-ranking employees at the Fridley branch of Atlas Technical Consultants are doxxed. A Norfolk Southern train line is sabotaged outside of Philadelphia in a manner that signals to trains to stop without endangering passengers or conductors.
\n\nMarch 1: The second consecutive CSAC meeting is cancelled. An ethics investigation into CSAC following their receipt of “Christmas gifts” from the Atlanta Police Foundation results in a new financial disclosure protocol for all CSAC members. Sharon Williams, the first person to use the phrase “eco-terrorism” in regards to the movement, strongly objects to this protocol. Williams is not named in official government documents and was not appointed by City Council.
\n\nMarch 2: APF notifies City of Atlanta that they need an addition $16.1 million dollars in order to secure their bank loan application by June 30, 2023. Around June 2024, they will also need $17.3 million.
\n\nMarch 4: The fifth week of action gets underway, beginning with the South River Music Festival.
\n\nMarch 5: A historic march takes place against Cop City construction site, involving hundreds of participants, burning vehicles and installations on the construction site in broad daylight. Police then raid the music festival. People in Avon, Massachusetts protest outside of Atlas Technical Consultants.
\n\nMarch 6: The interfaith coalition holds a press conference. Given the chance to denounce other participants in the movement, faith leaders instead denounce the violence of the authorities.
\n\nMarch 7: Of the 23 people arrested at the music festival, judge Anna Watkins Davis denies bond to 19. Later, it emerges she is married to an executive of KPMG, a massive accounting firm with four members on the board of the APF. All 67 arrests associated with the movement up to this point are assigned the same case number. A few dozen protesters march to Georgia Pacific and Norfolk Southern headquarters and enter the lobby to demand they divest from the APF. As the group marches to other offices, over 100 police are mobilized to follow the group.
\n\nMarch 8: The Sonic Defense Committee, a group that assisted organizing the South River Music Festival, releases a statement about the March 5 raid. Graffiti appears across from police facility in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania reading “Stop Cop City.” Tortuguita’s mother holds a press conference in Weelaunee People’s Park. She spreads Tortuguita’s ashes in the area of the killing ceremonially with other forest defenders.
\n\nMarch 9: A demonstration at King Center marches to APF. 600 people gather to listen to speakers, chiefly organizers from Black organizations. Police across multiple agencies mobilize several hundred officers to encircle the crowd and fly drones over it. A banner is hung in New York City on the same block as Banyan Street Capital, the landlord to the APF.
\n\nMarch 10: A raid on Lakewood Environmental Arts Foundation targets medics and local homesteaders for alleged connection to the movement. A noise demonstration takes place outside Dekalb County Jail in solidarity with arrestees. Prisoners break windows, set objects on fire, and throw burning objects from facility to police on the street.
\n\nMarch 10-13: Hundreds of small farmers, ecologists, gardeners, and naturalists converge on Weelaunee People’s Park to convene a Food Autonomy Festival; the majority of them camp in the forest. Throughout the weekend, presentations and discussions take place in the Living Room and parking lot area. Hundreds of fruit-bearing plants and trees are planted in the area.
\n\nMarch 13: An independent autopsy conducted by a forensic pathologist indicates that Tortuguita was killed while sitting cross-legged on the ground with both of their hands in the air.
\n\nMarch 14: Locks at a bank of America ATM near Belmont, Massachusetts are glued.
\n\nMarch 16: A banner drop takes place in Montreal, Québec.
\n\nMarch 17: 7 ATMs belonging to Wells Fargo and Chase Bank are glued shut in Berkeley, California in solidarity with arrestees facing “Domestic Terrorism” charges. Both banks participate in the Atlanta Police Foundation. In Windsor, California, the office of a Consolidated Engineering Laboratory (CEL) is vandalized. CEL is a subsidiary of Atlas Technical Consultants.
\n\nMarch 18: In Philadelphia, anonymous saboteurs pour bleach into the engines of heavy machinery in memory of Tortuguita.
\n\nMarch 19: GI Partners is spray-painted with a fire extinguisher in Embarcadero Center, San Francisco in retaliation for attacks on Weelaunee Forest.
\n\nMarch 23: At the second bond hearing for the March 5 arrestees, 15 people are released, while 8 are denied bond for allegedly having jail support numbers written on their bodies (which is not a crime, nor evidence of one). Deputy Attorney General John Fowler associates the ongoing movement to the 2020 protests following the killing of Rayshard Brooks and to an “organization” allegedly formed in 2019. He attributes over 100 acts nationwide to the movement.
\n\nMarch 24: Dekalb County CEO Michael Thurmond announces the closure of Intrenchment Creek Park to the public, citing supposed “safety concerns.”
\n\nMarch 25: Spelman College alumnae publish an open letter denouncing Cop City.
\n\nMarch 26: After courts deny bail to music festival arrestees, the home addresses of the two municipal judges appear online. Another post lists the suspected addresses of the chief APD investigator of the movement, Ronald Sluss, as well as the Atlanta Assistant Police Chief and GBI Special Agent on the case.
\n\nMarch 31: The Brent Scarborough Company begins clearcutting at the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. A few dozen people gather at City Hall on short notice. Dozens of police vehicles are deployed.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/5.jpg\")
Artwork in solidarity with the fight against Cop City elsewhere in the South.
\nApril 5: Three machines belonging to Brent Scarborough Company are burned in Atlanta in retaliation for the destruction the company is wreaking in Weelaunee Forest.
\n\nApril 6: A March 28 inspection of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm near Key road found the site to be in violation of code. No Stop Work order was issued until April 6, when Dekalb County issued one. City of Atlanta officials interceded, conducting a private meeting and getting the order lifted within about two hours. The announcement that the Stop Work order was lifted was published at at 4:42 pm by City of Atlanta. The announcement that a Stop Work order had been made in the first place was published at 8:30 pm that same day by the Dekalb government.
\n\nApril 21: The official Dekalb County autopsy report on the killing of Tortuguita suggests that no gunpowder residue was found on their hands.
\n\nApril 22-23: In honor of Earth Day , April 22, and Tortuguita’s birthday, April 23, dozens of events and actions occur in at least 17 cities.
\n\nApril 24: Demonstrations take place at Agnes Scott College, Emory University, Georgia State University, Morehouse College, Georgia Institute of Technology, Spelman College, and Clark Atlanta University. Late at night, dozens of police vehicles encircle Emory students who had initiated an encampment on the Quad, forcing them to leave under threat of arrest.
\n\nApril 25: The Georgia Bureau of Investigations attempts to conduct a media operation claiming that the April 21 autopsy report does show gunshot residue on the hands of Tortuguita. Media largely ignores the story as the GBI statement admits that Tort suffered 57 gunshot wounds and because these injuries were incurred at close range, traces of gunshot residue could have come from the entry of bullets into both of their hands. The GBI report names the officers involved in the killing. ATMs at a Bank of America in East Atlanta are sabotaged.
\n\nApril 30: Police attempt to intimidate participants in a demonstration in Eugene, Oregon. Fliers and a brick are left at the door of a Nationwide Insurance office later that day. Nationwide is one of the insurance providers for the APF.
\n\nMay 2: Three people are arrested in Bartow County, Georgia for allegedly posting fliers about the officers who killed Tortuguita. The three are held in solitary confinement, denied bond, and are charged with “Intimidate Law Enforcement officer/family in retaliation to discharge of duties by force” and misdemeanor stalking.
\n\nMay 4: Preliminary hearings begin concurrently in Dekalb and Fulton County courts for the March 5 and January 21 arrestees respectively. One person is granted bond, while two arrested on March 5 are denied bond in Dekalb County court. In the Fulton County hearing, a judge upheld domestic terrorism charges against alleged participants in a demonstration following the killing of Tortuguita. District Attorney Fowler compared the breaking of the windows of the APF headquarters to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.
\n\nMay 9: A Michigan State Police sign is vandalized in solidarity with the movement to stop Cop City.
\n\nMay 15: Nearly 500 people flood the City Council meeting at City Hall. Before the sign-up list is closed, 288 people sign up for public comment. The others begin chanting slogans. The meeting is dominated by nearly eight hours of public comment, all of which is opposed to Cop City. This may be the largest mobilization of local protesters yet outside concerts and parties.
\n\nMay 20: Over 100 local residents gather for a block party in Glen Emerald Park, an event organized chiefly by canvassers and attended by residents who live in direct proximity to the forest.
\n\nMay 22: In Springfield, Illinois, activists visit Corporation Services Company, which handles investments for Ryan Milsap.
\n\nMay 23: In Rochester, protesters visit the office of Invesco, a major donor to the APF.
\n\nMay 24: Department of Homeland Security issues its National Terrorism Advisory bulletin for May-November 2023. It includes the movement in its summary of possible threats of terrorism. All of the other threats are racist groups and far-right causes.
\n\nMay 26: A Nationwide Insurance office in Des Moines, Iowa is visited by forest defenders. By way of their subsidiary Scottsdale Insurance, Nationwide provides coverage for the APF and their contract with Brasfield & Gorrie.
\n\nMay 27: The commencement ceremony at Bard College is disrupted when Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock arrives to speak at the podium. Students, alumni, and community members chant slogans, pass out fliers, and hold up banners at the event, disrupting it completely. Warnock has yet to make his position on Cop City clear, although when prompted by a journalist, he has publicly stated he was “not on record supporting Cop City.” Atlanta Community Press Collective reveals that tax liability for Cop City is actually double what politicians claimed, and always was intended to be.
\n\nMay 31: At about 8:30 am, Georgia Bureau of Investigations and Atlanta Police Department raid the home of three activists in east Atlanta. They arrest three people they claim are members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, charging them all with “charity fraud” and “money laundering.” Later that day, 120 people hold an emergency demonstration at Dekalb County Jail. National Lawyers Guild and state legislators denounce the state Attorney General Chris Carr in written statements online.
\n\nJune 2: At the bond hearing of the May 31 arrestees, the judge grants bond, saying he is “unconvinced” by the argument of the Prosecutor John Fowler. City Hall announces that all services on June 5 will be canceled except for the City Council meeting and that liquids will not be allowed inside.
\n\nJune 4: The full membership of the Atlanta Police Foundation is doxxed. The Buckhead Coalition, a business alliance of wealthy Atlanta elites, is doxxed for their advocacy of Cop City.
\n\nJune 5: 1000 people flood Atlanta City Hall to denounce Cop City at the City Council vote. About 300 of them are prevented from entering and briefly attempt to break into the building. For fifteen hours straight, people use the public comment section of the meeting to speak out emotionally against Cop City. At dawn, Atlanta City Council nonetheless votes “yes” to allocating over $60 million to fund the project.
\n\nJune 6: All of the councilmembers who voted “yes” are doxxed.
\n\nJune 7: Offices of Alta Vista and Bank of America vandalized with paint-filled balloons in Oakland, California. The home address of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens appears online.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/06/21/4.jpg\")
Artwork in solidarity with the fight against Cop City elsewhere in the South.
\nStarting in April 2021, a bold movement set out to defend Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta, Georgia, where local politicians and corporate profiteers want to build a police training compound known as Cop City. In the following assessment, participants evaluate the strategic hypotheses that the movement has produced and tested over the past two years and reflect on the risks and possibilities of the next phase of the struggle.
\n\nFor background on the events that are analyzed below, consult “The City in the Forest,” which covers the first year of resistance, and “The Forest in the City,” which details the second year. A week of action is scheduled to begin March 4.
\n\nAs protest movements and insurrections appear around the globe with increasing frequency, large swaths of humanity are engaging in a new form of open-source resistance. Protesters in Palestine, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Chile, Equador, Peru, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Iran, and beyond communicate with one another in a global language of refusal, explicitly referencing each other in instructional online protest guides. Revolutionaries have always imitated each other’s breakthroughs, and 21st-century communications platforms have made this process much easier.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/6.jpg\")
Open-source resistance.
\nMemetic resistance enables large numbers of people to participate in such activities without theoretical coherence, shared goals, relationships of trust, or longstanding organizations. Because of this, contagious and reproducible tactics can spread rapidly between contexts—across languages, oceans, continents, and worldviews. This phenomenon cannot be stopped. As societies continue to grow more atomized over the coming years, depriving desperate people of the collectivity and trust they would otherwise need to formulate plans according to shared goals and principles, the struggles to come will depend more and more on this approach.
\n\nBut if revolutionaries’ ideas and strategies do not spread as quickly as the tactics they use, it is likely that these tactics will eventually be appropriated to prop up the reigning order. If protest movements only imitate the models provided by other struggles, they may not enable the participants to cultivate new priorities, new desires, new values. In some ways, this is a strength of this paradigm of resistance, as it allows radically different people to fight alongside one another without need of coherent organizational or political alliances. But if revolts mobilize people without connecting or transforming them, they will not be able to bring about profound social change.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/7.jpg\")
Memetic resistance: demonstrators in Chile in 2019 sport riot shields, as seen previously in Kyiv, Ukraine and subsequently in Portland, Oregon and Myanmar.
\nOver the next decade, as the climate chaos and economic immiseration that are already hitting the Global South begin to impact previously affluent global centers like the United States, more and more people will find themselves struggling with inflexible bureaucracies and state violence. Even conservatives who are relatively comfortable today may find themselves in open conflict with police tomorrow.
\n\nYet one may fight specific police without taking a stand against policing itself. Those who have no analysis often fight against particular injustices only to preserve the system that causes them. Common-sense ideas tend to justify and reproduce the dominant social order, as it is the status quo that produces those ideas in the first place. Without revolutionary visions or questions, even the fiercest struggle can only return us to our starting point. Those who want to change the fundamental structures of our society must spread their ideas and ways of thinking at least as widely as any image of struggle, or else the movements of the future may seek only to reclaim the lost privileges of a chosen few or recreate an imagined version of the 20th century.
\n\nThe model is always wrong. Even if all one hopes to accomplish is to spread the tactics and gestures of revolt, mere forms, styles, and instructional guides will not suffice. Methods that work in North Africa cannot be automatically grafted onto the suburban sprawl of Los Angeles. Moreover, if those fighting on the frontlines do not take for granted that brand new effective revolutionary doctrines will fall from the heavens as a natural consequence of their methods, they will need to spread a questioning attitude within their movements. There is nothing wrong with risking being wrong; there is nothing right about doubling down on irrefutable claims or immutable practices.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/12.jpg\")
Memetic resistance: lasers in Hong Kong.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/11.jpg\")
Memetic resistance: lasers in Santiago, Chile.
\nAll of the headway that the movement to defend the forest has made can be credited to an experimental and problem-solving mentality. Wherever people have held to rigid dogmas, those have obstructed the movement. With stakes so high, we cannot afford to fall into sentimental attempts to imitate past successes, nor stubbornly insist on formulas that cannot be rigorously tested and refined. There is no “Defend the Forest Model.” There is only reality and those prepared to confront it.
\n\nIn order to take what has worked so far in this struggle to apply in other contexts or times, rebels and creative people will have to resist the urge to imitate tactics or images alone. Instead, they will have to cultivate a shared understanding, or at least shared questions, with those around them about what is happening, what is missing, and what is possible.
\n\nIn spring 2022, the movement faced a number of dilemmas. After the Atlanta City Council approved Cop City, a small group of activists remained determined to fight against it. They engaged in small skirmishes with contractors and police in the Old Atlanta Prison Farm.
\n\nAround the same time, small groups of people began building encampments on both sides of the South River, in Weelaunee People’s Park (as it later became known) and the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. Activists also began a pressure campaign against the supporters of the Atlanta Police Foundation, specifically targeting their contractors and subcontractors. Meanwhile, other groups initiated another round of public canvassing, while yet another circle organized periodic Weeks of Action. Those fighting in the courtrooms continued their appearances and appeals. New groups emerged to bring in young children and their communities; some invited groups of Muscogee (Creek) people to their ancestral homelands. Finally, whenever it was possible, anonymous saboteurs demonstrated the vulnerability of the forest destroyers by disabling or destroying excavators, trucks, tractors, and other pieces of machinery left in the forest.
\n\nForest defenders maintained various encampments from October 2021 to January 2023. Located in different parts of the forest, these encampments addressed concrete problems facing the movement. They drew on specific preexisting strengths within radical environmental networks. They also introduced observable limits and problems—some of which have been resolved, while others have not.
\n\nThese encampments enabled activists to gather a tremendous amount of information about the forest destroyers and their plans. They made it difficult for contractors and subcontractors to operate inside the forest. They disrupted the construction timelines and compelled police to focus on carrying out evictions. As long as police had not cleared the camps, contractors remained averse to advancing on construction timelines. Those who wanted to participate in the movement could join an encampment, where they could enjoy free shelter, sustenance, and community, at least if they managed to fit in with the specific subculture and attitudes of those living in the forest. Journalists, photographers, documentarians, community members, students, and others who were curious about the movement, wanted a tour of the land, or sought an easy and low-risk way to contribute could usually find someone living in the forest to talk to.
\n\nAfter the third Week of Action, which culminated in fierce clashes with law enforcement, the construction of tree houses expanded drastically. These offered journalists a picturesque image and a romantic story at a moment when they might otherwise have reduced the narrative to militancy and clashes alone. The tree houses also enabled some of the encampments to persist despite the frequent sweeps of the Prison Farm by police. If the police were to evict the activists from tree houses, some believed, they would do so at the cost of considerable resources and perceived legitimacy.
\n\nOn the other hand, the encampments posed challenges to the movement. It is not out of contempt for the frontline defenders that we discuss these, but out of respect for them, for their dedication, their joys and hardships, their sacrifices in pursuit of the world that we are trying to build together.
\n\nSustaining the encampments required a Herculean effort. Feeding dozens of people and providing them with water, building supplies, clothing, camping equipment, kitchen equipment, and other needs was ceaselessly demanding. Much of this work was organized by those living among the trees, but not all of it. There were periods during which the majority of campers were newcomers, eager to help but unaware of camp norms or chores. A fair number of forest defenders who did not live in the encampments invested the majority of their movement-related energies in feeding and assisting those who were living in the forest.
\n\nThe dynamics of the camps were complex, especially those involving tree houses, which require a great deal of training if the resident is to avoid serious bodily harm or death. Few people with jobs, children, class schedules, or other commitments can move into forest encampments for long periods of time. The majority of those living in the camps were white; this was likely more related to the form of the permanent encampment itself and the free time required to participate in it than to overtly discriminatory behaviors.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/3.jpg\")
A tree house on the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, 2022.
\nBy no fault of the forest dwellers, supporting the encampments came to stand in for mass strategizing and action. Some people came to conflate the effectiveness of the movement as a whole with the well-being of the camps. Something similar occurred among the police, as well, who became obsessed with the people living among the trees and dedicated a disproportionate amount of effort to clearing them out. Just as those evictions have not crushed the movement, activists living outside the forest should not have allowed their own initiative, creativity, and energy to come to revolve so disproportionately around the encampments.
\n\nThe period of small-scale, intensive encampments on the land is probably over. But the need to physically defend the forest has not passed. Therefore, other strategies will have to emerge to fill this need.
\n\nRefusing to lose themselves in the symbolic and convoluted world of official politics and representation, some activists embarked on a research-intensive campaign targeting the companies contracted by the Atlanta Police Foundation. By identifying the support structures of the Cop City plan, these activists helped to propose concrete strategies. The first general contractor hired by the APF, Reeves+Young, backed out of the project after a number of actions directed at their CEO, their Board of Directors, and some of their subcontractors. This was a significant morale boost for the movement, and many hoped that continuing on this path would lead to similar results for whatever company was contracted to replace them.
\n\nWhen Brasfield & Gorrie was hired to replace Reeves+Young, activists set about pressuring them, their Board, and their subcontractors, just as had occurred before. Some hoped that home demonstrations, office visits, call-in campaigns, and other pressure tactics would enable risk-averse activists to participate in direct action against Cop City. It is certain that hundreds, if not thousands, of people have called the offices and cell phones of the forest destroyers over the past year. But few did much more than that.
\n\nVisiting the homes, churches, job sites, and offices of Brasfield & Gorrie executives or their subcontractors has not yet drawn the kind of participation some hoped for. In some cases, it seemed that this strategy primarily attracted direct-action-oriented people who might have preferred to simply vandalize an office or facility under the cover of night—which has occurred dozens of times across the country. Some protests or rallies at offices or homes have involved confrontational methods, with the consequence that many participants did not feel comfortable returning to an address for a follow-up protest; this inadvertently contributed to the general abandonment of this tactic. Misapplied militancy did not increase the pressure against the targets—in fact, over the long term, it actually diminished it.
\n\nIt is not clear how many subcontractors have dropped from the project as a result of the pressure campaigns against them. Can a pressure campaign push Brasfield & Gorrie out of the project? So far, the answer has been no.
\n\nIf activists hope to isolate Brasfield & Gorrie from the Atlanta Police Foundation, they will need to identify and target the weak spots in their corporate organization. Insurance providers, for instance, are essential to corporate entities. If Brasfield & Gorrie lost their provider, they would have to halt all of their jobs. If this occurred multiple times, it could be expensive. If the service provider (in this case, Brasfield & Gorrie) were compelled to choose between being a successful corporate enterprise or fulfilling one contract (in this case, building Cop City), they would likely choose the former. If activists cannot create that kind of dilemma, they are not likely to attain their goals with this kind of strategy.
\n\nIn early January 2023, Mayor Dickens spoke to the Rotary Club of Buckhead at a Maggiano’s Little Italy restaurant. He pleaded with them to place bids for Cop City construction contracts. Some of the business owners in attendance responded that they were afraid because of protests against the development. Mayor Dickens insisted that the protesters “would be taken care of”—a chilling phrase, only a few days before police killed a forest defender named Tortuguita—and argued that because Brasfield & Gorrie wasn’t backing down, others should feel confident to join them.
\n\nIs Brasfield & Gorrie receiving financial assurances or support from municipal or state-level authorities? They could be. The Third Quarter campaign updates from the Atlanta Police Foundation in 2021 and 2022 reveal that the construction company and their subcontractor, the Brent Scarborough Company, both donated generously to the Atlanta Police Foundation. The Brent Scarborough Company also made generous contributions to the Brian Kemp gubernatorial campaign both of those years. If these companies are in fact engaged in bribery or “quid pro quo” corruption schemes to secure access to public contracts, we could imagine the government might allocate tremendous resources to protect them from grassroots resistance.
\n\nAll this is speculation. But there are precedents for governments stepping in to support corporations targeted by activists, even when the corporations were not working directly for the government. Two decades ago, the government of the United Kingdom repeatedly took action to protect the animal testing corporation Huntingdon Life Sciences after the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign drove away all their investors. The state-owned Bank of England offered HLS an account when no other bank would; the British government helped HLS to negotiate a refinancing when their last backers pulled out; when HLS lost their insurance provider, the Department of Trade and Industry gave HLS unprecedented coverage. The SHAC campaign would have driven HLS out of business if not for all this. One of the chief functions of governments is to put a finger on the capitalist side of the scale whenever corporations come into conflict with ordinary people.
\n\nBrasfield & Gorrie may not be counting on making a profit on finishing Cop City so much as securing government contracts for decades to come if they hold the line against the movement. If this is true, protesters and researchers will need to discover what vulnerabilities Brasfield & Gorrie retain despite the backing of the state. If they cannot, their efforts would be better spent on other targets—or else on other strategies.
\n\nAt the same time, if Cop City can only attract the governor’s personal cronies, perhaps it is closer to failure than is readily apparent.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/8.jpg\")
A rally outside a Brasfield & Gorrie office in Charlotte, North Carolina in June 2022.
\nActivists have organized multiple waves of canvassing since summer 2021. At first, a group called “Defund APD, Refund Communities” (DARC) drew together dozens of activists to strategize around door-to-door outreach in southwest Dekalb County as well as other parts of Atlanta. These canvassers were chiefly interested in spreading awareness of the project. When the City Council passed the ordinance to build Cop City after 17 hours of negative feedback—chiefly, comments from those DARC had canvassed—the momentum around this cycle came to a close.
\n\nOver the year and a half since, several more waves of canvassing have taken place. Every few months, a new cohort dedicates themselves to knocking on doors and passing out leaflets. In some cases, proponents of door-to-door outreach have built on the efforts of those before them. Other groups have wrongly assumed that no one else had yet considered addressing those living in the immediate vicinity of the forest.
\n\nGentrification, urban restructuring, digital communications technology, and the War on Drugs have destroyed the social fabric of urban neighborhoods. Once upon a time, neighboring households often shared the same forms of employment, religion, language, and ethnicity; this increased the likelihood that they could mobilize around the same discourse or plan of action. In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, organizing efforts were often modeled on the urban landscape itself—in some cases, revolutionaries could build a coherent organization simply by walking around knocking on doors.
\n\nThings don’t seem to work that way in the 21st century. But there is more to say about canvassing, regardless of whether it remains a good way to build a formidable revolutionary organization.
\n\nIn all likelihood, door-to-door canvassing has connected many people to the movement who live near the forest. These rounds of outreach may well have spread positive associations with the movement far beyond the left-wing subculture from which many of the canvassers hail. Some current participants in the movement might have first learned of the plan to destroy the forest from canvassers. None of this can be proven or disproven on a scale larger than anecdotal examples.
\n\nWithout a clear, falsifiable hypothesis to test, nobody can judge the effectiveness of canvassing or any other proposal. Has canvassing increased local participation in the movement more than other strategies? Have grassroots networks or organizations grown proportionally to the hours they have invested knocking on doors in the area? Nobody knows for sure. In any case, canvassing has almost certainly not harmed the movement. Whether it is worth the hard work it requires remains an open question.
\n\nSo far, there have been four Weeks of Action to defend the forest and stop Cop City. Each of these has altered the tactical and political landscape of the movement in demonstrable ways. In addition, the organizers of these Weeks have usually articulated specific aims and expectations.
\n\nGroups with extensive contacts outside of local political subcultures have been the main proponents and organizers of these. In gathering people from across the country, the Weeks of Action have expanded the priorities and capacities of many grassroots activists around the United States, especially anarchists and their associates. The Weeks of Action have enabled the movement to impose an irregular seasonal rhythm on the Atlanta Police Foundation by rearranging the balance of forces in concussive bursts. They have allowed activists to keep the forest destroyers in a state of anxiety and reactivity, forcing them to adopt a discourse about “outside agitators” that has been delivering diminishing returns since the Ferguson uprising of 2014. They have also enabled the movement to grow outward across the country rather than accumulating in a single metropolis. This is important because the forest destroyers depend on supply chains that extend throughout the country, far beyond downtown Atlanta.
\n\nThe participants who dedicate the most energy to the Weeks of Action have been able to take breaks between them, which has enabled them to maintain long-term participation in the movement. Although the Weeks have complemented other approaches and sometimes relied on them, they operate on a different rhythm, as many groups and strategies, especially legal and frontline defense, require responding urgently to the activity of the forest destroyers at a pace set by the enemy.
\n\nOn the other hand, Weeks of Action are often preceded and followed by a temporary increase in tension with the police. As the proponents of Cop City rely on more and more desperate means to force through their agenda, this pressure could become too great for the local participants in the movement. If the Weeks of Action do not increase the number of people prepared to respond to repression on the ground and in the courtrooms, then they are setting the stage for defeat.
\n\nThis model entails other challenges, as well. For example, when there were encampments in the forest, preparing for mass convergence was often stressful because hundreds or even thousands of short-term residents were about to share the space that the forest dwellers relied on every day for food and shelter.
\n\nMost groups or organizations do not necessarily maintain a robust network of connections around the country and the world; they have other strengths to offer. At times, because of the outsized impact of the Weeks of Action on the fight to save the forest as a whole, those other strengths have been underexplored or utilized.
\n\nFinally, it is possible that risk-tolerant segments of the movement have relied too much on a convergence model of action that often results in arrests. Over time, this repression could cause problems for people and movements in other parts of the country, where autonomous groups are less prepared to support people facing legal consequences, especially far away.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/CJAOurPower/status/1629203023800020994\n\n\n
The South River Forest Coalition, South River Watershed Alliance, Save the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, and some individuals have pursued legal strategies to halt the destruction of the forest. Over the past year, most of these efforts have focused on appealing the legality of the land-swap agreement between Dekalb County CEO Michael Thurmond and Hollywood real estate mogul Ryan Milsap. Before January 31, 2023, when the government finally approved the Land Disturbance Permits for Cop City, they also applied pressure to the Dekalb County Commissioners to deny these permits on ecological grounds.
\n\nWhen Cop City is defeated and the land-swap is overturned, at the institutional level, this will likely appear to be the result of legal efforts. The forest destroyers do not possess a unitary chain of command, so no single entity will come out waving a white flag of surrender. Instead, various “technicalities” and “oversights” will put various development phases “on pause.” It is likely that the project will never be overtly cancelled. Instead, it will be reformed repeatedly, and then eventually, it will simply evaporate from public discourse. The authorities will go to great lengths to make sure that the public understands that this is the consequence of legal measures, not direct action. They will have their own story about what has taken place, and that is fine.
\n\nThere are already visions regarding what this forest could become. The most developed of these plans, the South River Forest Vision, has already been added to the City Charter. Before the current demolition plans, this Vision was the plan for the area. In the past two years, this document has taken on new components, new radical alterations and improvements. It could have changed more if different sectors of the movement decided to engage with it. It is not a perfect document, but it offers the government something to grab onto. It offers their lawyers the chance they will need to say, “Oh, it turns out Cop City is actually illegal. We will have to go with the previous plan.”
\n\nAs it stands, every significant ruling on the movement that has taken place in a courtroom thus far has been a setback. As two years of struggle have illustrated, legal strategies alone are insufficient. They cannot halt adversaries who are willing to destroy things illegally, who wield disproportionate power in the economy and court system. They cannot win in a game rigged by the Atlanta Committee for Progress and the industrial forces they represent to Georgia state senators. But legal strategies can slow the progress of development. They can put forest destroyers on the defensive, forcing them to respond to various requests, and they can provide the adversary with opportunities to quit the project within a logic of jurisprudence that they understand.
\n\nIn late February 2023, an exploratory committee headed by the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) released a new South River Forest vision document. Meant to foster cooperation between Atlanta and Dekalb and move forward with turning the South River Park into an actual park, the documents make no mention of the conflict that has unfolded over Weelaunee Forest. Maps produced by the committee simply mark the land that the movement is fighting for as beyond the bounds of the prospective park. This vision indicates the narrowing ambitions of some urban planners. The original call for the park envisioned 4000 connected acres of forest. The new proposal has already shrunk that number to 3500 acres, accepting the loss of forested areas to Cop City and Ryan Millsap as if they are inevitable.
\n\nWill the South River Forest Coalition, the South River Watershed Alliance, and other sectors of the movement accept this new conciliatory and defeatist vision? Surely, if the current administration does not suspend these projects after law enforcement killed a protester, there is little chance that they will pay any mind to this amended version of the South River Forest Vision.
\n\nSince the very beginning, shortly after local activists first exposed the plans to build Cop City, anonymous groups have sabotaged machinery, vandalized offices, and engaged in other forms of direct action. After the police killed Tortuguita on January 18, 2023, people across the country broke windows, stormed offices, burned machinery, glued ATMs, and painted slogans every day for a month. On February 19, 2023, while the APF was spending $41,500 per day to stage police officers in and around the forest at all hours, saboteurs still managed to torch excavators and tractors under the cover of night.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/1.jpg\")
Fridley, Minnesota, January 2023.
\nThe rationale behind direct action is that people can enact the changes they want directly without waiting for permission. Sabotage is a form of direct action with a long history in this country and across the world. It has been used in a wide array of struggles. Freedom fighters depend on it whether their struggles take place in factories, plantations, prisons, schools, offices, slaughterhouses, shopping centers, pipeline corridors, forests, or elsewhere. Sabotage is especially empowering for those facing intense repression or powerful adversaries, because saboteurs are not dependent on safety in numbers. Instead, they can rely on the element of surprise, the cover of night, intimate knowledge of their targets, the arrogance of law enforcement. Generally speaking, the saboteur wants to use methods that demand the least time, special skills, and effort and that minimize risk to participants and bystanders while resulting in the maximum consequences for the target.
\n\nThe infrastructure of control is vulnerable—and nowadays, it is everywhere. Direct action demonstrates this. Effective sabotage campaigns can cripple authoritarian regimes, apartheid states, colonial exploiters, entire economies. But to accomplish this, they have to inspire the self-directed activity of other influential segments of the population, especially those who can access logistical bottlenecks.
\n\nIn the movement to stop Cop City, saboteurs have sometimes claimed responsibility for their actions online. By issuing online statements (“communiqués”), saboteurs can explain what happened, where, and why. These statements break the media silence surrounding such actions, making it more difficult to erase or misrepresent them. The authorities do not want civilians to know how easy it can be to perform them. But there are risks to releasing communiqués. For one, if authors do not adequately hide their digital identities or accidentally reveal identifying characteristics via their style or phrasing, they could be caught. Moreover, the more abstruse the statements, the less likely it is that readers will identify with the action.
\n\nPeople who carry out direct action often have an interest in explaining their motivations. However, if the intention is to encourage more people to take action, they can do themselves a disservice by alienating readers with complex jargon or by bringing up unrelated topics, however important those may be. If the communiqués explain how the actions are carried out, this can contribute to copycat actions. Anyone who performs more than one act of sabotage risks leaving a unique “fingerprint” in their actions, rendering them vulnerable to repression as investigators patiently track subtle technical similarities or other clues. If more anonymous saboteurs adopt the same model, that may make it more difficult to track the first ones who used it.
\n\nWhen it comes to claiming responsibility, simplicity may be best: in the fewest words, with the simplest and most conventional language possible, explain who did what, where they did it, when it happened, why they did it, and how.
\n\nLastly, if those who focus on this kind of action do not concern themselves with other political means, if they do not respect others’ boundaries and concerns, they will tend to become an isolated faction. If their efforts are not comprehensible to society at large—or at least connected to the movement they participate in—they risk wasting their energy on poorly timed actions that will not contribute to the momentum of the movement. Just as media spokespeople, jail support teams, and other specialized groups can develop the bad habit of evaluating everything according to its relevance to their areas of expertise, saboteurs must be careful to see others’ efforts as part of a larger whole, rather than simply judging them according to how much damage or disruption they cause.
\n\nIf saboteurs are not thoughtful, their preferred methods—precisely because those are easy, empowering, and often effective—can dominate their own and others’ imaginations at the expense of political flexibility and creativity. If all you have is a hammer, everything will look like a nail.
\n\nNew tactics, new strategies, and new formations are developing within the movement. These will combine the most resilient methods of the previous phases with new content and approaches that have not been explored until now. It is important that all of the participants develop their own reflections, their own priorities, their own aspirations and ways of understanding the situation. The courage, clarity, focus, and inventiveness of individuals has contributed at least as much to the experiments and victories of this movement as the formal decision-making of organizations and collectives. The more comfortable everyone feels innovating, the less that dogma or adrenaline alone will structure what comes next.
\n\nThe movement to defend the forest and stop Cop City began in April 2021. Throughout the ups and downs since then, this movement has been sustained by the dedication of a few hundred people in Atlanta and a few hundred more across the country. It is impossible to overstate the contributions of anarchists, abolitionists, and radical environmentalists, who have constituted the vast majority of organizers.
\n\nNow, after two years, the situation is changing. Following the murder of Tortuguita—and not an instant earlier—a number of non-profit organizations and a smattering of local left-wing groups are looking to get involved. This is good, because it could make the movement more versatile and bring in more resources and participants. The presence of interfaith groups, students, and civil society organizations will make it more difficult for the authorities to employ the “terrorism” narrative they have been pushing. No matter how fierce or dedicated small groups of people are, they cannot pose a credible challenge to the system without fostering widespread participation. Yet if the radical edge that has led the movement up to now is not able to keep the initiative as the movement expands, the principles that brought it this far could be lost.
\n\nOver the preceding decade, we have seen large-scale mobilizations and autonomous movements erupt suddenly, drawing together thousands or even millions of people alongside activist groups and nonprofit organizations. In what has become a familiar paradigm, the most ambitious and uncompromising participants have had to fight for space—forced to establish their own bail funds, assemblies, march routes, and media platforms in order to express themselves and take action. Most of the tactical innovations that anarchists and autonomists have developed over the previous decades have emerged in that context: breakaway marches, consensus meetings, spokescouncils, anonymous blogs, and so on.
\n\nThe movement to defend the forest in Atlanta represents a different paradigm. Now it is the quasi-institutional left, the coalitions and organizations, the “progressive” Democrats, and the nonprofit groups that have to try to carve out space for themselves.
\n\nThis is not unprecedented. After Black youth and anarchists initiated riots in response to the murder of Oscar Grant by Bay Area Rapid Transit police in 2009, civic and non-profit organizations spent months seeking to tame, shame, and contain their rebellious energy. Something similar occurred in 2014 after courageous residents around West Florissant sparked a nationwide movement in response to the murder of Michael Brown by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. Non-profits and their allies are a real part of contemporary struggles—but as long as they steer them, they tend to push them into the arms of the Democratic Party, towards cooptation and toothlessness.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/4.jpg\")
A protester tosses a projectile at heavily armored police in Baltimore in April 2015 in response to the police murdering Freddie Gray.
\nWe can expect to see the influence of the nationwide associations and organizations increase in the coming months, especially as elements within the original movement are sidelined by state repression. If they are allowed to gain their own footing and develop their own infrastructure alongside those of the existing movement, they are likely to outpace it and to overdetermine the outcome. If that occurs, they will lead the movement to reconciliation with the authorities—in other words, to failure.
\n\nYet while remaining vigilant against cooptation, frontline fighters and other long-term participants must allow newcomers to join and transform the movement they have built. The current balance of forces—in which the police are willing to kill activists and charge whoever survives with Domestic Terrorism—demands that the movement rapidly expand before the authorities can isolate and destroy it.
\n\nWhoever is able to surround their opponent will win. Literally speaking, this is likely to be true tactically in the conflicts that play out in the forest. Politically speaking, if one side becomes isolated from allies and sympathizers, greater and greater means can be deployed against them and they will be unable to respond.
\n\nIn the first week of February 2023, Morehouse and Spelman students disrupted an event at the Atlanta University Center. These students, supported by an open letter signed by 20% of the faculty, boldly denounced Cop City and the destruction of the forest. The next day, predominantly Black students from Georgia State University, Emory, Georgia Tech, Morehouse, and Spelman marched through downtown chanting slogans and delivering fiery speeches.
\n\nIt took some years for students to respond to the movement in this way. Nowadays, the promise of class mobility makes many students somewhat risk-averse. Still, their participation at this juncture could be significant. Many of the board members of the Atlanta Police Foundation are professors. Students are well positioned to address them directly.
\n\nSymbolically speaking, Black students are an important demographic in Atlanta politics. Many in the ruling cliques rely on the patronage, networks, resources, and support of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities to advance their narratives and privatization schemes. The self-directed activity of these students could secure significant advances for the movement. Should these students embrace methods proportional to the situation at hand—such as unruly demonstrations, direct confrontation with APF members or school administration, sit-ins, walkouts, strikes, or other innovative forms of struggle—they could push the crisis into a new stage. In addition to catching the authorities off guard, this would enable Black students, and students in general, to introduce their own priorities and demands to the movement.
\n\nWe are already seeing this develop. On January 31, 2023, Mayor Dickens hosted a Q & A session at Morehouse College at which students denounced and berated him for hours. On February 22, 66 faculty members at Spelman College signed their own denunciation of Cop City. At this point, the participation of students and professors in the movement is a foregone conclusion, but the nature of that participation remains to be determined.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/10.jpg\")
Georgia Tech students demonstrating against Cop City.
\nIn February 2023, a small group of animal rights activists in Los Angeles descended on an office belonging to Atlas Technical Consultants. Wielding multiple megaphones and attempting to gain entry to the lobby of the Cop City subcontractor, these activists chanted denunciations of Cop City. Tactically speaking, this was not a radical departure from other events in the movement—but it represents a shift in participation, as it was coordinated by a formal organization with no previous ties to the movement.
\n\nIn the weeks leading up to March, organizations such as the Center for Biological Diversity have released statements urging their supporters to join the movement. In Atlanta and elsewhere, nonprofit groups connected with national organizations have begun conducting “direct action trainings” and hosting online seminars with their members about the movement.
\n\nIf animal rights, environmentalist, anti-militarist, anti-police, anti-racist, and anti-gentrification nonprofit organizations and activist groups across the country take steps to oppose Cop City, the pressure on funders, insurers, contractors, and subcontractors will increase dramatically. Some of those groups can mobilize considerable resources to promote their actions, as well as providing legal and financial aid. Participation in the movement could expand to include more senior citizens, although it also would probably attract more middle-class people.
\n\nToday, on-the-ground defense of the forest could form a comprehensive offensive strategy. The dynamics of the conflict have changed considerably since April 2022. If a large encampment of hundreds or thousands of people were established, it could contribute directly to the abandonment of Cop City as well as the land-swap. The confidence of the authorities is wavering, and construction companies are not enthusiastic about the project, thanks to recurring sabotage and continuous pressure. It is possible that a frontline struggle involving pacifists, students, rock-throwers, campers, interfaith groups, and motorists could push the legitimacy crisis surrounding the project to a breaking point.
\n\nAs of now, there are two victory conditions for the movement:
\n\n1) The Atlanta Police Foundation is unable to hire anyone to destroy the forest.
\n2) A politician or government institution pulls the plug on the project.
If activists can continue isolating Brasfield & Gorrie from their subcontractors, their insurance providers, their lawyers, their associates and lenders, Brasfield & Gorrie may eventually drop the APF contract. It is possible that the contract is too risky for another company to pick up. Or, after losing so much time and confidence, it is possible that the funders of the APF might revoke their loans. Cadence Bank and Northwest Bank both previously offered the APF active lines of credit. Now, neither of them do. Nearly every transparent line of credit held by the APF is revocable. It is not too late to bankrupt them.
\n\nLastly, it is possible that in their haste and hubris, the Police Foundation has violated their legal rights as a 501c(3). With close scrutiny, it is possible that someone could find illegal lobbying or criminal misappropriation of funds, assets, or influence involving the APF. Could a single lawyer have this organization disbanded, their assets frozen, their contracts canceled? Crazier things have happened. Still, with the forest in immediate danger, any courtroom victory will depend on activity in the streets. If forest defenders hope for a legal victory, they will need to become ungovernable first.
\n\nIf the crisis developing around this project and other cases of police violence continues to polarize US society, the priorities of elected officials and bureaucrats could shift rapidly. Governor Kemp has instituted a state of emergency since late January, allegedly because of the protest on January 21 in response to the killing of Tortuguita.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/5.jpg\")
Demonstrators denouncing the terrorism charges at a courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia.
\nWhile many people in Atlanta were mourning Tortuguita, the killing of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police department shocked the nation. Police and politicians carried out extensive media operations and counterinsurgency efforts in the days leading up to the release of the horrific footage. Aiming to desensitize the public by overexposure, the Chief of the Memphis Police released statements several days in a row warning people of the “inhumanity” of the video and suggesting that it was “worse than the Rodney King footage.”
\n\nThis police chief, Cerelyn Davis, was previously employed with the Atlanta Police Department, where she worked for the infamous Red Dog Unit, a special “crime fighting” task force infamous for maiming, killing, abusing, and stalking civilians. The unit was eventually disbanded and Davis was fired. She moved to Memphis to form the Scorpion Unit there, an identical task force responsible for the brutal killing of Nichols. Before she lived in Atlanta, she was in the leadership of the Durham Police Department in North Carolina. In all three departments, she participated in and helped to establish law-enforcement exchange programs with the apartheid-imposing Israeli Defense Forces.
\n\nColonial domination in the global periphery translates directly to authoritarianism in the imperial core. With the failure of US military rule in Afghanistan after 20 years of human rights abuses, tens of thousands of trainers, consultants, contractors, and mercenaries are returning to the US to look for new employment opportunities. Likely, many of them will seek further employment in the private sector, where heinous abuse is easier to conceal.
\n\nAll of these private sector firms build their business models around government contracts. In the era of capitalist globalization, when cutthroat competition has whittled away the profit margins of many sectors of the economy, the spheres of “security,” arms dealing, and policing remain more profitable than ever. Cop City is an investment in this industry, funneling tens of millions of dollars through military contractors like Invesco into domestic police agencies. These investments are not new, but they will expand in the coming years as states rely more and more on private investors as a result of tax cuts for the rich.
\n\nIf the two major parties keep doubling down on policing as their primary solution to unrest and desperation, the struggle against Cop City is likely just the tip of the iceberg. If the Puerto Rican and Hawaiian colonies are any indication, facilities like Cop City might be planned for every region of the country. We have not yet discovered strategies that can halt this process. It is urgent that we do.
\n\nFortunately, the forces allied against us are spread thin, with vulnerabilities and divisions throughout their ranks. The fight against Cop City is becoming a signal fire for movements across the country.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/9.jpg\")
A vigil in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after the killing of Tortuguita in January 2023. Footage by Unicorn Riot.
\nAndre Dickens did not address the killing of Tortuguita for nearly a month. When he finally did, it was because of the pressure he faced at Morehouse College during the Q & A session with AUC students about Cop City. When a student boldly demanded that he address the killing, he responded simply “I wish [they] didn’t die. It’s not fun. But people die everyday.”
\n\nWe will see more and more of this sort of indifference to institutional killing if we permit them to build Cop City.
\n\nDickens continues to make public appearances, including at cocktail parties and mixers in Buckhead. He has held multiple press conferences about Cop City, bemoaning the threats and “misinformation” spread against it, framing himself as the real victim. Tortuguita’s killers have yet to be named. This is especially unusual in view of the tendency of politicians and corporate media to lionize every officer who sustains injury on the job.
\n\nThe administration, which apparently did not even plan to release Tortuguita’s name, hopes to kill and erase protesters while protecting their image among the urban liberals and fence-sitters who enable them. At every opportunity, the administration and the APF audaciously claim that the area where they hope to build Cop City “is not a forest.” By denying what anyone can see clearly with their own eyes, they are addressing themselves solely to those sitting safely on designer furniture, passively waiting for newscasters to spoon-feed them the day’s events while courageous young people are dragged off to jail, blanketed in tear gas, and shot to death.
\n\nIn the long run, this will cost them. If they stake their future on those who are incapable of meaningful action, they will end up supported only by passive sympathizers and internet commentators. In dragging the conflict into the realm of pure force, they play a dangerous game, jeopardizing both their perceived legitimacy and their control.
\n\nIn astronomy, necroplanetology is the study of planets that are being destroyed, or of the wrecked debris that indicates the previous existence of a planet. A terrestrial necroplanetology would recognize Cop City as an assault on something unique and irreplaceable. Not only is our own planet being destroyed—the planet that bore us, that gives us life, the only planet that could be our home—but the same process is eroding our capacity to imagine any relationship to the Earth other than the violence represented by Cop City.
\n\nIf this movement fails and Cop City is built, it will be built upon the unmarked graves of enslaved African people, over the absence of the Muscogee Creek people who were forcibly relocated, another atrocity added to the suffering all of the prisoners who were forced to toil on this land. They will pave over the corpses of all of the forest spirits, all the creatures who have inhabited this bioregion, just as they are doing everywhere else. They will erase the lives and courage of all who are fighting to prevent further violence and death, all who are imperiled, all who have died, who have had everything taken from them, who have given everything they had to protect the possibility of a freer future. The defeated heroes will become footnotes on a plaque behind a glass case in City Hall somewhere, so that future administrations can fraudulently lay claim to their memory to justify future atrocities the way they do today with the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
\n\nWe must not let this happen. Cop City will never be built.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/28/2.jpg\")
\nThe campaign to defend the forest in Atlanta, Georgia has become one of the most vibrant movements of the post-Trump era, interweaving environmentalism, abolitionism, and the fight against gentrification. Yet as police shift to employing lethal violence and indiscriminate terrorism charges, it has reached a critical juncture. Participants explore how this struggle has developed over the past year, reflecting on the practices that have given it strength and analyzing the challenges before it.
\n\nOur society is at a crisis point. Decades of escalating economic pressure have created rampant inequality and desperation. Rather than addressing the root causes of these, politicians across the political spectrum continue channeling more and more money to police, relying on them to suppress unrest by force alone. This dependence has enabled police departments and their allies to consume a vast amount of public resources. Meanwhile, driven by the same economic pressures, catastrophic climate change is generating hurricanes, forest fires, droughts, and widespread ecological collapse.
\n\nIn this context, starting in April 2021, a bold movement set out to defend a forest in Atlanta, Georgia, where local politicians and corporate profiteers want to build a police training compound and a soundstage for the film industry. The training compound, known as Cop City, would be the largest police training facility in the United States. It would devastate the South River Forest, also known as Weelaunee Forest in honor of the Muscogee Creek people who lived there until they were deported in the Trail of Tears.
\n\nThe movement to defend the Weelaunee Forest has drawn together a wide range of groups and strategies. Legal defense organizations like the South River Forest Coalition, which is bringing a lawsuit against the Dekalb County government, work parallel to groups like the SRY Campaign, an anonymous collective of researchers who publicize the home and office addresses of those who seek to destroy the forest. While abolitionists and radical environmentalists have established encampments and tree houses in the forest, a network of pre-schools and parents has built community gardens and hosted public outreach events. Still others have organized raves and cultural events in the forest, connecting the most ambitious artists with the irrepressible spirit of the movement.
\n\nAmong those who wish to see Cop City built are the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), mayor Andre Dickens, and the various corporations that stand to profit on the development. At the same time, thanks to a back-room deal with the city government, real estate mogul and film industry executive Ryan Millsap is preparing to destroy a public park on an adjacent land parcel within the same forest.
\n\nBehind the scenes, Cop City has the support of the Atlanta Committee for Progress, a business association involving the region’s most powerful industrial and bureaucratic cliques. Alex Taylor, the former chairman, is also the acting president of Cox Enterprises, which owns various Atlanta media outlets and is among the leading funders of the Atlanta Police Foundation. In order to create a veneer of democratic process and local support, the APF and their supporters have contrived the Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee (CSAC), comprised of members of the Police Foundation and a few residents of Southwest Dekalb. When one of the initial members of CSAC spoke out against the project, she was removed from her position.
\n\nThese are the forces that are facing off over the forest. On one side, some of the wealthiest and most institutionally powerful figures in the state of Georgia. On the other, a network of local activists and their friends.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/20.jpg\")
Demonstrators in downtown Atlanta on January 21, 2023.
\nDuring the George Floyd rebellion of 2020, for the first time, it became possible to speak of police abolition as a viable proposal about how to break the cycle of violence that poverty and police militarization impose on our communities. Yet every effort to “defund the police” via institutional means reached a dead end. Under Joe Biden, the Democratic Party has doubled down on unconditional support for police. If there is any hope of limiting the continuous expansion of police infrastructure and state violence, grassroots movements and direct action will have to show the way.
\n\nThe same goes double for climate change. At this point, practically everyone agrees that humanity is on a collision course with ecological disaster, but institutional efforts to address the situation have accomplished precious little. The movement to defend the forest in Atlanta offers a glimpse of what it would take to defend our communities from the unbridled profiteering and repression that are forcing this catastrophe on all of us.
\n\nThe Atlanta forest has become a flashpoint in both of these fights. With stakes this high, it is easy to see why people on both sides are dedicating so much energy to this conflict.
\n\nAfter two years of simmering conflict, the situation is escalating. Starting in December, the police began bringing terrorism charges against almost every activist they arrest, citing being in the forest and posting on social media as sufficient grounds. On January 18, Georgia State Patrol Officers killed Manuel Terán, known in the forest as Tortuguita. Tortuguita had been living under siege for almost a year as a beloved part of the small community dwelling in the encampments.
\n\nWhile the authorities seek to crush the movement by any means, solidarity efforts are springing up across the world. Forest defenders in Atlanta are planning another Week of Action from March 4 to 11, inviting everyone to join them.
\n\nThe following text was drafted by heartbroken people in crowded rooms, receiving phone calls and text messages day and night. We offer this humble contribution in the midst of grief and horror at the killing of Tortuguita. We hope to pass on memories and analysis from the fight that Tortuguita joined in April 2022.
\n\nTo support the arrestees, donate here. For background on the movement and the strategies that participants employed from its inception through March 2022, read “The City in the Forest.” We’ve also prepared a poster that you can use to promote the struggle on the walls of your own community.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/6.jpg\")
Click on the image to download the poster. Artwork courtesy of Breakaway.
\nAt the end of January 2022, as described in a previous essay, it seemed almost impossible to slow the pace of the preparations for construction that Reeves+Young and their subcontractor Long Engineering were carrying out. Neither small group actions nor larger protests had succeeded in delaying the soil boring and sampling at the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. The segments of the movement that had previously sought to sway City Council were in disarray, while activists oriented towards direct action were still seeking the leverage they needed.
\n\nOn March 1, 2022, an anonymous group poured bleach into the engines of five vehicles belonging to Long Engineering. According to an online statement, this action was intended to impose consequences for their participation in “pre-construction” efforts in the forest. On March 19, six machines owned by Reeves+Young, including two excavators, were reportedly destroyed by saboteurs in the Flowery Branch suburb. On April 9, a website appeared listing the names and home addresses of executives in Reeves+Young. This came just a few days after independent researchers discovered that Brasfield & Gorrie had been contracted to build Cop City. It is rare for more than one general contractor to oversee projects like this. What was happening behind closed doors was confusing; the only thing that was clear was that the forest destroyers were moving forward and nothing was stopping them.
\n\nAnd then, unexpectedly and without explanation, Reeves+Young dropped the contract. Seeking to control the narrative, the Police Foundation claimed that the work Reeves+Young had been contracted for was complete and they were no longer on the project. At the time, however, Reeves+Young had hardly done any work. They had sent a representative to escort a subcontractor into the forest a few times, but the surveyor flags and stakes that they had placed had been removed overnight.
\n\nThey probably did not withdraw as a consequence of the accumulation of actions, nor as the result of any particular action. More likely, it was the feeling that things could go in any direction, that the future of the project could not be predicted, nor the costs reliably calculated.
\n\nThe entire movement interpreted this as a win. With this small victory, a new period of resistance opened up.
\n\nA frenzy of activity followed. Mass meetings, canvassing efforts, media interviews, and sabotage all increased in frequency and focus. Many movements and organizers rely on repression or fear to mobilize supporters; activists defending the forest in Atlanta have sought to maintain a positive and proactive attitude throughout, highlighting confidence and goals even in the face of setbacks, aiming to foster ambitious, solution-oriented mentalities and proposals.
\n\nAt the end of April, police began scoping out the forest, making half-hearted incursions into the Old Atlanta Prison Farm North Gate on a few occasions. Sometimes these went unnoticed or ignored; occasionally, activists repelled them with stones. Nobody was sure how the situation would develop for those camping in the forest.
\n\nOrganizers announced a third Week of Action for the second week of May 2022. It seemed likely to bring many more people into the movement than the previous weeks of action. In the lead-up, local organizers began to promote a summit with the Muscogee (Creek) communities in Oklahoma. Building on the Stomp Dance ceremony of November 2021, this was a chance to hear from elders, historians, and activists. A local radio station came to broadcast the presentations live on the air. Several preschools attended the summit along with students, faculty, and parents.
\n\nTying together different narratives, ways of understanding, and forms of knowledge has been a strength of the movement from the beginning. Rather than combining efforts in the name of efficiency, different groups perform the same tasks, reproducing similar infrastructures, efforts, and events. Sometimes, this is intentional, sometimes not. This has created resiliency in the movement, ensuring that power is distributed across many people and projects rather than aggregating in a few hands. When one group burns out, faces repression, loses steam, or slows down, other sections of the movement pick up the slack. The different attitudes, aesthetics, and styles of organizing that comprise this movement are incommensurable, sometimes even mutually unintelligible, but this has made the movement stronger, like the proverbial many-headed hydra.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/9.jpg\")
A banner describing the relationship of the Muscogee Creek and Cherokee peoples to the land.
\nThe third Week of Action marked the threshold between one phase and another—no less than when the Atlanta City Council had passed the Cop City ordinance at an earlier decisive moment in fall 2021.
\n\nStarting on May 8, 2022, hundreds of people poured into the forest: anarchists, environmentalists, abolitionists, and other direct action-oriented groups bringing tents, hammocks, sleeping bags, and food. Some arrived prepared to operate a field kitchen. Small encampments emerged everywhere, some adopting names for themselves. Clusters of tents and canopies appeared in a patchwork on both sides of the South River—some organized by affinity group, others by chance. It is difficult to take a head count in the forest, as the opponents of the movement have probably also noticed. The kitchen crews estimated that a minimum of 200 people were sleeping in the forest at night; on some days, considerably more people joined the occupation.
\n\nThe forest remained family-friendly; kids were present in the forest every day of the week, receiving guided tours, making art, or directing their own time under the care of community members. But this was not your standard protest encampment. Many of the participants wore balaclavas. They arrived prepared to take direct action against the Police Foundation and its affiliates, aiming to shift the balance of power.
\n\nOn the first day of the Week of Action, May 9, forest defenders awoke to the sound of falling trees. At the behest of Ryan Millsap, a small construction crew and a group of Dekalb County Sheriffs working as private security were making their way into the tree line from the Radio Control (“RC”) club on the southeast side of Intrenchment Creek Park. A number of determined people responded immediately, repelling the bulldozers with a few stones before linking arms and chanting “move back” in unison at the police officers further afield. One courageous person approached an officer and explained to him that the construction crew was engaging in illegal activity. Later, Dekalb County issued a “Stop Work” order, ostensibly following a flurry of calls by lawyers and neighborhood groups tipping them off about the illegal work.
\n\nIn the following days, amid assemblies, workshops, shared meals, mushroom walks, and informal socializing, those gathered for the week of action endeavored to make the Weelaunee Forest into a cop-free zone. Whenever officers approached the area, venturing into the parking lot or parking their vehicles nearby, activists confronted them. In some instances, several dozen people descended from multiple sides of the forest, rushing police vehicles, slashing tires, smashing windows, throwing rocks.
\n\nNo one was arrested or injured in these confrontations. They did not disproportionately shape the atmosphere in the forest, either. There was plenty of space in which anyone with objections to or concerns about this kind of action could be confident that they would not be caught in a confrontation. The third Week of Action created a space in which people of many different temperaments and strategies could coexist.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/10.jpg\")
\nAt the same time, actions targeting the bureaucrats and executives overseeing the destruction of the forest began in earnest. These actions highlighted the forces responsible for Cop City. They are driven by abstractions, victims of a competitive system pitting humanity against all living things. But they are also human beings.
\n\nOn May 9, several dozen people marched to the suburban home of Shepherd Long, the CEO of Long Engineering, a subsidiary of Atlas Technical Consultants and a subcontractor of Brasfield & Gorrie. This was the first of several such actions during the Third Week of Action.
\n\nOn May 11, a small crowd gathered outside the suburban home of Keith Johnson, regional President of Brasfield & Gorrie. Protesters scaled the fence and banged on drums early in the morning, chanting “Drop the contract!” Johnson is invested with the authority to make decisions for Brasfield & Gorrie—and he is compensated handsomely for this responsibility, judging by the size and location of his multi-house estate.
\n\nBrasfield & Gorrie is one of the largest construction general contractors in the Southeast. They are based out of Birmingham, Alabama, but they have offices throughout the Southeast, including one in the northwest periphery of Atlanta, next to the Atlanta Braves stadium, in a district known as “The Battery.” This part of the city, a pseudo-neighborhood recently invented by developers, offers a farcical imitation of urban life. Fast food restaurants, luxury condominiums, corporate hotels, and gas stations fill the area, punctuated by parking lots and storage units. There had never been a protest there, not even in 2020 during the George Floyd rebellion.
\n\nOn May 12, around 80 people in hoodies and camouflage descended on the Brasfield & Gorrie regional office in The Battery. Demonstrators chanted “Stop Cop City” while some in the crowd painted graffiti and shot fireworks at the façade of the building. After breaching the lawn of the facility, a few determined people began throwing paint balloons and stones at the building, cracking the plate glass windows. Others continued lobbing fireworks. After several minutes, the crowd dispersed into the surrounding streets.
\n\nWithin a few minutes, police cars encircled the area, pulling over cars and snatching pedestrians off the street. Some people were detained in nearby strip malls and gas stations. In the hours that followed, Cobb County police harassed and intimidated anyone wearing black or “alternative” clothing. By the end of the day, police had arrested five people they claim participated in the action against Brasfield & Gorrie. All were charged with felonies including “Rioting” and “Criminal Damage to Property.” At the time, this was the most serious repression the movement had faced. News coverage of the demonstration spread within left-wing “infospheres” and algorithmically constructed “echo chambers.” In the press release that followed, Brasfield & Gorrie confirmed for the first time what activists had already known: they were participating in the construction of Cop City.
\n\nThe following morning, in the very early hours, several people in white coveralls vandalized the Brasfield & Gorrie corporate headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama. Video released by the company showed the group painting slogans, throwing rocks, and using blunt objects to smash glass doors and windows. News of this action reached the encampment in Atlanta many hours later, when an online claim of responsibility was read aloud to a large crowd around a campfire—offsetting the demoralization some may have felt after the arrests at the Atlanta office.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/16.jpg\")
Footage from the demonstration at Brasfield & Gorrie corporate headquarters, courtesy of Unicorn Riot.
\nThe situation developing in the forest was uncontrollable—and the government knew it. In light of the vandalism, news coverage and internet commentary opposed to the movement began to conjure an image of militancy out of a Hollywood movie. According to this false narrative, the movement was comprised of hardline extremists from other parts of the country. Looking at a beautiful, rambunctious cultural zone teeming with creativity and mutual support, the government described only terror and chaos. In painting this picture, opponents of the movement hoped to prepare the public to support a crackdown.
\n\nRather than reinforcing this caricature of militancy and thus contributing indirectly to the repressive strategy of the local government, the events of May 14—the final day of the third Week of Action—directly contradicted it. This was no ruse: this is in fact a popular movement with widespread cultural and civic support, and the end of the Week of Action was a good time to showcase that.
\n\nIn the early afternoon, over 100 residents marched in East Atlanta Village, chiefly pre-school children with their parents and teachers. Many children took the megaphone to express themselves. They comprehended the political stakes of the struggle more clearly than its critics: they did not want the forest to be destroyed because they were worried about their futures; they did not want the police to be given control over a large portion of the city because they didn’t want to see more violence-producing infrastructure. There were many photographs of this march, but local media outlets did not circulate them, and likely none appear in the Bureau of Investigations slide-show presentations about the movement. Similarly, some segments of the movement have inadvertently participated in the censorship of the schoolchildren by focusing only on militant actions or the progress of the lawsuits, to the detriment of a coherent analysis of the movement as a whole.
\n\nA few hours after this march, around 4 pm, another group of over 200 people met in Freedom Park near Little 5 Points. With many participants holding small branches and plants, reminiscent of the soldiers at the conclusion of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, they set off behind banners and drums into the surrounding neighborhoods. Aside from blocking traffic and setting off a few fireworks, those gathered seemed more interested in communicating with the public then engaging in direct action or clashing with police. The atmosphere was jubilant, and countless motorists and local residents stopped to applaud. After an hour, the crowd began dispersing in Inman Park, off Euclid Avenue. Helicopters were circling overhead. Police cruisers were racing up and down all of the surrounding streets. Were the police foolhardy enough to fall into the trap?
\n\nAfter the protest dispersed, frustrated cops sprinted from their vehicles, pouring into the park and shopping district from every side. This was not the fire-breathing mob they had convinced themselves would be laying siege to the area. Still, they were not able to alter their plans. The cultural composition of the protesters matched the bohemian aesthetics of the majority of the pedestrians, residents, and shoppers in the area, rendering it impossible to distinguish between supporters of the movement and people leaving the second-hand clothing shops or health food stores on nearby streets. News cameras filmed neighbors screaming at officers from their lawns. Multiple people were tackled and beaten by officers for their alleged participation in the protest. One journalist was tazed. In the end, 17 people were arrested and charged with “pedestrian in a roadway.”
\n\nFrom one perspective, the protest was a disaster. The crowd was not ready to engage the police in a physical confrontation. On the other hand, it altered the media narrative and the public perception of the movement in favor of the protesters. It is rare to see such a shift shortly after masked activists smash windows and vandalize a corporate headquarters. Instead of a mad clique of violent extremists, the movement could be seen for what it really was: a popular struggle facing reckless hostility from local authorities. The real art of subversion cannot be reduced to illegal activity or physical resistance. Rather, it is a question of turning systems of control upside down, cultivating a situation in which self-directed activity can flourish contagiously.
\n\nWithin a few days, all the charges against the 17 arrestees had been dropped. The accused now stand to take home thousands of dollars apiece in restitution for their wrongful arrests. This protest was not planned to produce that outcome, but if it had been, it would have been astute.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/18.jpg\")
The forest.
\nAfter the third Week of Action, many expected police to seek revenge. The easiest way to respond would be to attack the encampments in the forest. Although the media coverage that Atlanta police had received for their excesses in Little 5 Points had shifted public attitudes, it probably did not substantially alter the eagerness of law enforcement agencies to use force. Since today’s media landscape tends to show consumers only what they already believe, it is likely that law enforcement and their allies only saw coverage confirming their own perspectives.
\n\nOn May 17, the frustration and bitterness of the police, which had accumulated for a week, was unleashed on those living in the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. In the early morning, dozens of police vehicles, helicopters, and drones encircled the forest. Atlanta Police Department, Dekalb County Sheriffs, the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Natural Resources, the Atlanta Bomb Squad, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and possibly other agencies mobilized their forces and prepared to raid.
\n\nPolice entered the forest around 10 am from Key Road. Most officers were wearing helmets or other forms of protective gear; some sported camouflage and masks. The agents and officers involved in the operation immediately set about destroying food, shelters, and protest infrastructure. One officer used a sledgehammer to smash a generator. Others worked with arborists to destroy unused tree houses or sat beneath the occupied tree sits threatening to do violence to the activists above them.
\n\nMeanwhile, other activists engaged in proportional responses to the police operation. An abandoned truck caught fire, as did barricades made of wood and unused tires. Small groups and individuals engaged in hit-and-run actions. While the police employed state-of-the-art equipment, armor, and weaponry, forest defenders used rudimentary structures, ragged hoodies, sticks, stones, and fireworks. On more than one occasion, forest defenders used Molotov cocktails to prevent further police incursions, presumably seeking to prevent the invaders from doing serious harm to the defenseless activists who were occupying the trees. Those devices were only used in clearings where the results could be easily predicted. Pro-police advocates spent many months making a fuss about a few improvised bottles of flammable liquid. Surely, the police would not prefer to face the flash balls, tear gas, pepper spray, heat-seeking helicopters, and K9 units that they have routinely used against forest defenders.
\n\nPolice discuss using deadling force against protesters in the forest in May 2022.
\nAfter several hours, police began to withdraw from the area. On the other side of the forest, Dekalb County police officers entered Intrenchment Creek Park and arrested the first eight people they encountered, charging them all with “Tresspassing” in a park in broad daylight. These parkgoers may or may not have been participants in the movement, but they almost certainly were not the same people engaged in defense at the Prison Farm on the other side of the river, nearly a mile away.
\n\nPrecision was not the point, however. These arrests were an essential component of the policing strategy. To this day, news reports claim “eight protesters were arrested after activists threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police,” strongly implying that the arrestees were themselves charged with taking such actions. In fact, no one engaged in combative protest tactics was arrested in the course of the raid. In the end, despite the damage to camp infrastructure, the raid was a failure.
\n\nWithout the defensive actions that had taken place in the forest, including rock-throwing and other forms of direct action, it is possible that those living in tree houses or tents would have suffered significant injuries, or that the forest itself would have fallen into the hands of the police. Other interventions took place that day, as well. While the confrontation in the forest was still ongoing, a network of activists and organizations sent out a press release announcing a press conference at 4 pm.
\n\nThe police operation ended upon the arrival of movement supporters and corporate media at the edge of the forest. The speakers denounced the police operation, but they did not confine themselves to commenting on repression. In front of the news cameras, they focused the assembled crowd on the need for direct resistance, on the stakes of the struggle against climate chaos, racism, gentrification, and colonialism. Footage of the statements played on television news in the metro area, which is usually the sole domain of reactionaries and police spokespeople—who were mostly silent about the movement for several months afterwards.
\n\nThis was a direct inversion of the usual media landscape. Opting for silence and obscurity did not help the police, just as it has rarely helped subversive movements in the past.
\n\nNowadays, it is unusual for anarchists or other aspiring revolutionaries to address the corporate media. Over the past several decades, radicals have developed many theories about the role of corporate news organizations, the effects of mass communication on the popular imagination, and the consequences for movements that consent to be represented. Informed by these analyses, many people have developed alternative and underground media projects including websites, journals, zines, and podcasts to circumvent censorship and address audiences on a more horizontal basis. Though mass struggles have erupted year after year, those on the front lines have usually opted not to try to explain themselves to the hundreds of millions of people who learn about the world chiefly through the corporate radio, newspapers, magazines, and televisions.
\n\nThe experience of revolt itself can transform the consciousness of those who participate in it, shifting their vantage point on reality. But actions are not enough when a society is as filled with false narratives as ours is. As long as the most ambitious and courageous participants in these struggles are not able to address people on their own behalf, bureaucrats, liberals, reformers, and academics have a free hand to misrepresent them. Often, this means portraying them as foot soldiers for other groups who are willing to explain the situation to mass audiences according to their own politics.
\n\nHoping to break this pattern, the movement to defend the forest has taken on addressing corporate media as one of its core activities.
\n\nSome people know this movement as Defend the Atlanta Forest, others as Stop Cop City. Both of these slogans describe more or less the same constellation of groups, tactics, goals, and woodlands, but they speak to slightly different demographics. Understood as a whole, the movement operates a sophisticated social media infrastructure including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Mastodon, TikTok, and Telegram, as well as websites, media kits, and publicly-listed emails. These platforms ensure that the movement can communicate with those who already support it and perhaps with those immediately adjacent to them.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/defendATLforest/status/1627058976784535553\n\n\n
When journalists contact one of the movement’s platforms, activists coordinate to ensure that someone within the movement can engage with them. It is usually proponents of radical social change who assume this responsibility, including abolitionists, Black autonomists, anarchists, or other aspiring revolutionaries. Rather than presenting themselves as leaders or spokespeople, activists answer journalists’ questions, give them walking tours, offer them information packets, provide them with research, and supply them with insider perspectives, leads, images, quotes, and narratives suitable for their assignments. This work is unpaid and largely invisible to media consumers.
\n\nAll of the most accessible sources and platforms associated with the movement have refused to denounce direct action or radical politics. While different platforms present their own perspectives in a variety of different tones, none of them have veered so far away from the others as to offer the news outlets rifts to exploit. During interviews and press conferences, commenters from the movement speak in clear and concise sentences. Ideally, every single sentence should stand on its own as a soundbite, so that it is impossible for an editor to mutilate them. When journalists ask questions about complicated or unexpected topics, activists do not hesitate to say simply “I don’t know about that right now, but maybe we can follow up later.”
\n\nJournalists do not expect everyone to know everything, but they want other people to do as much of their jobs for them as possible. As long as participants in the movement are willing to hold their hands throughout the process, writers or photographers will often offer them sympathetic coverage. If radicals do not take on this time-consuming work, liberal organizations will take it up in pursuit of their own agendas. If the stories are not coherent or interesting or timely enough, news agencies will go with pro-police rhetoric or else invent false stories from whole cloth.
\n\nBecause corporate media coverage is the primary means by which the authorities prepare popular opinion to accept the repression of protesters and poor people, it can be dangerous not to intervene in it. Movements should never gratuitously portray themselves as more powerful or destructive than they actually are; it is much better to be underestimated than to give your adversaries an opportunity to mobilize others against you. Likewise, they should not miss any opportunity to humanize the participants and frame the narrative themselves.
\n\nAt the same time, doing so involves a host of challenges.
\n\nIt can be tempting, for instance, for media spokespeople to water down their messaging so that it appeals to the broadest possible audience. However, this will not prepare audiences to understand the tactics or priorities of the movement, nor the stakes for which they are fighting. The most important thing is not to generate favorable coverage so much as to structure the popular perception of the movement, setting the terms of debate.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/12.jpg\")
\nIf participants in combative movements are unwilling to appear in the press under their legal names or at least with their faces visible for fear of state and vigilante violence, corporate outlets will usually not work with them. The risks are real enough; indeed, even liberal leaders who denounce radical tactics may still be targeted by far-right trolls and police who associate them with a fierce movement. Fortunately, 21st century social media outlets have given grassroots activists some leverage against this form of corporate censorship by breaking down some barriers to mass communication. If editors fear that they will miss a chance to generate revenue by refusing to ease their policies regarding anonymity, they will sometimes make exceptions, even platforming balaclava-clad demonstrators if the latter can credibly present themselves as participants in powerful movements. More often than not, however, news outlets will simply move on to covering other stories.
\n\nAmbitious movements should seek to maintain a full-spectrum media interface. They should be prepared to work off the record with sympathetic journalists and documentary filmmakers, to operate round-the-clock social media strategies, to have some participants available who are willing to show their faces, others who are willing to air their voices, and more who are willing to answer written interviews. For the sake of reciprocity, anti-capitalist, abolitionist, and anarchist groups should not needlessly criticize more moderate groups.
\n\nSome might object that all of this energy is better invested in other tasks. Surely, there are more pressing issues than the way that the movement is perceived by those who are not even taking part in it. Often, it is career-oriented opportunists who end up handling media operations. This leaves front-line participants at the margins of public attention, rendering it almost inevitable that they will have to invest countless hours and sleepless nights struggling to unmask or outmaneuver self-defeating and divisive reformist perspectives. In the end, it can be more time-efficient to start out with a proper media strategy than to play catch-up late in the game.
\n\nIn the movement to defend the forest, activists in local and national press openly support direct action, encourage diverse participation, and advocate for radical social change in clear language, without hyperbole. In this case, it is the careerists who are left complaining about “imbalanced” coverage. When journalists ask leading questions, attempting to goad activists into denouncing each other, this is almost always rejected outright.
\n\nThere have been exceptions. One participant stupefyingly denounced the movement as “more disappointing than Cop City itself”—surely music to the ears of the APF. Such critics often frame politics via spatial metaphors, describing coherent identities and boundaries between inside and outside. Rather than contributing freely in a field of open play, some rush to associate themselves with or dissociate themselves from specific tendencies or perceived factions, while others watch from the sidelines, passing judgment or waiting for instructions.
\n\nThe urge to denounce the struggle seems to grip some people especially tightly during moments of brutal repression. Some people even posted cynical “I told you so” criticisms after the killing of Tortuguita. At the same time, these people do not hesitate to associate themselves with the movement when it provides them social capital. Despite individual smear campaigns like these, however, corporate media and law enforcement have failed to foster rival factions to pit against one another.
\n\nIf movements cannot tolerate differences among their participants, they must be able to address them internally, directly or through mediators. If that is not possible, the conflicting tendencies or groups should ignore each other. Clarity about differences is important, but drawn-out conflicts between rival camps almost always benefit the authorities most of all. The more divisions in a movement, the more emboldened the authorities will be to target the most effective currents within it; when rivals post on social media about each other’s errors or vulnerabilities, this can assist the authorities in strategizing or building a narrative to justify repression. Often such conflicts needlessly polarize entire movements, as everyone is compelled to take sides; many ideologies justify this kind of behavior, to everyone’s misfortune. Unfortunately, contemporary social media platforms often incentivize this sort of conduct.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/8.jpg\")
A forest defender.
\nAcross the country, at least twenty acts of direct action followed the police raid of May 2022. With morale high after the third Week of Action, movement participants outside Atlanta were determined to preserve the initiative. Cultivating winning strategies is not simply a question of using the right tactics, nor of accumulating actions against a target. Rather, the strategy of targeting the logistics of the development on a decentralized basis has succeeded because it is empowering: it has enabled many people to participate in the movement on their own terms. At the same time, the whirlwind of different events and tactics has confused the Police Foundation, their bureaucratic supporters, and their contractors.
\n\nMorale is a crucial factor in struggle. Those who believe that they will win are more likely to win. They are more likely to respond urgently to attacks, to be prepared to make sacrifices, to confront problems rather than avoiding them. Oddly, in US-based autonomous movements, many of the most intelligent participants often embrace cynicism about the movements they participate in and the ideas they espouse. In doing so, they shrug off the responsibility to formulate effective plans, to test new hypotheses, to foster strong and diverse movements. Pessimism and ironic detachment serve to excuse them from convincing people, working well with others, or carrying out courageous deeds.
\n\nAt demonstrations, press conferences, and assemblies, in written statements, participants in the movement to defend the forest regularly exhibit an attitude of confidence. Stating that they intend to win this fight is not arrogant—it is a decision driven by real conviction. That conviction emerges from something greater than individual will.
\n\nSeveral activists had established tree houses (“tree sits”) in the forest beginning on January 19, 2022. This was one of several interventions during a difficult period for the movement. At that time, Reeves+Young was still the general contractor for the Police Foundation. Their subcontractor, Long Engineering, was conducting surveying efforts and soil sampling excursions and activists were confused about how to stop them. Four months later, in May 2022, the situation had changed completely.
\n\nComing out of the third Week of Action, movement groups dedicated to on-site resistance needed to innovate their form of struggle. If the news media continued broadcasting footage of hooded people throwing Molotov cocktails, that could embolden the police to utilize levels of force that few were prepared to resist. The tree sits made it possible to reframe the narrative.
\n\nAt least half a dozen treehouses were constructed on the Old Atlanta Prison Farm and a section of Intrenchment Creek Park in late May 2022. The residents and architects gave them names and decorated them according to their tastes; some tree houses co-existed with adjacent ground camps. In the weeks following the raid, activists living in these tree houses drafted statements, gave interviews to the press, and took photographs documenting their determination. By June, the majority of news coverage—including in national press such as The New Yorker—had shifted to an almost anthropological interest in the exotic, romantic tree sitters.
\n\nThe strategy of those who were seeking to destroy the forest also changed, though this took longer. At first, it did not seem clear to the authorities that the raid of May 17 had failed. This only became evident when contractors with Long Engineering entered the forest near Constitution and Old Constitution Road on June 2. The construction crew arrived with a piece of tree-felling machinery, but without sufficient police detail; about ten activists easily repelled them. Aside from yelling and waving their arms, a few of these forest defenders tossed firecrackers in the direction of the work crews in order to get their attention. Work was canceled for the day.
\n\nFor the next six months, no work took place inside the perimeter of the forest without considerable police protection.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/25.jpg\")
A tree house in the forest.
\nThis was the beginning of a spiral of paranoia for the police agencies. On June 6, 2022, a convoy of police officers accompanied a work crew on Key Road. Workers with Boyette Brothers Construction Rental were knocking down trees at the side of the road. This was intended to be a part of the pre-construction phase of development that was meant to include the erection of an 8-foot security fence. Protesters approached the forest destroyers unarmed. Blowing whistles and waving their arms, forest defenders sought to enter the vicinity of work crews in a fashion likely to induce them to halt work. Without hesitating, police officers drew their weapons and pointed them directly at the protesters. Withdrawing into the woods, forest defenders managed to save their own lives, but they were not able to halt the destruction. By the end of the day, the workers had felled dozens of trees.
\n\nLater that evening, however, the machines they had used to destroy the trees were in ruins. An anonymous online communiqué stated that the company had been identified and their facilities located in Conyers, GA. The greater part of their fleet was vandalized, some of it burned. The online statement read “If you build it, we will burn it.”
\n\nOn June 10, a few days later, the Dekalb County Government posted a “Stop Work” order at the entry gate to the Old Prison Farm, likely because of phone calls to various departments and commissions. Evidently, the aforementioned work had been undertaken without the proper permits, which still had not been approved by the county government. After the sabotage and Stop Work order, not a single day of “pre-construction” work was attempted for nearly five months on the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. Other potential subcontractors who normally work for Brasfield & Gorrie may have been unwilling to bid on this contract in light of what took place at Boyette Brothers Rental.
\n\nThroughout the summer, initiatives to defend the forest continued to occur across the country. Acts of civil disobedience occurred at a Brasfield & Gorrie office in Charlotte, North Carolina. Protesters distributed fliers at the homes, neighborhoods, and churches of executives associated with the project. There were also acts of sabotage and vandalism at the offices of subcontractors. Every week, there seemed to be new statements and news articles.
\n\nNew constellations and groups emerged within the movement during this time. The group of teachers, preschool students, and associated organizers who had organized the march in May continued to host walks, community events, and gardening days that brought children to the forest. Their participation as an organized group—the Weelaunee Coalition—enabled supporters with children to participate in the movement without having to commit to risky actions or find childcare for their kids. Such groups are not auxiliary forces that serve only to tidy up the movement’s reputation. They preserve their own strategic autonomy and discourse, engaging as all the other participants do, shaping the movement and taking responsibility for it in their own ways.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/32.jpg\")
One of the trees in the forest.
\nPolitical strategy develops as contending forces act and react to one another in a creative circuit, each identifying weaknesses in the opposing strategy and exploiting it. Strategies that solve one problem often produce another.
\n\nThroughout June and July and continuing well into fall, police began carrying out ritualistic “sweeps” of the forest, specifically the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. These sweeps typically involved five to twenty officers from the Atlanta Police Department. Because they were operating outside of their jurisdiction and were therefore unable to perform arrests, these interventions were chiefly symbolic. On Tuesday mornings and sometimes Wednesdays or Fridays as well, officers would enter the so-called “North Gate” on Key Road. They would assemble for an hour or so before boarding Utility Task Vehicles (UTVs) or All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs).
\n\nGuessing that these sweeps were chiefly symbolic, activists refused to engage police during them. Hiding, running, climbing into tree houses, or otherwise remaining distant from officers became the defenders’ primary response, while the cops engaged in slashing tents, dumping out food, stealing water, and loitering. During this period, police agencies were being lured, consciously or not, into fruitless entanglements in the forest. With the activists obstructing their efforts, they could not move forward on the project, but they also could not find the well-hidden forest defenders.
\n\nThe higher-ups received updates to the effect that protesters had abandoned the zone, which they passed along to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Apparently, the APF spread this misinformation to the Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee (CSAC), an organization contrived by the Atlanta Police Foundation and their advocates for the purpose of rubber-stamping Cop City under the pretense of democratic feedback.
\n\nTwo people, Sharon Williams and Allison Clark, began to use CSAC as a platform to spread increasingly paranoid and far-fetched myths to the media. They were among the very first to denounce activists as “eco-terrorists.” As popular opinion turned against Cop City, the opinions of CSAC became more important to the project, as it was the only public group willing to stand in front of news cameras to defend it.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/UR_Ninja/status/1623150549066711040\n\n\n
Local groups announced the fourth Week of Action for the end of July. With such short time since the last Week of Action, it wasn’t clear what they could organize on a large scale. On the other hand, a construction timeline released by the Police Foundation expressed their intention to begin “Clearing and Grading”—a euphemism for felling trees and disturbing the land—before the end of summer. If the third Week of Action had essentially been an exercise in mass convergence and direct action, the next one would have to be something else entirely.
\n\nNew ideas rarely arise from politics; they are merely translated into it. Innovations in thinking and language do not emerge from reflection and conversation alone. Just as some professional athletes take dance classes in the off season, rebels and aspiring revolutionaries have long drawn inspiration from literature, poetry, art, and music—perhaps the only form of human activity that immanently channels the shared vibrancy and intensity common to all beings and systems in the cosmos.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/defendATLforest/status/1627906812887412736\n\n\n
Black liberation movements have always had a generative relationship with Black music. This relationship nourishes the struggle, helping to transmit cultural and political knowledge, lessons, and awareness. Music plays a similarly important role in many Indigenous struggles. By contrast, some predominantly white movements do not ascribe a comparable role to music and art. Some participants attempt to compensate with militant fantasies, or uncritically consume cultural innovations without understanding what is powerful about them. Some activists may even cynically conceal themselves in cultural circles, biding their time until the “real” action can begin.
\n\nHappily, the movement to defend Weelaunee is not one of those movements. This struggle constantly replenishes its connection to music, arts communities, and cultural events. It would be difficult to overstate the impact this has had on the longevity and creativity of the forest defense, both in the woods, downtown, and around the region.
\n\nWhen the fourth Week of Action was announced, an autonomous organizing group declared that they would be coordinating a free music festival in the forest. Within a few days, a local folk artist popular with alternative Black youth announced his intention to organize one as well. Artists and musicians began reaching out. Soon, full lineups were assembled including performers from the regional dance, indie, folk, hip hop, and hardcore punk music scenes. Other people announced additional workshops and actions. Music journalists began reaching out to local organizers, expressing the desire to camp out with the protesters and attend the music events.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/13.jpg\")
Weelaunee People’s Park after the ribbon-cutting ceremony of July 23, 2022.
\nIn the days leading up to the Week of Action slated to begin on July 23, Ryan Millsap of Blackhall Studios began to work with Dekalb police to block access to Intrenchment Creek Park. Over the previous weeks, Blackhall Studios had been renamed Shadowbox Studios following its acquisition by Commonwealth Asset Management, an investment firm that Millsap sits on the board of. Millsap believed that this sale nullified his agreements with the Dekalb County government to develop a nearby clear-cut (which he had already destroyed) into “Michelle Obama Park” in return for building a soundstage complex. Via this ruse, he hoped to legally steal about 40 acres located in and around the Intrenchment Creek Park trailhead, including a section of the PATH Foundation bicycle and walking trail, the RC Field, and some of the forest.
\n\nOngoing lawsuits coordinated by activists with the South River Watershed Alliance were one of the only things preventing this land grab from moving forward. According to the terms of the lawsuit, the forest was not to be substantially disturbed and the park was to remain accessible to the public until the case was resolved in court. While those pursuing the lawsuit and related efforts to arrive at courtroom solutions were operating at a distance from the rest of the movement, most of the activists occupying the forest or pressuring contractors considered these strategies to be legitimate means of defending the land.
\n\nThe City of Atlanta government had adopted “The South River Forest Vision,” the vision of the Watershed Alliance, as the official purpose for this land before shifting to the Cop City proposal after the George Floyd rebellion. The teams working on the lawsuits serve the forest as a defensive bulwark, exemplified by the Stop Work order of June 10, but they also constitute one of the offensive fronts of the struggle. If the movement wins, that will likely manifest itself as a decision in the courts.
\n\nOn July 19, Ryan Millsap violated the agreement to keep the park accessible to the public. This was hardly the only time he did so. Legal defense is an important part of a holistic strategy, but it will not suffice to prevent the destruction of the land.
\n\nLate on the afternoon of July 19, contractors accompanied by Dekalb County Sheriffs erected concrete barriers in the driveway of Intrenchment Creek Park Trailhead, blocking access to the parking lot. Presumably, Millsap believed that this would keep people out of the park during the Week of Action. With hundreds of people preparing to camp in the forest and bands expecting to play there, it seemed urgent to remove the barriers and reorient around this section of the forest for the time being, since pre-construction efforts in the Prison Farm had come to a halt.
\n\nOn the night of July 21, a group calling themselves “100 Cute Little Ants” moved the heavy barriers to the side, opening enough space for one or two cars to enter at a time. The new placement of the barriers allowed civilians to enter with ease, but made it difficult to operate large machinery or vehicles in the small entranceway facing West Side Place. People redecorated the gray barriers with pink paint and slogans.
\n\nThe Week of Action launched on July 23 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that drew over 100 people. A lovely official-looking sign was planted in the ground reading “Weelaunee People’s Park” on one side and “South River Forest Park” on the other. After cutting the ribbon, the assembled crowd chanted “People’s park, people’s park!” while cars and equipment began loading in. By afternoon, hundreds of people filled the area.
\n\nWhile parkgoers and forest defenders set up camps and listened to the first live performances, others organized home demonstrations. Beginning on July 25, protesters visited the homes of various Brasfield & Gorrie executives, chanting and holding banners. Police response to these demonstrations escalated over the course of the week, creating an atmosphere of danger at what were in fact legal protests.
\n\nOn the other side of the forest, a surveillance technology startup named Flock Safety began to install security cameras on small towers. On July 25, two days into the Week of Action, a group of forest defenders confronted a work truck associated with Flock Safety. The worker inside had just installed a new surveillance camera on Key Road. Activists chased off the truck by throwing gravel at it, breaking one of its windows, and dismantled the new camera. This action in which no one was injured contributed to the spiraling paranoia of law enforcement.
\n\nOver the following days, Sharon Williams and Allison Clark of the Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee (CSAC) worked with bureaucrats in the police department to spread the falsehood that activists had fired a gun at the Flock Safety worker. The only “evidence” they offered was a random bullet casing on the side of the road. Enterprising community members placed fliers refuting this claim in mailboxes throughout the surrounding neighborhood.
\n\nOrdinary police officers are not immune to police propaganda. To this day, many of them still believe that forest defenders shot at a construction worker. Right-wing trolls and the local District Attorney repeated this lie at every opportunity. Thanks to this lie publicized by Williams and Clark, the temperature increased.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/28.jpg\")
A banner in the gazebo at Weelaunee People’s Park.
\nThe music festival began on July 28. The promotional materials promised three days of “Peace, Love, and Anarchy.” Musicians performed on a makeshift stage beneath tarps strung between poles and trees. The sound system was powered by generators. Attendees could help themselves to pamphlets and other informational materials as well as clothes, water, and food.
\n\nOver the first two days, hundreds of people passed through the area, listening to the music pulsing through a small clearing in the pines. Tents and small encampments popped up everywhere. The crowd was diverse by any measure, bringing together people from different ethnic backgrounds; the styles of music were not segmented into distinct days or blocs, but flowed in and out of each other exclusively according to the principle of starting slowly and picking up steam. Together, the attendees created a transformative experience, far from the corporate venues and controlled musical experiences most were used to.
\n\nOn July 30, the final day of the Week of Action, campers woke up to shouting: “They are going to tow your car! Everybody wake up! A tow truck is here! Get to the parking lot!”
\n\nAround 8 am, Ryan Millsap and a colleague of his arrived at Weelaunee People’s Park with a tow truck pulling an excavator atop a flatbed trailer, accompanied by a small cohort of Dekalb County police he had hired as private security. In Georgia, you can legally hire off-duty police, who are permitted to bring their service weapons, uniforms, and city-owned vehicles with them while fulfilling a private contract. This is unusual in other parts of the Global North, but common enough elsewhere in the Americas.
\n\nMillsap did not venture far from his car, but his colleague, Anthony Wayne James, approached forest defenders who were seated beneath a gazebo in the middle of the parking lot. James began using the excavator to hit the roof of the gazebo, despite the potentially lethal risk that this posed to those beneath it. At this point, the cops-for-hire intervened, notifying James that it was not acceptable for him to attempt to risk killing people in front of them. Frustrated, he began screaming at them to arrest people: “Do your jobs!”
\n\nIn a few minutes, more people began arriving from the tree line, most of them wearing masks and hoodies. One person addressed the crowd, now consisting of perhaps 40 people: “Are we going to do something or are we going to just stand here?” Promptly, this person pulled a hammer from their waistline and began smashing the windows of Millsap’s pickup truck. At the sight of the vandalism, the police faltered. A light hail of stones and beverage cans began to fall upon James, Millsap, and the Dekalb Police, all of whom rushed back to the street.
\n\nSome people continued to destroy the truck, while others assembled piles of rocks anticipating additional confrontation. The concrete barricade which had been constructed on Millsap’s orders some days earlier was now used to close off the parking lot; others added tires and wooden pallets. More police vehicles attempted to approach; these, too, were pelted with stones. Millsap, cowering behind officers in a blind rage, was screaming epithets at the crowd: “Go buy your own park! Stop being homeless!”
\n\nHalf an hour later, his truck was in pieces. The catalytic converter was removed, the interior was stripped, the engine was destroyed. After an hour or more of calm, it became clear the police were not going to return. The crowd, which had grown to about 100, slowly dispersed back into the forest or returned to town. Activists listened to presentations or prepared for the final night of music.
\n\nEventually, after everyone had dispersed from the parking lot, someone set the truck on fire. The smoke billowed above the tree line. The park is across the street from a fire station, and a fire truck doused the truck from the street. Some feared that the sight of the charred truck might deter people from attending the workshops or music events, which were intended to draw locals to the forest who had no prior experience in movements of this nature and who might already have been cautious about participating.
\n\n“We don’t know what will happen,” one long-term forest occupant enjoined others. “Let’s see. Let’s not freak out.”
\n\nIn the end, that person was right. The truck became a monument to the fortitude and courage of the movement. People did not hesitate to attend the presentations that historians and academics offered that day.
\n\nBy nightfall, hundreds of concert-goers were pouring into the park for the festival’s final evening. Many of them took pictures with the remains of the truck or decorated it with graffiti. As the show picked up momentum, a joyous throng moshed as a series of hardcore punk bands took the stage. Then they were swaying and bouncing to the sound of post-punk indie rockers, then gyrating to the disco-influenced beats and repetitive thumping of the late-night DJs. Midway through the night, it began to rain. The tarps covered all who wished to stay dry, but some chose to soak themselves in the water descending through the tree canopy above.
\n\nBetween sets, people read aloud from fliers and handbills. Some performers led chants of “Stop cop city!” and “Defend the forest!” Organizers repeatedly took the microphone to explain the movement’s goals, emphasizing its autonomous and decentralized nature, enjoining everyone assembled to take personal responsibility for giving life to it.
\n\nMany concert-goers affirmed that this was one of the greatest experiences of their lives.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/14.jpg\")
“Go buy your own park!” business mogul Ryan Millsap shouted at forest defenders. Afterwards, his truck bore these slogans.
\nMany participants in the movement, especially those who lived in the encampments, expected the fourth Week of Action to be followed by a massive raid, just as the third one had been. The Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee was spreading lies about the alleged use of firearms against a Flock Safety worker. A feeling of dread dominated some sections of the movement.
\n\nFour days later, on August 3, 2022, a large operation did indeed occur around the forest. On Bouldercrest Road, Key Road, Fayetteville Road, Constitution, and Old Constitution—all of the streets adjacent to the section of forest that was occupied—construction workers and utility companies initiated work, accompanied by police officers and security guards. Some of these workers were doing electrical maintenance; others were working on the plumbing beneath the street, or potholes, sewage maintenance, or other municipal projects in the immediate vicinity of the forest. Georgia Power, the electrical company that is funding the APF, used industrial lawn mowers in a section of Weelaunee People’s Park to create an easement via which they could perform maintenance tasks. Given the chance to destroy a community garden built by pre-school children a week earlier, however, they opted to go around it.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/defendATLforest/status/1554856617778335744\n\n\n
It was hard to tell what was happening. But it was clear what was not happening.
\n\nThe operation was not attacking tree sitters. It was ignoring them. It was not felling trees, nor was it constructing a fence. After weeks of expectation, however, it was hard to not perceive all of this work as connected to some sort of repressive operation in the forest. And perhaps it was. Perhaps the Dekalb County contractors were there on behalf of the APF, or Millsap, or other corporate interests aiming to increase carrying capacity of the roads for the sake of large machinery, or the capacity of the electrical grid for the future Cop City infrastructure. Some of the companies had paper sheets taped over their logos. Was that because they didn’t want to be identified as subcontractors for Brasfield & Gorrie? Or because police had misled them to believe that everyone in the area was in danger of imminent harm at the hands of vicious protesters living in the woods?
\n\nTo this day, we don’t know. Over the following months, the situation remained confusing. Every week, coverage of the movement appeared in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, CNN, Vice, the Intercept, NPR, Fox, MSNBC, the New Yorker, the Washington Post. The movement had reached a new threshold of publicity, almost all of which was favorable.
\n\nAt the same time, what had been an innovative movement seemed to be stabilizing into its simplest and most reproducible elements. Since the deforestation had definitively stalled, it was difficult to identify exactly who was working with Brasfield & Gorrie—though that didn’t stop activists from trying to figure it out. Call-in campaigns, home demonstrations, and other actions continued, especially against Atlas Technical Consultants, the parent company of Long Engineering, which worked under Reeves+Young.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/1.jpg\")
The construction of the pallet house in the forest in fall 2022.
\nBecause it was difficult to gather up-to-date information, activists could not tell whether their strategy was working. Beyond the apparent stalemate in the forest and the persistence of the camps, it was unclear whether pressuring contractors and subcontractors was having an effect. Ironically, this scenario resulted from the victories that defensive groups had achieved on the ground, as well as the Stop Work order for the Prison Farm.
\n\nThe few statements that law enforcement made to the press suggested that everyone was passing the buck: Dekalb Police were deferring responsibility to Atlanta Police, who were deferring to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, who were deferring to the Department of Homeland Security, who were waiting for the CSAC to establish their priorities, who were waiting on reports from police. Because no one was sending workers into the forest and none of the companies were making statements to the press (aside from whistleblowers inside a few companies leaking information to movement researchers), it was impossible to judge the effectiveness of the strategies at play.
\n\nOne consequence of this stalemate was a tendency towards less precisely targeted actions. Some people even advocated this. Aside from the regular sabotage of Flock Safety cameras in the area, some individuals apparently sought to turn the forest itself—previously a zone of defensive operations—into an offensive front. From September to November, a number of actions occurred targeting infrastructure around the forest, including some incendiary attacks. There is no evidence to suggest that anyone living in the forest was involved in any of these actions, though the police later attributed all the actions to them specifically.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/2.jpg\")
The construction of the pallet house in the forest in fall 2022.
\nOn one occasion, equipment was torched that belonged to Norfolk Southern, a funder of the police foundation (and incidentally, the corporation behind a train derailment and toxic chemical catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio on February 3, 2023). On another occasion, in early November, a man showed up with a flatbed trailer and began antagonizing parkgoers and forest defenders, insisting on his right to remove the burned remains of Millsap’s truck. After a brief altercation, his truck also caught fire. Later, he told the media he had no idea what was happening, and that he was simply the victim of violent crime. On another occasion, an annex building belonging to Shadowbox/Blackhall caught fire. Several pieces of heavy machinery parked in an area near the forest were sabotaged, perhaps in response to information connecting them to the planned developments. Finally, in November, someone sabotaged the electrical powerlines serving the police shooting range located in a section of the forest, disabling the entrance.
\n\nWhile all of this was happening, most segments of the movement seemed inert. The tools that the movement had developed were simple, but they weren’t proliferating. Nature walks and community events were still being organized with the pre-schools; weekly dinners were still taking place in the park, as well as workshops and trainings, rallies and press conferences, concerts and parties. Yet none of these had broken through the imperceptible wall that kept the movement on a plateau.
\n\nOne group of amateur builders constructed an incredible kitchen in the parking lot of Weelaunee People’s Park, dubbing it the “Weelaunee Café.” For weeks, potlucks and meetups took place there. Elsewhere in the forest, a team dedicated themselves to building a visually stunning warming shelter. The movement hardly lacked moral support or passive sympathy.
\n\nStill, no form of large-scale activity emerged in this period. Only the self-directed activity of large numbers of people can mobilize the kind of collective potential that can prevail over structures of authoritarian power. This is the strength that mass uprisings, general strikes, and insurrections are able to bring to bear that activist campaigns are not. The movement had made strides, but it had not broken out of the political isolation that limits so many movements.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/5.jpg\")
The pallet house, constructed in fall 2022 by and for forest defenders.
\nPerhaps specialization contributed to this impasse. Focused groups working tirelessly on particular tasks can accomplish many things. They can operate counter-surveillance teams or maintain camps; they can oversee legal initiatives and attend civic hearings; they can conduct interviews and advise journalists; they can organize meetings or canvassing teams; they can work tirelessly on jail support or legal aid; they can organize benefits and fundraisers…
\n\nBut there are limits to what specialized groups can accomplish. They are often unable to create the sort of expanding participatory momentum that movements need to win. As they become more skilled at their chosen tasks, it can be hard for them to keep the barriers to entry low, to connect newcomers to their own agency. Insofar as the various standard forms of engagement reproduce roles in the movement, this can contribute to a bottleneck, as the majority of enthusiasm comes from people without special skills or connections, who cannot easily integrate themselves into the confusing web of functions let alone arrange for contacts from previous struggles to vouch for their trustworthiness. In all of these ways, specialized groups can unintentionally limit the movements they build, bringing about a de facto form of political containment.
\n\nFollowing the George Floyd rebellion of 2020, it is possible that the most acute tensions within future movements will not emerge around the question of violence (as 20 years ago), nor the identities of the participants (as 10 years ago), but rather, over the tension between specialization and participation. After 2020, we sorely need forms of action and thought that can enable social upheaval to transform people, cultivating new social bodies and organizational forms rather than simply combining what already exists. Only time will tell whether the movement in Atlanta can contribute to these new politics, or if it will only express the terminus of the political intelligence cultivated by the movements of the preceding years.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/3.jpg\")
The construction of the pallet house in the forest in fall 2022.
\nMeanwhile, throughout the fall, the forest destroyers were developing a new media strategy, as the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, the Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee, the Department of Homeland Security, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp got involved.
\n\nAfter the fourth Week of Action, these groups began experimenting with openly criminalizing the movement. Sharon Williams, Allison Clark, and various law enforcement agents began using the phrase “eco-terrorist” in their meetings and press briefings. They worked with local news outlets to spread unfounded stories, like the falsehood about forest defenders shooting a Flock Safety worker. Some of these stories were not just exaggeration, but pure fabrication, including claims that forest defenders were vandalizing homes, mugging people, or stealing cars. Nothing of the sort had occurred. When the scrapper came into the forest to steal the remains of Millsap’s truck, he told police he “feared for [his] life” and that he was nearly “burned alive,” another falsehood.
\n\nIn all likelihood, high-ranking authorities in the local government and state and federal agencies have a fairly clear picture of what they are up against. This does not stop them from spreading conspiracy theories and lies to rank-and-file officers, APF funders, and their supporters. For officers on the ground, however, the ability to distinguish talking points from reality was becoming dangerously blurred. For them, everything bad in southwest Dekalb County was the fault of a few dozen young people eating off of propane stoves and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.
\n\nBut that was the kind of narrative their bosses needed to justify the violence they were about to unleash.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/4.jpg\")
The construction of the pallet house in the forest in fall 2022.
\nThe stalemate broke in December.
\n\nIn fall 2022, it was not uncommon to hear activists speculate that the winter months would see the police and their allies regroup—especially in the forest, where tree cover and foliage would be reduced. But no one was prepared for what transpired.
\n\nFollowing weeks of propaganda, a massive inter-agency raid encircled the forest on December 13. Under the direction of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, officers from the Atlanta Police, the Dekalb Police, the Bomb Squad, and the Department of Homeland Security entered the forest from Key, Constitution, Fayetteville, Bouldercrest, and West Park Place. They advanced on foot from Constitution and Fayetteville. Drones hovered overhead and helicopters circled above the trees with thermal cameras trained on the encampments. Officers in riot gear equipped with off-road vehicles invaded the Prison Farm through the North Gate with firearms at the ready.
\n\nActivists withdrew to treehouses or hiding spots or else fled the forest altogether. Since there were no subcontractors present, few chose to resist the operation; forest defenders did not want to be caught in conflicts with police that did not actually delay construction. Previously, this had seemed like the wisest idea, especially after the symbolic sweeps of the forest began. But this was an extraction mission: rather than escorting excavators or subcontractors or making a symbolic appearance, the police intended to make arrests and destroy camps. In hindsight, if more people had arrived to resist, things might have turned out differently. Some people in the forest did clash with officers, mostly by throwing stones and erecting barricades.
\n\nThe police wrecked dozens of tents and campsites. They bulldozed the Weelaunee Café. They used chainsaws to demolish the warming station along with hammocks, tables, medic stations, water bottles, and makeshift stages. A cherry picker entered the forest; arborists used it to destroy unoccupied tree houses. Officers who were able to locate forest defenders positioned in the trees stood beneath them, insulting and threatening them. Police pointed firearms at tree-sitters; they shot them with pepper balls, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Atlanta police unleashed attack dogs on activists moving on foot through the forest.
\n\nBy the end of the day, five people were under arrest. All of them were slapped with felony charges including “Domestic Terrorism.”
\n\nThe movement responded immediately. A press conference met on December 14 outside Weelaunee People’s Park. The park was temporarily closed off by police, who illegally closed access to the land with their vehicles during a second day of operations in the forest. They had not successfully evicted all of the tree houses, so they returned to complete their goal. While Dekalb County cops were in the forest shooting pepper balls at Tortuguita—at the time, known only as an anonymous activist occupying a tree house—activists and community members gathered outside of the park to deliver speeches to the local news media. This did not end the raid, as the press conference in May 2022 had, but it did draw away police resources to the parking lot, especially after activists breached the police line by walking into the edge of the forest, bringing news crews with them to photograph riot police in the ruins of the Weelaunee Café and park gazebo.
\n\nFootage from the press conference played repeatedly on local television. Another person was arrested in the vicinity of the forest and charged with “Domestic Terrorism.” Nonetheless, the police operation failed to remove the remaining tree-sitters and the other activists who remained in the forest. Over the following days, national coverage of the repression appeared on Democracy Now!, CNN, and other outlets.
\n\nAll of the various organizations and tendencies involved in the movement came together to defend the accused. Other groups, including socialists and others who had kept distance from the movement for whatever reason, stepped up to denounce the repression of the six young arrestees.
\n\nOn December 16, the Dekalb County government denied the “Land Disturbance Permit” required to begin the destruction of the Old Atlanta Prison farm. This was the fourth time that an application for the permit was denied. The next day, 200 people gathered in East Atlanta Village. At that point, this was one of the biggest local protests in the context of the movement. Speakers from local Black liberation organizations, a pre-school, a solidarity organization, and within the movement denounced the repression. “We cannot allow six young people to rot in prison for taking actions we all agree are necessary,” one person declared to a cheering crowd. The whole crowd shared the sense that this attack on the forest occupants constituted an attack on the movement as a whole.
\n\nAfter an hour of fiery speeches, the crowd gathered behind a banner demanding that Brasfield & Gorrie drop the contract with the APF and another declaring “We Are All Forest Defenders.” They marched around the business and residential area for an hour, drawing applause and cheers. In many ways, the police assault had fostered sympathy with the movement, not paralysis.
\n\nFor their part, the police claimed that this was a long and dangerous confrontation “finally coming to a head,” implying that the movement was over. Nothing could be further from the truth.
\n\nOn December 21, a week after the raid, Ryan Millsap and his henchman entered Weelaunee People’s Park. Nearly eight months after his attempt to destroy the area during the third Week of Action, he finally had a free hand.
\n\nThey brought bulldozers and heavy machinery into the area through the entrance of the Radio Control club. Reportedly, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations requested this for the explicit purpose of denying anarchists the ability to operate freely in the forest. They knocked down dozens of trees along the paved bicycle path, overturned the park gazebo, and cut down a large number of saplings and bushes. By midday, they had destroyed substantial swaths of the forest near the parking lot and trailhead, creating clear lines of sight at ground level. It will never be known how many nonhuman inhabitants of the forest this operation killed or displaced. This was the first destruction of the forest at that scale. When a few journalists arrived at the scene, the contractors withdrew.
\n\nThe next day, December 22, the contractors returned. This time, they demolished the parking lot with heavy machinery and tore up a large segment of the paved bicycle path. They worked quickly. No police officers accompanied them. Only one man in a “Peace Officer” jacket oversaw the parking lot area. When a few forest defenders and journalists arrived, the contractors fled once again. Work trucks associated with a company called Stake Center were nearby; they have been seen numerous times in the vicinity of the forest, but it remains unclear who was executing the destruction at Millsap’s behest.
\n\nIn the hours following the second day of destruction, community members called the Dekalb County Commissioners and various departments to notify them of the work taking place. Within a few hours, two Dekalb County police officers cautiously approached the parking lot, which was now in ruins. They anxiously notified those assembled that they would soon be returning with a “Stop Work” order. They asked protesters to allow them to do so undisturbed.
\n\nWith “Stop Work” orders now in effect in both sides of the forest, many people in the movement felt a bit of temporary relief. Yet there was nothing preventing police from entering the forest to remove encampments or to attack movement infrastructure.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/7.jpg\")
The overturned gazebo in Weelaunee People’s Park after the destruction of December 21, 2022.
\nIn the final weeks of December, the movement worked hard to rearrange priorities and regain confidence. The encampments in the Old Atlanta Prison Farm held firm in the face of the repression. Local musicians and artists organized a “Rock Against Repression” fundraiser for those facing terrorism charges; several hundred people attended. Jail support and legal aid teams worked tirelessly in a superhuman effort to assure the safety of the accused. Activists and lawyers from around the country offered assistance along with advice distilled from previous eras of repression, including the Green Scare.
\n\nThe movement was drawing national attention, especially from outlets like Motherboard that were concerned about the politically-charged prosecution of forest defenders. Far-right trolls also took notice, siding with the authorities by organizing doxing efforts and smear campaigns targeting the accused.
\n\nDekalb County District Attorney Sherri Boston and police spokespeople were arguing that affiliation with the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement was itself a legitimate basis for the terrorism charges. According to the government, some of the acts that “affirmed” one’s “belonging” in the movement included camping in the forest, being in the forest during a raid, posting about the movement on social media, and protesting against the destruction of the forest. Prosecutors falsely claimed that the Department of Homeland Security had “classified” the movement as a Domestic Violent Extremist Group.
\n\nOnce again, this was a falsehood. Homeland Security internal documentation on criminal action is simply that: internal memos regarding actions and events. Even if they had classified the entire movement as a domestic terror group, that would have been a clerical matter, not a legal one. But DHS does not classify movements, as seen in their rejection of Donald Trump’s absurd demand that they categorize “Antifa” as a terrorist group.
\n\nTo discourage continued attacks on the forest and rebuild morale within the movement, people began organizing daily vigils in the ruins of the parking lot. Early each morning, dozens of people met to eat breakfast and drink coffee in the former parking lot of Weelaunee People’s Park. This positioned them to learn immediately of police interventions or the arrival of heavy machinery.
\n\nNo contractors or police showed up on the mornings of the vigils. Without more data points, we can’t know whether the morning vigils impacted the timeline for the destruction of the forest. In the future, perhaps similar creative tactics could be used to mobilize those who cannot sleep overnight in the forest, assuming the land itself remains a contested zone.
\n\nOn New Year’s Eve, hundreds of people converged in the forest. Neighbors, ravers, and activists assembled beneath a new gazebo that had been covertly assembled over the course of the day in a section of the park just barely outside of the zone that Millsap claims to own. Glow sticks illuminated a walking path through the destruction toward the sound of thumping music. A local queer collective organized the party, which was a major success.
\n\nFor many people, returning to the forest had become fraught and stressful. Many attendees said they hoped that this party marked the turning of the tide against those who wished to destroy the forest.
\n\nAfter the destruction of December 21, legal advocates filed a request for an injunction against Ryan Millsap with the Dekalb County court. The appeal highlighted the continuous abuse of the land by Millsap and his goons and the persistent violations of the terms of the land-swap deal struck between Millsap and Dekalb County, including his repeated attempts to close access to the park and his decision to tear up the bicycle path connecting the trailhead he claims to own to several other parks that he makes no legal claim to.
\n\nOn December 28, the judge denied the appeal, groundlessly associating it with the protests and brazenly asserting “the damage being done to the property by those folks inhabiting it is far worse than anything anybody else is doing at this point.” She was parroting a cliché often repeated by other opponents of the movement—right, left, bureaucratic, and grassroots alike—that the protests were doing more harm than good. Protesters had not clear-cut trees, destroyed public infrastructure, or blocked public access to the park.
\n\nIn her closing remarks, she made it explicitly clear that Ryan Millsap was free to continue destroying the forest however he liked, regardless of agreements with Dekalb County or anything else. The Dekalb County Office of Planning and Sustainability had rejected this idea when they issued their Stop Work order on December 22. At present, as consequence of that order, Millsap cannot continue destroying Weelaunee without permits. But as a consequence of the January 3 ruling, he is free to apply for the permits that would allow him to do so.
\n\nThe truth is, nothing will prevent Millsap from resuming the destruction of the forest except the bold, creative resistance of ordinary people.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/24.jpg\")
Dekalb County and Atlanta police prepare to carry out a lethal raid on January 18, 2023.
\nDuring the first half of January, the situation in the forest encampments had changed, but activists were adapting to it. Outside the forest, organizers were also strategizing, trying to figure out how to respond to repression while regaining the initiative. Almost every organizing cluster was busy with meetings, phone calls, interviews, and similar tasks.
\n\nAt the same time, new antagonists appeared, likely drawn by all the news coverage. Congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene, former president Donald Trump, and their legion of online imitators began commenting on the movement, cartoonishly describing it as an “ANTIFA autonomous zone.” Capitalizing on this demagoguery, bigger outlets began using the intentionally misleading description “the area, referred to as an ‘ANTIFA autonomous zone.’” Local fascists began surveilling the movement by pretending to be journalists. Many adherents of the far right demanded that Governor Brian Kemp clamp down on the movement.
\n\nSince metro-area police had failed to crush the encampments, the governor decided to try his hand by sending in the Georgia State Patrol (GSP). These officers, the extreme majority of whom are white men who live far outside the city limits, normally conduct traffic stops on the interstate; they have very little experience controlling protests. The surge of propaganda throughout the fall and the raid of December 13 were pushing the conflict into new terrain.
\n\nWhat experiences the Georgia State Patrol has had with protests only underscore the tensions already existing between the GSP and activists. On November 27, 2014, following the failure of a grand jury to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown in Missouri, GSP responded to protesters on the I-75/I-85 connector, attacking Black women and others who were passively blocking the road. On July 4, 2020, a black bloc vandalized the headquarters of the Georgia State Patrol, breaking windows and starting fires inside the building. Later that summer, GSP agents attacked crowds from within armored Bearcat vehicles, shooting tear gas canisters at protesters’ heads.
\n\nIt is possible that aside from these episodes, few current GSP officers had ever engaged with a protest in Atlanta. In any case, these cops almost certainly believed the false narratives of their bosses and the members of the Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee. GSP entered the forest anticipating violence, prepared to kill those living in the encampments.
\n\nIn the early hours of January 18, police established an operations control center in the parking lot of Gresham Park. Dozens of police vehicles from metro-Atlanta agencies began amassing there. Across the forest, other agencies spearheaded by Atlanta Police Department began amassing on Key, Fayetteville, Woodham, and adjacent streets. Helicopters were circling overhead. Forest defenders could hear the sounds of police drones hovering near their tree houses and tents. K9 units arrived with dogs. The bomb squad was stationed nearby, while all-black SUVs parked alongside Constitution Road near Shadowbox Studios. For the first time, the Georgia State Patrol entered Weelaunee People’s Park.
\n\nAt 9:04 am, some 30 or more shots rang out in the forest.
\n\nThe Georgia State Patrol had killed Manuel Páez Terán, a Venezuelan anarchist of Tomoto-Cuica heritage who went by the name Tortuguita in the forest.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/29.jpg\")
Artwork celebrating the life of Manuel Páez Terán, known in the forest as Tortuguita, by N.O. Bonzo. You can print copies of the poster here.
\nTortuguita had been living in the forest since May 2022. During their time in Atlanta, they had endeared themselves to many other forest defenders. They coordinated mutual aid efforts for those living in the forest, something they had experience doing in Tallahassee for the homeless as well as victims of natural disasters. They were known to be very brave and very warm to those close to them. They died defending the forest. Their death is an incalculable loss.
\n\nHorrifically, the operation did not end there. Over the next several hours, officers continued to fan out through the forest, shamelessly continuing their assault. Once again, they smashed camp infrastructure, pointed guns at park-goers, and fired pepper balls into the tree houses. One courageous person living in a tree house was encircled by law enforcement, who sent an arborist into the tree. The arborist destroyed the tree house, but the activist climbed higher, refusing to come down.
\n\nThe activist remained suspended in the air supported by a harness for nearly 19 hours. Police did not leave the foot of the tree for the entire day and then, for the first time, remained in the forest after dark. At last, the tree sitter came down and was also arrested.
\n\nFive of the people who survived the lethal assault on the forest were arrested and charged with Domestic Terrorism.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/27.jpg\")
In this and other affidavits, the police charge arrestees with Domestic Terrorism solely on the grounds that they were present in the forest and occupied a tree house. In this particular case, the police adduce as further evidence that the arrestee was in the woods when they killed Tortuguita.
\nAs the morning of January 18 passed into afternoon, it was still not known who had been killed. What was known, thanks to a press conference police held at midday, was that a patrolman had been shot. To this day, the authorities have released no information about who this patrolman was or how they were shot. Without more information, we cannot know whether this officer shot himself, was shot by a fellow officer—as subsequently released police video showed officers concerned about crossfire and one declaring ‘’You fucked your own officer up”—or was shot by a forest defender acting in self-defense.
\n\nThe initial phase of police propaganda claimed that agents had been “ambushed” by a shooter. The New York Times invented the idea that the shooting had occurred during a “firefight” in the woods. Later, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations changed their story, claiming that agents had encountered someone in a tent (sic), ordered them to exit, and that person opened fire “without warning” on patrolmen. Yet the photo they released to accompany their story did not show a tent, but a hammock. Unlike a tent, hammocks do not occlude any line of sight. One cannot “hide” in a hammock, which is precisely why the GBI decided to use the word “tent” in their campaign of lies.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/15.jpg\")
Tortuguita’s hammock on the day that they were killed. As can clearly be seen, they were not in a “tent,” contrary to the lies of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations.
\nOn January 19, after careful deliberation, forest defenders decided that it was not acceptable to permit the police to be the first ones to announce the name of the deceased. Many were concerned that such an announcement would include an effort to smear Tortuguita’s reputation, as is customary for police seeking to justify the murders they frequently carry out. It was better to get ahead of the propaganda machine.
\n\nWhether or not Tortuguita fired at officers during the raid is not known. Owing to the difficulties, we may never know the details. Since every police agency that could investigate the event was participating in the operation, none of them are credible sources on this subject; even the District Attorney acknowledged this by recusing herself of the case. None of the killers were wearing body cameras and no credible witnesses have stepped forward yet.
\n\nWhat is undeniable is that Tortuguita (who was also known as Geese, Onka, Cami, Manny, and other names) dedicated their life to defending the forest and its inhabitants, to the planet and all of its oppressed peoples. Despite the escalating violence directed at them, they remained steadfastly committed to resisting the militarization of the police and the destruction of the planet up to the last. This is why the police killed them.
\n\nOn the night of the killing, around 200 people gathered in Findley Plaza in Little 5 Points. Despite the rain, this crowd assembled to light candles and to defend space for those in grief. Some attendees read statements or delivered speeches. Others stood in silence. Many cried.
\n\nMost of those gathered blocked Moreland Avenue. When a police cruiser approached, a few people threw objects at it to send it away. The crowd slowly marched down Euclid Avenue, dragging debris into the street. Someone smashed a storefront window. Eventually, everyone calmly dispersed.
\n\nOver the following days, coverage of the movement reached international proportions. Corporate outlets throughout the Western world ran articles about the killing and the movement to defend the forest. Another vigil was announced for Friday, January 20, in Weelaunee People’s Park. Similar actions and vigils were announced in dozens of other cities across the US and around the world. Some of those vigils were quite large, considering the context and cold weather; the events in Richmond, Portland, New York, Chicago, and Austin drew over 100 people each. Altogether, several thousand people mobilized that weekend in Tortuguita’s memory.
\n\nThe vigil in Weelaunee People’s Park was attended by around 100 people and a number of undercover police officers. Officers in riot gear were stationed nearby. However, the vigil took place without incident. It was important for people to be able to gather near the site of the killing as a community, to listen to some of the songs Tort had adored, to share space with one another and grieve.
\n\nThat night, solidarity actions took place around the country. A UPS facility was vandalized in Portland because UPS funds the Atlanta Police Foundation. An office of Atlas Technical Consultants was vandalized in Detroit on account of their contract with Brasfield & Gorrie. In Oakland, dozens of windows were broken at a Bank of America in memory of Tortuguita. Bank of America is also a sponsor of the APF.
\n\nOn Saturday, January 21, around 300 people gathered at Underground Atlanta, a plaza and shopping mall downtown. The majority of this crowd wore black clothing to mourn Tortuguita’s passing, as the flier requested. Around 5 pm, members of a nationwide socialist organization began making speeches to the crowd from behind their banners. On occasion, they passed around the megaphone to those who asked for it. Nobody else seemed prepared to deliver speeches, but the socialists on the megaphone had not organized this event, they simply had arrived aiming to instrumentalize those assembled for their own political aims. This is a strategy they use effectively, especially in power plays targeting spontaneous movements, in which organizers may not be prepared to give speeches themselves.
\n\nAround 5:45, the crowd set off from the plaza in the direction of the State Capitol building. A contingent of about a hundred people wearing black hooded sweatshirts and masks halted the crowd and began marching the opposite direction, explaining to others that this was the original plan for the route. Finally, Tortuguita’s friends and comrades were in the front.
\n\nThe crowd turned onto Peachtree Street heading north. Colorful smoke began to drift above the throng. Some pedestrians joined the march. Rush-hour foot and car traffic in the city center gave audience to the demonstrators as they chanted “Cop City will never be built!” and “Cops, pigs, murders!” Just north of the Peachtree Center MARTA station, an Atlanta police SUV attempted to turn around, backing up after a demonstrator threw a firework at it. The officers parked the car and jogged away. When the crowd reached the vehicle, they broke its windows.
\n\nThe police vehicle was parked directly in front of the Deloitte Tower. The Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters is on the ground floor; it was already vandalized once, during the first Week of Action in 2021. On the night of January 21, 2023, several people threw rocks at the building while others smashed the doors and windows. Someone in the crowd dropped fireworks outside of the building. Unfortunately, those exploded in the crowd, which startled the back of the march, sending some people in the opposite direction.
\n\nA block ahead, the crowd passed another Atlanta police vehicle and set about breaking its windows. Someone tossed a firework inside it. A few minutes later, the burning vehicle poured smoke into the early evening skyline. Someone broke a window of Truist Bank. A half block ahead, a Wells Fargo lost many windows and both of the street-level ATMs were broken. Again, fireworks exploded near the crowd at street level, to no clear purpose. Anxiety was building in the march though it had encountered no obstacles up to that point.
\n\nAhead, three police vehicles blocked Peachtree Street near the intersection with Baker Street. A few forest defenders began throwing fireworks and stones at the cars, which stopped them from advancing closer to the march. Nearly a half block separated the crowd from the cruisers, and there were no cops behind the march, which now numbered around 120 people. Rather than confront the officers, a confrontation the march probably could have won, the group faltered, pausing for a few crucial moments. Abruptly, a few Atlanta police officers charged out of their cars toward the black bloc. Only a handful of protesters threw stones and fireworks; everyone else pulled back, though they did not scatter or stampede.
\n\nThe officers managed to tackle a few young people near the front of the protest. Moving quickly, the black bloc dispersed into downtown. Shortly after, police tackled and arrested a few more people they suspected of participating in the event. Georgia State Patrolmen parked along Peachtree Center and Piedmont, donning gas masks and retrieving tear gas from their trunks, but the demonstration was over.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/19.jpg\")
Demonstrators commemorating Tortuguita’s life in downtown Atlanta on January 21, 2023.
\nEveryone arrested that night was charged with Domestic Terrorism, bringing the total number of those accused under the statute to 18 people. One person is facing two counts, one from the December 13 attack on the forest, and one for being in the vicinity of the January 21 protest. At time of publication, 7 of those 18 have been denied bond for over a month. Several of the accused are not receiving proper medical care or food appropriate for their dietary needs.
\n\nAll of the accused are being charged under House Bill 452, the Georgia Domestic Terrorism law. This law redefines Domestic Terrorism in Georgia following the horrific killing of Black parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina in 2017. Under the previous law, such an act would not have constituted Domestic Terrorism, because only nine people were killed, and the old law required that ten people die before a Terrorism enhancement could be applied. Under HB 452, no such quota exists. The law is extremely wide-reaching; depending upon how it is interpreted, it could serve to criminalize a wide range of ordinary protest activities, because of a vaguely-worded clause about “critical infrastructure.”
\n\nThe protesters arrested on January 21 are not being charged with Domestic Terrorism because they broke windows. If they had, that would already constitute a shocking and novel abuse of judicial authority. Rather, they are accused of being in a crowd in which some people broke windows and threw fireworks.
\n\nAtlanta area prosecutors aim to set the precedent that sending text messages, camping in the woods, posting on social media, and participating in an unruly protest are all forms of terrorism. This sets a precedent for outright totalitarianism.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/23.jpg\")
Demonstrators commemorating Tortuguita’s life in downtown Atlanta on January 21, 2023.
\nImages of the police cruiser set aflame on January 21 spread virally online. Both corporate and grassroots reporting highlighted the precision of the vandalism: protesters broke windows only at the bank branches with direct connections to the APF, as well as some APD cruisers and the APF headquarters itself. Judging by the chatter across town and online, the public seemed to understand the targets and the rage of the forest defenders in the wake of the killing of Tortuguita, even if they did not approve of political vandalism in the abstract.
\n\nAt the same time, the movement’s popularity was exploding. Thousands of non-profit organizations and civic groups joined anarchists, autonomists, anti-capitalists, and revolutionaries around the world in signing a declaration of solidarity with the movement. Among those groups were 350.org, Rainforest Action Network, Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Sunrise Movement, No More Deaths, Black Alliance for Peace, National Lawyers Guild, and PEN America—the sort of groups that had previously stood aside from the struggle to defend the forest. Several more drafted their own statements of support for the movement, including the King Center. Many of these groups emphasized the list of secondary and tertiary targets connected to Cop City, calling on their members to pressure those companies to divest from the APF. Soon after the march downtown, three Democratic Party Congresspeople declared their support for the movement.
\n\nIn less than a week, the movement had confronted an unspeakable tragedy and reoriented the narrative 180 degrees, outflanking the falsehoods of the police, politicians, and corporate media.
\n\nIf the movement continues on its current trajectory toward mass mobilization and support, it will demonstrate the viability of its strategy, provided that the way that the movement developed in the first place is not erased (as occurred, for example, in the George Floyd rebellion). Specifically, it would show that a small, dedicated group of militant activists can precipitate a large-scale mobilization, not just chase after it. If the movement continues to grow, that will have been because of the dogged determination, flexibility, courage, creativity, and intelligence of a couple hundred people who pushed the envelope continuously from the beginning.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/21.jpg\")
A burning police car in downtown Atlanta on the night of January 21, 2023.
\nOn January 31, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and Dekalb County CEO Michael Thurmond held a joint press conference. After inviting all of the local press, the authorities changed their minds at the last minute, closing public access to the event and locking all but two corporate media outlets outside with protesters. They deployed 60 police cruisers around the perimeter of City Hall in order to contain the dozens who gathered to protest the press conference.
\n\nTogether, the mayor and the CEO of Dekalb County announced a “compromise” between the two governments. The new agreement, which is not legally binding, emerges from a series of closed-door meetings with no public input or transparency. It introduces changes that nobody asked for: for example, supposedly, the new plans for Cop City no longer include an explosives testing site. Presumably, this change is intended to hurry the project through the permitting process. The new permits include an “elasticity clause,” allowing the APF to alter or expand the development once it is underway; this leaves them an opening to underhandedly fulfill their original plan. While the announcement does not represent a victory, it does suggest that a degree of institutional panic could be taking hold.
\n\nThe Land Disturbance Permit was approved. Throughout an entire hour of lies and half-truths, Mayor Dickens did not mention the killing of Tortuguita a single time.
\n\nMeanwhile, Tortuguita’s family had commissioned a private autopsy, which revealed that they were shot at least 13 different times by various officers.
\n\nThe following week, Mayor Dickens announced his intention to host a question-and-answer session at the Atlanta University Center (AUC). The AUC hosts Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta, and the Morehouse School of Medicine. These are the privately-owned historically Black colleges and universities that Atlanta is famous for.
\n\nThe Mayor was determined to host this Q&A session with the Black students on February 7, because a week earlier, on January 31, a group of students staged a public disruption of a campus event, during which they demanded that the school divest from the Atlanta Police Foundation and denounce Cop City. At the same time, 20% of Morehouse faculty signed an open letter to the campus administration, strongly denouncing the institution’s involvement with the APF.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/kamaufranklin/status/1621509325310267394\n\n\n
During the Q&A on February 7, some students and community members refused to enter the auditorium, chanting slogans and denouncing the event from outside. Inside the event, speaker after speaker criticized the Morehouse President, the Mayor of Atlanta, and the systems of white supremacy and capitalism that terrorize and kill the communities that the school is supposed to educate and uplift. The event was a disaster for the City Government’s public relations strategy.
\n\nThe following day, on February 8, the Atlanta Police Department released body camera footage of the January 18 raid. This footage was published unceremoniously, with no accompanying statement or press conference. After the GBI had claimed that no footage existed that was relevant to the case, many were shocked by what the video showed.
\n\nThe body camera footage does not show the killing of Tortuguita by Georgia State Patrolmen. Rather, it shows a few officers walking through the woods when gunfire bursts erupt from nearby. No yelling or commands precede the shooting. One Atlanta police officer says “You fucked your own officer up?” In the footage, which shows many perspectives and moments from the morning, three separate groups of Atlanta police officers seem to be under the impression that the Patrolmen have accidentally shot one of their own. The video also records a single unexplained shot several minutes after the initial volley.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/atlanta_press/status/1623484224924798976\n\n\n
All this seems to undermine the official narrative. In releasing the footage, the Atlanta police were bowing to pressure brought to bear on them by Tortuguita’s family and their lawyers, who had hosted a press conference two days prior. It is also conceivable that they hoped to distance themselves from the actions of the GBI.
\n\nIn the following days, a massive number of police began stationing around Key Road and inside the North Gate of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. They escorted Brent Scarborough Company, a Brasfield & Gorrie subcontractor and a donor to the Governor and the APF, onto the property, where officers erected a barrier tarp and several large spotlights facing the forest. Inside the gate, workers began laying down gravel and clearing trees in order to erect silt fencing for erosion control. Police officers and unmarked vehicles are staging 24 hours per day at positions every few dozen feet along the perimeter of the Prison Farm. In a recent statement to the Dekalb County court, the APF claims it is spending $41,500 per day to secure the site.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/17.jpg\")
Targeted vandalism in downtown Atlanta on the night of January 21, 2023.
\nResistance is spreading. During the final week of January, protests and vigils occurred in over 20 cities On February 9, over 100 Georgia Tech students marched around campus denouncing Cop City and attempting to storm administration buildings. Since the beginning of February, rallies, marches, and benefit shows have taken place in Ann Arbor, Washington, DC, Binghamton, New Orleans, Flagstaff, Tucson, Vancouver, Humboldt, and elsewhere.
\n\nWhile Brasfield & Gorrie and their subcontractors continue to push ahead at the behest of the APF, forest defenders everywhere are organizing themselves into local committees and organizing groups to pressure contractors, spread awareness, raise funds, and send delegations to Atlanta for the Week of Action scheduled to begin on March 4.
\n\nIt is possible that the movement is closer to victory than it seems. It is certainly at a crucial threshold—sure to be the most determinant of the entire struggle. It is up to courageous people to keep pushing for bolder and more creative strategies.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/30.jpg\")
Artwork by N.O. Bonzo.
\nAssembled from publicly available reports.
\n\nApril 2, 2022: An open records request with the State of Georgia reveals that Brasfield & Gorrie has been contracted to take over work on Cop City. Brasfield & Gorrie later confirms this in a press release.
\n\nApril 9: SRY Campaign website launches (at that time as Stopreevesyoung.com). The site includes names and home addresses of those seeking to destroy the forest, including the president and CEO of Reeves+Young.
\n\nApril 18: Reeves+Young drops the contract with the Police Foundation.
\n\nApril 23: Muscogee Summit draws hundreds to the forest for information sessions and a historical presentation.
\n\nApril 26: Bank of America windows are broken in Portland because of the bank’s connection to the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF).
\n\nApril 27: ATMs across the Bay Area are sabotaged in support of the movement, targeting institutions backing the APF.
\n\nMay 1: Windows are smashed and walls painted at the Minneapolis office of Atlas Technical Consultants, a subcontractor involved in Cop City construction on behalf of Brasfield and Gorrie. On the same day, an Atlas Technical Consultants office in Highland, Indiana is painted in solidarity with the movement and a Bank of America in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has its windows broken.
\n\nMay 4: Police attempt to enter the Prison Farm through the North Gate. They are repelled with burning barricades, stones, and smoke.
\n\nMay 8-14: The Third Week of Action to Defend the Forest draws hundreds of participants to an autonomous encampment in the South River/Weelaunee Forest. Dozens of events, walks, talks, parties, and actions take place throughout the week, effectively liberating the zone from police control.
\n\nMay 9: A bulldozer marked “Dodd Drilling LLC” and two Dekalb County Sheriffs enter the forest via the entrance of the Radio Control Club on Constitution Drive. Despite the early morning hour of their arrival, a few dozen activists successfully repelled the bulldozer and police, though not before a number of trees were felled. On the same day, a demonstration took place at the house of Shepherd Long, the CEO of Long Engineering, a subcontractor of Brasfield & Gorrie.
\n\nMay 10: “Some anarchist” breaks seven windows at an office of Atlas Technical Consultants in Albany, New York on account of their contract with Brasfield & Gorrie.
\n\nMay 11: Two Dekalb County police cruisers enter the parking lot of Intrenchment Creek Park but are repelled by groups of people throwing stones. An hour later, a van belonging to the Juvenile Detention Center parks in the parking lot. Several dozen black-clad activists ambush the vehicle from multiple sides, slashing its tires and smashing its windows. 30 protesters assemble at the home of Keith Johnson. Johnson is the Eastern Regional President of Brasfield & Gorrie, general contractor for Cop City.
\n\nMay 12: Approximately 80 protesters converge on the Brasfield & Gorrie headquarters in Northwest Atlanta. Brasfield & Gorrie is the new general contractor for Cop City. Protesters paint slogans, toss paint balloons at the veneer of the building, break windows, and shoot fireworks at the facility before dispersing. Nearby, several people are arrested in alleged connection to the event.
\n\nMay 13: In the early morning, someone paints “Drop Cop City or Else” on the Birmingham, Alabama headquarters of Brasfield & Gorrie; many windows are broken at the facility as well. In Atlanta, police are overheard complaining about “Black Flag Atlanta,” a fictitious organization of anarchists that they believe are monitoring them closely, impairing their movement in the area of the Weelaunee Forest.
\n\nMay 14: Over 100 people join a march in East Atlanta Village to denounce Cop City, led by preschoolers, parents, and teachers. Later that day, over 200 people march in Little 5 Points to oppose Cop City. Neighbors and pedestrians display overwhelming support for those in attendance. After the march ends, dozens of police vehicles and multiple helicopters swarm the area. Police arrest numerous people at random while bystanders express disapproval.
\n\nMay 16: A home “associated with” Dodd Drilling LLC is vandalized. The same day, a call-in campaign targets Brasfield & Gorrie.
\n\nMay 17: Hundreds of officers from Atlanta Police Department, Dekalb County, Bomb Squad, Joint Terrorism Task Force, Georiga Bureau of Investigations, Department of Natural Resources, and Dekalb County Parks and Recreation participate in an inter-agency raid on the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. Forest defenders evade officers and repel them with stones, fireworks, and Molotov cocktails. Several park-goers are arrested in the adjacent Intrenchment Creek Park, though their charges are dropped shortly after. All of the major media outlets attend a press conference at Intrenchment Creek Park at which activists denounce the police operation. Audio leaks of police communication reveal police discussing the day’s raid as a “deadly force encounter,” justifying the use of lethal force against activists.
\n\nMay: Over the course of a month, construction equipment for various projects in Lane County, Oregon is vandalized in support of the movement.
\n\nMay 20: In Minneapolis, Bank of America windows are broken and “Defund Cop City” is painted across the building.
\n\nMay 26: Windows are broken at Consolidated Engineering Laboratories, a subsidiary of Atlas Technical Consultants.
\n\nMid-May: Protesters visit Keith Johnson, Regional President of Brasfield & Gorrie, at his home. The gate outside of his property is decorated with spray paint.
\n\nLate May: Forest defenders construct tree houses in the Weelaunee Forest.
\n\nJune 1: Windows are broken at the office of Atlas Technical Consultants in Erie, Pennsylvania.
\n\nJune 2: Just ten forest defenders repel a construction crew in the Old Atlanta Prison farm using stones and fireworks. An Atlas Technical Consultants office is vandalized in Columbus, Ohio.
\n\nJune 5: Activists visit the church of Michael Keller, Director of Pre-Construction for Brasfield & Gorrie, and place fliers on cars parked outside the service.
\n\nJune 6: A large contingent of police escort workers into the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. When activists attempt to dissuade the workers, officers point firearms at them. A few dozen trees are felled. Later, several machines owned by Boyette Brothers Rental Service that were used to knock down trees catch fire. An online statement addresses “anyone who tries to help build cop city, our message is simple: ‘If you build it, we will burn it.’”
\n\nJune 7: In response to an attempt to evict a tree-sitter, dozens of people conduct a “car caravan” protest, blocking access to Constitution Road and honking their horns. The eviction operation is halted. Elsewhere, a noise demonstration takes place outside of the New York City office of Atlas Technical Consultants.
\n\nJune 10: Windows are broken at the Tallahassee office of Atlas Technical Consultants. A “Stop Work” order is delivered by the Dekalb County Government on account of the illegal removal of trees and bulldozing in the Prison Farm.
\n\nJune 12: “Every window and door” of the Kansas City Atlas Technical Consultants office is broken.
\n\nJune 15: The Springfield, Massachusetts office of Atlas Technical Consultants is vandalized.
\n\nJune 19: Activists construct additional tree occupations to commemorate Juneteenth.
\n\nJune 20: A speaking tour of the West Coast gets underway, lasting through July 7.
\n\nJune 28: More trees are reportedly spiked in the Weelaunee Forest.
\n\nJune 30: Protesters block roads and disrupt a Brasfield & Gorrie office in Charlotte, North Carolina. A speaking tour of the East Coast gets underway, lasting through July 3.
\n\nJune 29-July 1: Forest defenders repeatedly evade or resist police incursions into the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. Barricades are constructed at the North Gate to slow entry.
\n\nJuly 1: A new website launches called “Stop the Atlanta Police Foundation.” The website details the links that connect companies like Norfolk Southern to the APF.
\n\nJuly 7: Atlanta Police erect a surveillance camera on a pole near the forest. “Beavers” cut down the 40-foot pole.
\n\nJuly 19: Ryan Millsap orders contractors to place concrete barriers in the entranceway to Intrenchment Creek Park, effectively closing the public facility.
\n\nJuly 20: In response to police actions in the preceding weeks, including pointing firearms at unarmed protesters, a new website is launched called “Cops of Cop City.” This website features images and home addresses of Atlanta-area law enforcement.
\n\nJuly 21: “100 cute little ants” move the concrete barriers out of the entranceway to Intrenchment Creek Park, reestablishing open access to the forest just before the fourth week of action.
\n\nJuly 22: South River Watershed Alliance and Atlanta Community Press Collective release the construction timeline and site plans, revealing that “Clearing and Grading” is intended to begin in the fall of 2022. Meanwhile, the Remote Control club has their facilities vandalized and access to the airfield, which they had been using semi-illegally, closed by barricades. In preceding weeks, some activists had come to believe the RC Club was working with the police in operations against forest defenders.
\n\nJuly 23: Climate activists chain themselves to the front doors of the Brasfield & Gorrie office in Charlotte, North Carolina. In Atlanta, the Fourth Week of Action begins. Activists gather at the site of the concrete barricades and erect a sign reading “Weelaunee People’s Park.”
\n\nJuly 25: Protests take place at the home of Keith Johnson, Regional President of Brasfield & Gorrie, and Jodye Ellen DiSario, Executive Assistant at Brasfield & Gorrie. Activists carry out a banner drop in Minneapolis to support the Week of Action. In the forest itself, several cameras and a work truck are vandalized; these belong to Flock Safety, an entity contracted to establish surveillance infrastructure around the forest. Police and police enthusiasts falsely claim that forest defenders have used a firearm against the contractors. In the following weeks, every camera installed in the area is repeatedly vandalized until Flock ceases to install new ones.
\n\nJuly 28: A three-day autonomous music festival begins in Weelaunee People’s Park, bringing together indie, techno, hip hop, and hardcore punk acts. Roughly 1000 people attend the events, listening to speeches, reading literature, and camping in the territory. Elsewhere, Defend the Forest posters appear around the Twin Cities.
\n\nJuly 29: Banner drops occur in Orlando, Florida and Brooklyn, New York. A Brasfield & Gorrie jobsite at the intersection of Hank Aaron Drive and Fulton Street is disrupted by 30-40 protesters who march inside chanting. Later, police arrest 8 individuals in the area, alleging that they were connected to the event.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/UR_Ninja/status/1553951710585954307\n\n\n
July 30: Ryan Millsap and his associate Anthony Wayne James attack the Weelaunee People’s Park/Intrenchment Creek Park trailhead. A crowd quickly gathers and repels Millsap, James, and the Dekalb County sheriffs who have come along to defend them. A truck and trailer owner by Millsap is decommissioned and later burned. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, activists paint graffiti in support of the movement.
\n\nAugust 3: During a multi-agency operation in and around the forest, a Georgia Power truck has its windows broken. Georgia Power was providing infrastructural support for Eberly & Associates and other companies hoping to initiate pre-construction for Cop City.
\n\nAugust 4: The Omaha, Nebraska office of Atlas Technical Consultants has its windows broken and veneer painted.
\n\nAugust 5: Alta Vista, a subsidiary of Atlas Technical Consultants, has its windows broken in Manhattan, NYC.
\n\nAugust 24: Activists visit the home of Justin Rannick, confronting him in his driveway. Rannick is the Division Manager for Brasfield & Gorrie and serves on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation. Protesters also visit the home of Keith Johnson again. Later, police pull over a car and arrest three people, accusing them of participating in the protest.
\n\nAugust 26: Four pieces of heavy machinery are disabled at a Brasfield & Gorrie job site on Ralph McGill Boulevard. “Stop Cop City” is written in red paint.
\n\nSeptember 8: “Various construction machines” stored at a location adjacent to Intrenchment Creek Park at Key Road and Bouldercrest catch fire.
\n\nEarly September 2022: An excavator catches fire on the parcel of land currently owned by Blackhall/Shadowbox located on Bouldercrest Road. This parcel, to be named “Michelle Obama Park,” is slated to be redeveloped into a park in order to facilitate the land swap deal between Dekalb County and Ryan Millsap.
\n\nSeptember 25: Someone visits the home of Magnus Miller Gorrie, CEO of Brasfield & Gorrie. His luxury vehicles are vandalized with paint thinner, while his driveway and a statue in his yard are vandalized with pink paint.
\n\nOctober 6: Stake Center employees enter the perimeter of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm to survey the land and set stakes. Their windows are broken and their tires slashed. This is the first time in several months that workers have arrived to the forest without a police escort. They do not return.
\n\nOctober 18: Multiple Ypsilanti Police vehicles in Michigan are painted to read “No Cop Cities.” In Atlanta, an auxiliary building of Blackhall/Shadowbox Studios catches fire.
\n\nOctober 24: The lawyer of Ryan Millsap slaps a website, organizations, and pages associated with the movement with a request for documents.
\n\nOctober 31: Activists drop a banner at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Protesters visit the home of Atlas Technical Consultants CEO Lonnie Joe Boyer in Austin, Texas.
\n\nNovember 5: Someone cuts down a surveillance camera pointing at the forest from a government-owned landfill.
\n\nNovember 8: A tow truck enters the forest attempting to remove the burned remains of Millsaps truck, which has become a sort of monument to the movement. Police are unwilling to escort the driver into the forest, and this tow truck is also burned. The driver tells reporters that he was “nearly burned alive,” which is not true.
\n\nNovemer 11: Norfolk Southern, a supporter of the Atlanta Police Foundation, leaves an excavator next to the Weelaunee Forest, which catches fire.
\n\nNovember 19: “Chainsaw-wielding militants” fell some trees in the forest, blocking access to the police firing range. One of the trees destroys an electrical transformer, shutting down the facility for days.
\n\nDecember 12: Without any evidence, Atlanta Vice Police Chief Carven Tyus claims that forest defenders were involved in the burning of two houses under construction near the forest, an allegation echoed on local news.
\n\nDecember 13: Police and other agencies raid the forest, charging five arrestees with domestic terrorism, including those occupying trees.
\n\nDecember 14: Police encircle the subsequent press conference. They arrest another person on charges of domestic terrorism.
\n\nDecember 15: Wells Fargo bank in San Francisco is vandalized because of its connections to the Atlanta Police Foundation and in solidarity with those charged with terrorism.
\n\nDecember 16: In Oakland, California, someone breaks the windows of CEL, a subsidiary of Atlas Technical Consultants. In Atlanta, the Dekalb County government denies the Land Disturbance Permits for Cop City for the fourth time.
\n\nDecember 17: Almost 200 people march in East Atlanta Village in solidarity with the accused, declaring their determination to continue fighting against destruction of the forest.
\n\nDecember 21: Construction workers serving Ryan Millsap overturn the gazebo in Weelaunee People’s Park and destroy part of the paved bicycle path.
\n\nDecember 22: Workers fell more trees in ICP before a small group of neighbors scares them off along with their security.
\n\nLate December: A breakfast and coffee vigil takes place in Weelaunee People’s Park every morning starting at 7:30 am. Groups assemble to observe the area in case construction workers or police arrive en masse.
\n\nDecember 31: Hundreds of people converge in Weelaunee People’s Park for a rave in the forest on New Year’s Eve.
\n\nJanuary 1, 2023: Someone sets a fire in a Bank of America branch in Portland, OR and releases an anonymous communiqué expressing solidarity with the arrestees in Atlanta, citing Bank of America’s funding of the APF. The bank branch is now permanently closed.
\n\nJanuary 3: A judge rules against the appeal for an injunction against Millsap, baselessly declaring that protesters are “more destructive” to the forest than the actual demolition of trees and park infrastructure.
\n\nJanuary 14: A late-night demonstration takes place in Palmetto Bay, Florida, at the home of Michael Peters, Vice President and Division Manager at Brasfield and Gorrie.
\n\nJanuary 15: Locals sabotage logging trucks in the Ozarks in solidarity with the movement.
\n\nJanuary 18: Atlanta and Dekalb police, Georgia Bureau of Investigations, Department of Homeland Security, and the Georgia State Patrol invade the forest in a large-scale armed operation. At 9:04 am, Georgia State Patrol officers fire approximately 40 consecutive shots, killing Manuel Teran, a queer and Indigenous Venezuelan anarchist known in the forest as Tortuguita. Police destroy camp infrastructure and arrest several more people, charging them indiscriminately with terrorism. Hundreds attend a subsequent vigil in Little 5 Points; some drag barricades into the street and throw debris at a police car. Nicole Morado of the Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee resigns upon learning of Tortuguita’s death.
\n\nJanuary 19: Over the following days, vigils in memory of Manuel Teran are announced at dozens of locations across the US. One group storms the offices of Atlas Technical Consultants in Minneapolis, demanding that they drop Brasfield & Gorrie.
\n\nJanuary 20: Hundreds gather in Weelaunee People’s Park for another vigil. Half a dozen undercover police attempt to infiltrate the crowd. Police in riot gear are staged nearby. Right-wing pundits spread fear about a post by an anonymous online commenter calling for a “Night of Rage.”
\n\nJanuary 21: 300 people gather at Underground Atlanta downtown. About half of the crowd forms a black bloc and begins marching north on Peachtree Street. Windows are broken at Wells Fargo, Truist Bank, and the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters. Two Atlanta police cruisers are vandalized and one of them is set on fire. Actions target the banks and contractors working with the Police Foundation in Chicago, Oakland, and elsewhere.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/11.jpg\")
A burning police car in downtown Atlanta on the night of January 21, 2023.
\nJanuary 22: Windows broken at Atlas Technical Consultants in New York City.
\n\nJanuary 23: Protesters in Philadelphia break windows and barricade streets. Saboteurs in Portland disable an excavator. In Vancouver, Canada, protesters block traffic.
\n\nJanuary 24: An office belonging to KPMG, a donor to the APF, is vandalized in Boulder. The Detroit office of Atlas Technical is targeted as well. “Stop Cop City” is painted on a Wells Fargo in Durham. In Milwaukie, Oregon, protesters picket the offices of Cushman & Wakefield, demanding that John O’Neill III, one of their executives and a member of the APF, cancel Cop City.
\n\nJanuary 25: Alta Vista, a subsidiary of Atlas Technical, is vandalized in New York City.
\n\nJanuary 28: Around 100 people march outside the Ann Arbor Merril Lynch office. Around 40 brand new Porsche luxury vehicles are vandalized by protesters for their connection to the Atlanta Police Foundation.
\n\nJanuary 29: Minneapolis locations of US Bank and Wells Fargo are targeted in memory of Tortuguita and Tyre Nichols.
\n\nJanuary 30: Windows are broken at the Fridley, Minnesota Atlas Technical office. Atlanta City Government and Dekalb County CEO Michael Thurmond approve the Land Disturbance Permit for Cop City. Police cruisers encircle protesters and media, who are locked out of the announcement.
\n\nJanuary 31: In Highland, Indiana, “all the windows and glass doors” of Atlas Technical Consultants are broken and a stink bomb is tossed inside. Six vehicles belonging to the company are also vandalized. Over 1300 environmental groups sign a statement demanding the resignation of Mayor Dickens.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/26.jpg\")
Graffiti in Mexico City reading “For the forest and the earth—Tortuguita presente!
\nFebruary 2: A private autopsy commissioned by Tortuguita’s family reveals that several different officers shot Tortuguita at least 13 times. Rivian charging station and Amazon delivery trucks are vandalized in Brooklyn, New York in solidarity with Atlanta forest defenders. Around 150 police officers surveil and encircle 12 protesters outside of the Columbus, Georgia Brasfield & Gorrie office, who rally peacefully and otherwise without incident.
\n\nFebruary 4: Windows are broken and slogans painted at a Denver, Colorado Wells Fargo branch.
\n\nFebruary 5: Over 100 students and faculty members at Emory University demand that Dr. Claire Sterk resign from the Atlanta Police Foundation.
\n\nFebruary 6: Quality Glass Co. announces they that have broken all professional ties with Brasfield & Gorrie. In a shocking turn of fate, Amy Taylor of the Community Stakeholds Advisory Committee files an appeal against the Cop City Land Disturbance Permit.
\n\nFebruary 9: Windows are broken at the Augusta, Georgia Atlas Technical office. A military recruitment and corporate career fair is disrupted by protesters at the University of Michigan. Dr. Claire Sterk resigns from Atlanta Police Foundation. Three members of Congress, Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush and Senator Ed Markey, echo calls for an independent investigation into Tortuguita’s death.
\n\nFebruary 10: Four Atlas trucks are immobilized at a Columbia, South Carolina Atlas office. Five ATMs are disabled at two Berkeley Bank of America locations. Some 150 students march on Georgia Tech campus, repeatedly attempting to storm the administration buildings and the student center.
\n\nFebruary 13: The Editorial Board of the Emory Wheel, the official news outlet of Emory University, denounces Cop City.
\n\nFebruary 14: AUC students disrupt a campus event to denounce Cop City. 20% of Morehouse College faculty draft an open letter denouncing the project. Alex Joseph of the Dekalb County Ethics Board resigns, citing objection to “closed door meetings.” Two others follow her lead.
\n\nFebruary 17: A Bank of America is spray-painted in Sonoma County, California. A Stop Work appeal filed in relation to Old Atlanta Prison farm is denied by Dekalb County court.
\n\nFebruary 18: Protests take place outside the Washington, DC homes of both Georgia senators.
\n\nFebruary 19: Three pieces of heavy machinery catch fire in Weelaunee Forest, despite extensive police protection.
\n\nFebruary 19-26: A “Week of Solidarity” with Stop Cop City/Defend the Forest movement takes place. Actions, rallies, vigils, fundraisers, parties, and concerts occur in at least 38 cities.
\n\nLate February: Dozens of police vehicles park 24 hours a day on the perimeter of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. Floodlights point directly at the trees. Brent Scarborough Company cuts down brush, lays down gravel inside of the North Gate on Key Road, and lays down silt fencing for erosion control.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/21/31.jpg\")
A banner in support of the movement to defend the forest, sighted in the Caribbean in February 2023.
\nWe endorse the following statement of solidarity with the movement to defend the Weelaunee Forest.
\n\nWe call on all people of good conscience to stand in solidarity with the movement to stop Cop City and defend the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta.
\n\nOn January 18, in the course of their latest militarized raid on the forest, police in Atlanta shot and killed Manuel Teran, known by fellow forest defenders as Tortuguita. This is only the most recent of a series of violent police retaliations against the movement. The official narrative is that Cop City is necessary to make Atlanta “safe,” but this brutal killing reveals what they mean when they use that word.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/01/19/1.jpg\")
In memory of Manuel Teran, also known by the name Tortuguita.
\nForests are the lungs of planet Earth. The destruction of forests affects all of us. So do the gentrification and police violence that the bulldozing of Weelaunee Forest would facilitate. What is happening in Atlanta is not a local issue.
\n\nPoliticians who support Cop City have attempted to discredit forest defenders as “outside agitators.” This smear has a disgraceful history in the South, where authorities have used it against abolitionists, labor organizers, and the Civil Rights Movement, among others. The goal of those who spread this narrative is to discourage solidarity and isolate communities from each other while offering a pretext to bring in state and federal forces, who are the actual “outside agitators.” The consequence of that strategy is on full display in the tragedy of January 18.
\n\nReplacing a forest with a police training center will only create a more violently policed society, in which taxpayer resources enrich police and weapons companies rather than addressing social needs. Mass incarceration and police militarization have failed to bring down crime or improve conditions for poor and working-class communities.
\n\nIn Atlanta and across the US, investment in police budgets comes at the expense of access to food, education, childcare, and healthcare, of affordable and stable housing, of parks and public spaces, of transit and the free movement of people, of economic stability for the many. Concentrating resources in the hands of police serves to defend the extreme accumulation of wealth and power by corporations and the very rich.
\n\nWhat do cops do with their increased budgets and their carte blanche from politicians? They kill people, every single day. They incarcerate and traumatize schoolchildren, parents, loved ones who are simply struggling to survive. We must not settle for a society organized recklessly upon the values of violence, racism, greed, and careless indifference to life.
\n\nThe struggle that is playing out in Atlanta is a contest for the future. As the catastrophic effects of climate change hammer our communities with hurricanes, heat waves, and forest fires, the stakes of this contest are clearer than ever. It will determine whether those who come after us inherit an inhabitable Earth or a police state nightmare. It is up to us to create a peaceful society that does not treat human life as expendable.
\n\nThe forest defenders are trying to create a better world for all of us. We owe it to the people of Atlanta and to future generations everywhere to support them.
\n\nHere are some ways to support the defense of the forest in Atlanta:
\n\nTo endorse this statement, please contact defendweelaunee@riseup.net. This list will be updated regularly. (Jump to individual endorsements.)
\n\nSince April 2021, police abolitionists and environmentalists have been engaged in a furious struggle to prevent the destruction of a precious stretch of forest in Atlanta, Georgia, where the government aims to build a police training compound and facilitate the construction of a giant soundstage for the film industry. In the following analysis, participants in the movement chronicle a year of action, tracing the movement’s victories and setbacks and exploring the strategies that inform it. This campaign represents a crucial effort to chart new paths forward in the wake of the George Floyd Rebellion, linking the defense of the land that sustains us with the struggle against police.
\n\nThis week, activists in Atlanta announced a new website, stopreevesyoung.com, and a nationwide day of action on May 1 aimed at pressuring the construction firm hired to destroy the forest. On April 22-23, Muscogee community members and forest defenders will gather in the forest for discussions, skill shares, and a press conference. A third week of action is scheduled for May 8 through 15.
\n\nIf you are looking for ways to keep the earth inhabitable and put a stop to police oppression, this could be your chance.
\n\nRead on to learn the lessons of a year of forest defense.
\n\n\n\n\n“When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.”
\n\n-Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/4.jpg\")
The forest.
\nAtlanta is a city in a forest, with the most tree coverage of any urban center in America. The South River Forest constitutes the largest continuous section of this forest; it functions as the “lungs” of the city, trapping carbon emissions and runoff in its marshy lands and dense tree canopy. The South River Forest connects other forested areas across the entire southern half of the city and up the east side into Decatur. It is not uncommon to see deer running or playing in the woods—a breathtaking experience, especially in a city. Away from surveillance cameras and strip malls, teenagers go on dates, enthusiasts ride mountain bikes, and elderly people walk their dogs.
\n\nThis is where the governments of Atlanta and Dekalb County and the Atlanta Police Foundation are attempting to build a police training compound. Next door, in Intrenchment Creek Park, a scandalous land-swap deal will give public lands to Blackhall Studios, who hopes to expand their nearby soundstage complex into the biggest such facility on earth. This forest forms an essential link in the urban wildlife corridor, which these developments will destroy. If the developments go forward, the entire metropolitan area, which is currently insulated from the worst consequences of ongoing climate collapse, will experience worse floods, higher temperatures, and smog-filled afternoons just as the world enters a century of climate crises and ecological collapse.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/17.jpg\")
If the developments are completed, everything surrounding and east of Starlight and Constitution will be destroyed.
\nThe area where the Police Foundation hopes to build their training compound is also the site of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. In the 19th century, slaves worked this land after it was taken from the Muscogee (Creek) people, who call the area Weelaunee. During Reconstruction, the land briefly operated as a dairy works; afterwards, it was turned into a prison camp where prisoners were forced to till fields and rear animals in dehumanizing conditions. Some were even lynched. Paving this land over with new carceral infrastructure perpetuates a historical continuum of dispossession and abuse.
\n\nOpponents of these plans regard the police training facility—dubbed “Cop City”—and the Blackhall development as interrelated aspects of the same repressive restructuring of Atlanta. In short, the Blackhall development will exacerbate economic disparities and ecological collapse, while Cop City will equip the police to preserve them.
\n\nThe movement opposing these developments, mobilizing around the watchwords Defend the Forest and Stop Cop City, has passed through several phases of experimentation, using a wide array of tactics and strategies to keep pace with the course of events. It represents an important effort to revitalize eco-defense and police abolition strategies in the wake of the George Floyd Rebellion.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/16.jpg\")
Old Atlanta Prison Farm. An old truck is repurposed.
\nTo understand the movement, it’s necessary to back up a bit.
\n\n\n\n\n“Historians say The Atlanta Way has its roots in Black and white business leaders meeting behind closed doors to negotiate incremental advances in racial issues to avoid public protests and preserve the city’s business-friendly image.
\n\nIn the 1960s, it helped the city overcome the turmoil of desegregation and become a national leader in the Civil Rights Movement. Atlanta emerged as the economic capital of the Southeast. That reputation has endured for decades, thanks to the many champions of The Atlanta Way in business and government.”
\n\n–“The Atlanta Way is an Ideal Never Fully Realized,” Atlanta Business Chronicle
\n
The “Atlanta Way,” as it is known locally, is a model of social management that goes back to the early 1960s. During the re-emergence of Black resistance movements in the Deep South after the Second World War, business leaders, landlords, government officials, and industrial magnates established a cross-caste alliance for the express purpose of forestalling racial justice movements in the city. They hoped that by increasing cooperation between the white corporate power structure and the Black business class, they could pre-empt the demands of the exploited Black masses without significantly altering the post-war capitalist economy, which brought unprecedented power to the ruling class in the United States following the destruction of European industry. Developed in the Jim Crow period and its immediate aftermath, the Atlanta Way subordinated public policy to the personal relationships and back-door dealings of the rich, a trend that continues to this day.
\n\nThe basic structure of pre-emptive counterinsurgency reflected in the Atlanta Way strategy dictates that Black people hold political office and fill roles in administration, policing, and the justice industry. In return, those who hold these positions are expected to impose repressive policies, budget cuts, and mass privatization on the region’s Black and poor majority. Many Georgia liberals believe that assuring progress on racial inequality means creating financial and business incentives for developers, universities, construction companies, industries, and real estate investors. Nepotistic patronage systems—similar to what is known as clientelism in some parts of the world—are supposed to foster a thriving Black middle class.
\n\nYet Black residents of Atlanta are still overrepresented in the city’s jails, unemployment statisics, food lines, and probation offices. All of the large public housing developments in the city have been closed down, all of the large shelters for the houseless have been shuttered, and historically Black neighborhoods face an unprecedented influx of non-Black tenants displaced from other cities and neighborhoods by the rising costs of living around the world.
\n\nThe Atlanta Way connects our time to the Jim Crow era. Without it, Atlanta would not be a major destination for profiteers and businessmen. By organizing city affairs around private agreements between politicians and capitalists, by coordinating investments and commerce according to the principles of privatization and corporate incentives, the architects of this system have smuggled Reaganite neoliberal policies into institutional leftism. In framing this as “anti-racist,” political elites deprive poor people of a necessary tool for fighting against immiseration. Indeed, the Atlanta Way could make it appear that anti-racism is simply a creative way to package the plundering of resources by politicians and their colleagues in the business and non-profit sectors.
\n\nToday, Atlanta has become the most unequal city in the continental US, and the Atlanta Way is beginning to break apart. Direct resistance to police brutality and racism also has a long, militant, history here, and it is clear that the years ahead will create a hostile environment for the ruling cliques. This is the context in which we can anticipate a new wave of resistance to the Atlanta Way from above. International investors and increasingly white, wealthy enclaves have no long-term investment in the urban core; they use the city as a space for profiteering because of its low taxes and relatively affordable land. Resistance will also come from below: from renters, workers, students, prisoners, young people, and residents facing displacement and erasure. The discourses of the past century will no longer serve to reconcile these two camps. The city government and its vast non-profit hydra are trapped between two conflicting forces; they may be swept aside in increasingly desperate fighting between them.
\n\nThe Obama era witnessed several large-scale autonomous movements, including Occupy Wall Street, the first wave of Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the revolt in Ferguson, and the struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
\n\nThe election of Donald Trump coincided with a far-right reaction propelled by memes, online misogynist forums, xenophobia, white nationalism, and anti-elitism. This in turn catalyzed a fierce anti-fascist movement. At the high points, it involved millions of ordinary people; but the front-line participants largely emerged from the same social strata as previous grassroots movements, all of which were de-emphasized in favor of building common cause with urban liberals and progressives against the extreme right.
\n\nThe George Floyd uprising changed all of that. In a matter of weeks, tens of millions of people confronted the police, directly challenging the right of the state to determine what constitutes safety or to defend disparities in access to resources.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/1.jpg\")
Atlanta, Summer 2020: days we will never forget.
\nIn the final days of May 2020, protests and riots spread from Minneapolis to the rest of the country, including Atlanta. For several weeks, thousands of people clashed with police and National Guardsmen near Centennial Olympic Park, constructing barricades, throwing back tear gas canisters, and breaking up the sidewalks into projectiles. On some occasions, large crowds smashed storefront windows, shined lasers at police helicopters, and threw fireworks at police. Every day, dozens of protests rocked the metropolitan area, with revolts also taking place in some suburbs.
\n\nOn June 12, 2020, two Atlanta police officers killed Rayshard Brooks, who had been sleeping in his car at a Wendy’s. In the following days, determined crowds torched the restaurant. Clashes continued on and off for weeks at the nearby Zone 3 Precinct, then located at Cherokee and Atlanta Avenue in Grant Park, bringing tear gas and explosions to the residential streets almost nightly. Protesters also established a small occupation at the burned-out remains of the Wendy’s.
\n\nAmid this unrest, the Attorney General brought murder charges against officer Garrett Rolfe for the killing. In response, hundreds of police officers initiated a citywide sickout, calling out of work and refusing to perform their normal duties. Many officers quit their jobs due to the stress of facing popular opposition and fear of legal consequences for their systematic use of force.
\n\nFrom the beginning of June to the end of 2020, more than 200 Atlanta police officers left their jobs, including the Chief of Police. Some state patrolmen resigned after protesters wrecked their headquarters on July 4, 2020. Some sheriff’s deputies, public transit cops, and affiliated staff also sought new employment. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations has sent out mass recruitment emails to sociology students, suggesting that they too are desperate for more agents. The system faces a crisis of legitimacy and an impossible institutional dilemma as white business owners, landlords, business associations, and international real estate companies demand a crackdown.
\n\nThis was the context in which the City of Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Foundation, and the office of former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms developed the plan to build the Cop City. Bundling together cultural nationalism with calls for peace, Mayor Bottoms appealed for calm as her officers dragged students out of cars, beat protesters with batons, and shot tear gas into crowded streets.
\n\nThe consequences of these events are still underestimated by commentators and activists alike. Some suffer induced amnesia about the revolt; others have moved on to simple commemoration; still others continue isolated but no doubt justified forms of subversive action. Meanwhile, forces in local and federal government, business associations, police departments, and armed militias have continuously worked to make sure a popular uprising does not reoccur.
\n\nIn addition to passing laws and killing dissidents, this institutional reaction has focused on managing public perception. Industrial interests and private investment companies have conducted influence campaigns using local news outlets—40% of which are owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a right-wing organization with ties to former US President Donald Trump. Between Sinclair, Nexstar, Gray, Tegna, and Tribune, this coordinated reframing of events has damaged the way that many sectors of the television-viewing public perceive the revolt and its consequences.
\n\nIn the wake of the uprising, a false narrative circulated to the effect that the police, demoralized and underfunded, could not control the “crime wave” sweeping the country. This narrative, orchestrated in response to the popular demand to “defund the police” advanced by some sections of the 2020 revolt, has shaped the imaginations of suburban whites, small business owners, and many urban progressives. The “crime wave” framework implied that police departments around the country had in fact been defunded or had their powers curtailed and were consequently unable to assure social peace or free enterprise. In reality, the vast majority of police departments received an annual increase in their budgets, as they normally do. If anything, they accrued more power following the events of 2020, from the political center as well as the right—witness the accession of Eric Adams to mayor of New York City.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/3.jpg\")
The Police Foundation enables corporations to funnel money to law enforcement. Behind every ribbon-cutting ceremony, a line of riot police.
\nThe government of Atlanta has developed a few tentative solutions to the dilemmas they face. To follow through on their commitments to their backers, city politicians need to continue sacrificing public assets on the altar of the economy in order to attract more major investors to the region, especially the film industry and technology companies. To maintain control in a period of rapid displacement and rising cost of living, with chronic tension between the conservative state government and the liberal city administration, they need to funnel more resources towards law enforcement throughout the region. Finally, to appease the increasingly rebellious lower classes, they need to frame this process of restructuring and repression in the language of Black empowerment, social justice, and progressivism.
\n\nThe bureaucrats are not in a good position to handle this. Decades of tax cuts and deregulation have created infrastructural failures and breakdowns of all kinds. Among other concerns, Atlanta lost the bid for a second Amazon headquarters because the public transit, one of the least-funded in the US, was not even operable when the corporate scouts came to visit. At the same time, it is precisely the low taxes and absence of regulation that attract capital to the state of Georgia, so cultivating a social-democratic governing strategy now may be impossible without creating a flight of wealth to other parts of the country. It seems that the current plan is to give over as many public contracts and resources to private developers as possible, to allow them to incur the costs of social disintegration and anger, to use the police to control the blowback, and to use images of Martin Luther King, Jr. to pre-empt meaningful resistance.
\n\nThus, the plan to transform a wild space into a police training compound is dubbed the “Institute for Social Justice.” The plundering of public assets for the benefit of a movie company and real estate mogul is described as an opportunity to create “good jobs” for local Atlantans, not as a criminal expropriation of infrastructure. The clear-cut that Blackhall Studios plans to trade the city government in exchange for a section of the forest is to be renamed “Michelle Obama Park.”
\n\nThe government plans to begin clearing the forest for construction in May or June of 2022. What follows is the story of the movement determined to stop this.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/8.jpg\")
Intrenchment Creek Park—future soundstage complex?
\nFor the sake of brevity, this timeline does not include lawsuits, injunctions, petitions to stop work, and the like.
\n\nSpring-Summer 2021: The City of Atlanta, in partnership with Blackhall Studios, approves the swap of Dekalb County public lands at Intrenchment Creek Park for a parcel of land currently owned by the movie studio. The land deal is conducted in a semi-secretive series of board meetings and hearings.
\n\nApril-May 2021: Activists and local ecologists uncover a plan by the Atlanta Police Foundation to transform the land known as the Old Atlanta Prison Farm at Key Road and Fayetteville Road into a massive police training compound.
\n\nMay 15, 2021: Over 200 people gather at Intrenchment Creek Park for an informational session about the development proposals.
\n\nMay 17, 2021: According to an anonymous statement on Abolition Media Worldwide, seven machines left unguarded on the land parcel owned by Blackhall—chiefly tractors and excavators—are vandalized. Their windows are broken, their tires cut, and they are set on fire. The statement connects the sabotage to the destruction of the forest:
\n\n\n\n\nWe don’t need a soundstage for entertainment. Everything we need is already there. We don’t need police training facilities. We demand an end to policing… Any further attempts at destroying the Atlanta Forest will be met with similar response. This forest was here long before us, and it will be here long after.
\n
June 2021: Notices appear affixed in the forest notifying passersby that trees in the area have been “spiked,” with the consequence that cutting them could damage saws and possibly injure those utilizing them.
\n\nJune 10, 2021: Three more excavators are burned on the parcel of land owned by Blackhall Studios. Neither action appears in local news media, although photographic evidence of the damage circulates on social media.
\n\nJune 16, 2021: On the night that the Atlanta City Council is to vote on the construction ordinance for the “Cop City,” a handful of activists protest outside of the private residence of City Councilperson Joyce Shepherd, the sponsor of the ordinance.
\n\nJune 23-26, 2021: The first week of action brings hundreds of people into the movement.
\n\nAugust 23, 2021: In Roseville, Minnesota, the windows of Corporation Service Company office are smashed. An anonymous online statement reads,
\n\n\n\n\nAfter smashing the office door and throwing cans of paint inside, a message was left sprayed across the front: HANDS OFF THE ATLANTA FOREST. Demands are being made for CSC to drop their client, Blackhall Studios. Blackhall Studios would like to level the South Atlanta Forest to build the country’s largest soundstage and an airport, creating unprecedented levels of gentrification in the city.
\n
Summer 2021: The Stop Cop City coalition and other left-wing groups join the movement. Grassroots activist organizations and networks create their own demonstrations, social media pages, and meetings. Local independent media outlet Mainline Zine steps up coverage of the movement more or less from the perspective of these organizations.
\n\nSeptember 2021: City Council meetings, held on Zoom because of coronavirus-related restrictions, are repeatedly flooded with hours of objections to the project. Votes on the ground-lease ordinance are repeatedly delayed because of these objections and demonstrations at the homes of Atlanta Chief Operations Officer Jon Keen and City Councilperson Natalyn Archibong.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/5.jpg\")
Outside of the home of Natalyn Archibong. Police arresting protesters so that City Council could approve the land lease.
\nOctober 7: Color of Change announces that Coca-Cola is stepping down from the Atlanta Police Foundation board.
\n\nOctober 18: A small group of rapid-responders disrupt the surveying and clearing of grounds at Old Atlanta Prison Farm. A surveillance tower is destroyed.
\n\nNovember 10-14: A wide range of cultural events, info-nights, bonfires, and meetings occur during a second week of action. This coincides with the establishment of an encampment in the forest; it lasts for six weeks.
\n\nNovember 12: A demonstration takes place at Reeves Young Headquarters. Intelligence gathering by activists indicates that Reeves Young Construction has been contracted to destroy the forest and build the Cop City development. About 30 people converge at the company headquarters in Sugar Hill, Georgia, holding banners and demanding that the company sever their contract with the Atlanta Police Foundation.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/defendATLforest/status/1461175735540924416\n\n\n
November 20: Two more bulldozers burn in the forest. According to an anonymous statement republished on the Unoffensive Animal website, anonymous forest defenders
\n\n\n\n\n…burnt two bulldozers in the south Atlanta forest. No Copy City, No Hollywood dystopia. Defend the Atlanta Forest.
\n
This equipment was located on the land-swap parcel currently owned by Blackhall Studios, the planned future location of “Michelle Obama Park.”
\n\nNovember 27: A group of Muscogee (Creek) people return to their ancestral lands at the current site of Intrenchment Creek Park in the South River Forest, which, in Creek, is called Weelaunee. The Muscogee delegation calls on everyone to defend the land from the Cop City and Blackhall developments.
\n\nDecember 17: A dozen protesters march to the entrance gate of Blackhall Studios on Constitution Road and block the main entrance, chanting slogans. Shortly after, a large contingent of police raids the forest, evicting the protest camp established there.
\n\nDecember 20: According to an anonymously-written statement republished on the website Scenes from the Atlanta Forest, banners are hung in the backyard of the private residence of Dean Reeves, chairman of Reeves Young. Reportedly, Dean Reeves was among the board members present at the November 17 action and personally shoved and assaulted protesters.
\n\nJanuary 9: Survival Resistance, a local environmentalist organization, begins a campaign against AT&T, which is funding the Cop City development, holding protests outside their offices.
\n\nJanuary 18: In order to begin “boring” the land, a process necessary for determining the construction supplies needed for laying foundation, Reeves Young and a representative of the Atlanta Police Foundation enter the woods near Key Road and use a bulldozer to knock down many trees. Construction is stopped when protesters demand that they leave. The bulldozer remains at the scene; it is subsequently vandalized, losing its windows.
\n\nJanuary 19: Several people climb into tree houses in the forest near the previous day’s confrontation, announcing their intention to remain there in order to delay further destruction.
\n\nJanuary 25-27: Long Engineering resumes surveying Old Atlanta Prison Farm, accompanied by the Atlanta Police Foundation, Atlanta police officers, and Dekalb County sheriffs.
\n\nJanuary 28: 60 forest defenders march into South River Forest near the Old Atlanta Prison Farm to stop the boring and soil sample collection. Dekalb County Police attack the protesters, arresting four—the first arrests inside the forest in the context of the movement.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/6.jpg\")
Forest defenders light smoke bombs and flares on their way to meet the tractors on January 28, 2022.
\nJanuary 31: “Autonomous vandals” break windows and spray paint “stop cop city” on a Bank of America in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. According to an online statement, this occurs in solidarity with the protesters arrested on January 28.
\n\nMarch 1: According to another communiqué,
\n\n\n\n\nFive large Long Engineering trucks used to do survey work to help delineate destruction in the South Atlanta Forest were destroyed in solidarity with eco-defenders currently protecting the forest from being clear-cut to build cop city and more Hollywood infrastructure for Black Hall Studios.
\n
March 19: Six machines owned by Reeves Young, including two large excavators and a bulldozer, are destroyed in Flowery Branch, Georgia. The online communiqué reads:
\n\n\n\n\nUnless your company chooses to pull out of the APF’s Cop City project of its own volition, we will undermine your profits so severely that you’ll have no choice but to drop the contract.
\n
March 26: Wells Fargo and Bank of America ATMs are vandalized in City Center, Philadelphia. According to an online statement, both institutions were targeted because they fund the Atlanta Police Foundation.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/unoffensive112/status/1509418720493453318\n\n\n
Movements usually take one of two common paths from inception to peak to decline.
\n\nThe first possibility is gradual escalation. This is the model commonly embraced by activist organizations, labor unions, student groups, and the like. In this approach, movement organizers or cadres initiate meetings and protest actions designed to walk as many people as possible through the contradictions inherent in the reformist process, slowly introducing the participants to the need for additional methods.
\n\nWhen this strategy goes well, an experienced movement then initiates a sequence of broader and more militant efforts focused around particular demands or aims. In the austerity era, however, it is very difficult to compel the authorities to grant demands; more frequently, police repression, charismatic careerists, and attrition all contribute to the slow deceleration of the struggle. In regions or companies that are experiencing substantial economic growth, movements are sometimes able to win their demands, but this generally comes at the expense of the mobilization itself, involving the co-optation of movement leaders, the criminalization of effective tactics, and the subsequent restructuring of resources and institutions—for example, in the form of automation or outsourcing.
\n\nAlternatively, it sometimes occurs that a movement erupts into the spotlight with a sudden concussive gesture that draws attention and power into a kind of vortex of refusals. Such struggles are often catalyzed by single issues or grievances that rapidly become paradigmatic of all social ills. Most of the mass revolts that have broken out since 2019 have followed this path, including the so-called October Revolution in Chile, the George Floyd uprising in the US, the revolt against Omar Bashir in Sudan, and the 2022 uprising in Kazahkstan. By escalating into a general clash with all forms of power, the protagonists of these struggles indict the entire social order, posing the question of revolution in practical terms. To date, however, most such uprisings have been crushed by police, swallowed by civil wars, or annihilated by geopolitical superpowers.
\n\nThus far, the fight to defend the Atlanta forest does not fit either of these patterns. It may represent a different trajectory, suggesting a way forward for struggles after the tumultuous events of 2020.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/2.jpg\")
“Barricades close the path but open the way.” A blockade defending the forest.
\nIn April 2021, when activists discovered these two proposals to destroy the South River Forest, they spread the news via word of mouth for several weeks about a large information sharing session at Intrenchment Creek Park. Around 200 people attended this initial event. The city government had yet to announce its plans publicly, so the opponents were able to craft the public narrative themselves, ensuring that the facts didn’t get lost in the shuffle. At the information session, multiple masked presenters contextualized the development within an overall schema of 1) racist and authoritarian backlash against the George Floyd protests, 2) pan-urban gentrification and displacement processes, and 3) climate collapse and the long-term future of the region.
\n\nWith this event, event organizers denied the city government the opportunity to introduce the developments to the public with a distorted narrative—assuming they intended to publicize them at all. Attendees asked questions, shared perspectives, and committed themselves to sharing what they had learned with their communities while organizing grassroots, bureaucratic, and direct resistance. This established basis for a collective struggle that could utilize multiple strategies and tactics.
\n\nWithin 48 hours, saboteurs destroyed seven unguarded excavators, tractors, and other pieces of heavy machinery. An anonymous statement appeared online detailing their motivations and methods and connecting the attacks to the struggle against colonialism, authoritarianism, and gender normativity. This catapulted the movement into its first phase of development. To date, no one has been arrested for these actions.
\n\nOver the following weeks, meetings, posters, and fliers spread throughout left-wing networks, farmers’ markets, and do-it-yourself subcultural spaces. Local ecologists and folk historians with long-term investment in the land organized tours and plant identification walks. A few candidates for City Council adopted the struggle as a component of their electoral campaigns.
\n\nIn mid-June, saboteurs published another statement announcing that a number of trees had been “spiked” and three more excavators had been damaged. The sabotage occasioned no dismay among the opponents of the development. Rather, because it occurred so early in the movement, this kind of bold action became a part of its genetic material. While many people celebrated these actions, it remained to be seen whether the movement would develop a participatory strategy enabling more people to take action beyond sharing information or cheerleading the courageous deeds of anonymous activists.
\n\nIf the participants in the first phase of the movement had aimed to create a political scandal, they had not succeeded yet. However, they had drawn the attention of a few hundred people who were willing to support a movement that included vandalism and other forms of sabotage. They had also established a discourse about the forest on the terms set by autonomous activists, not politicians or police.
\n\nWhat was missing in the first phase inversely structured the phase that followed.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/11.jpg\")
Intrenchment Creek Park.
\nBy mid-June 2021, most of the grassroots left as well as autonomous, anarchist, and radical groups in Atlanta were aware of the proposed developments in the forest, but they were still searching for strategies that would enable them to build enough power and leverage to halt the projects. Some people—including activists connected to nationwide socialist organizations, abolitionist networks, and ecological advocacy groups—began knocking on doors in the vicinity of the South River Forest, reasoning that neighborhood organizations and households around the forest would be necessary allies, as they would be among those most impacted by deforestation and sound pollution. The canvassers hoped to familiarize themselves with the discourse of the neighbors and learn what might help to mobilize them.
\n\nOther strategies emerged around the same time. One group focused on the City Council meeting of June 16, which was supposed to vote on the land-lease ordinance sponsored by then-Councilperson Joyce Shepherd. Because the meeting occurred online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the City Council members hosted their conversation from their respective residences. With a bit of research, a handful of protesters located the home address of Councilperson Shepherd. This group went to her home and displayed a banner during the meeting. While the majority of the protesters chanted from the sidewalk, one individual approached her house, knocked on the door, and rang the doorbell before returning to the street. Inside, unbeknownst to the protesters, Shepherd was panicking. Those in power typically assume that their actions occur in an abstract political “space,” and that the consequences of their decisions will not directly impact them. Shepherd called off the vote and left the meeting early to call the police, who arrived after the protesters had dispersed.
\n\nIn the hour that followed, Joyce Shepherd held a press conference from the newly constructed Zone 3 Police Precinct on Metropolitan Parkway. At the precinct, Shepherd was surrounded by police officers and news media. She described in detail the aims of her land lease ordinance, the nature of the project, and the efforts of protesters to stop her. With this short statement, she catapulted the movement and its story into the mainstream. The following day, she made another statement in which she claimed that she would push through the ordinance “no matter what” the city residents that she ostensibly represented had to say. Her fellow representatives rejected the tactics of the protesters, falsely implying that their methods were illegal.
\n\nWith this action, a few people were able to accomplish an early goal of the movement—to transform the Cop City/Blackhall developments from back-door agreements into public scandals. They also delayed the vote, concretely displaying the potential of direct confrontation. A new strategy was emerging: to pressure decision-makers directly.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/13.jpg\")
Intrenchment Creek Park walking path. Resistance in every inch of the forest.
\nThe first planned Week of Action began a few days later, on June 23. The organizers hoped to catalyze a wide array of interventions. They held meetings to explain their ideas, aiming to interconnect resistance against the Cop City development, the Blackhall development, and the accompanying gentrification and deforestation. Some set up a shared calendar and online promotion plan so that more people could step forward to express themselves in the context of the movement.
\n\nIn this regard, the first week of action was a resounding success. In the course of the week, there were conversations about ecology, colonialism, and sexuality; there were guided tours by day and by moonlight; there were nightly bonfires in a forest clearing; there was a hardcore punk show at a nearby venue, during which hundreds of participants repelled police; and there was a rave party deep in the center of the forest, gathering some 500 attendees in a utopian ambience illuminated by glow sticks and lasting into the early morning hours. If the organizers had set out to generate a cultural consensus among the thousands of people in the city’s DIY art, poetry, queer, punk, and underground dance subcultures, they succeeded.
\n\nOn the night of June 24, people visited the home of Blackhall Studios CEO Ryan Millsap in the outer Atlanta suburb of Social Circle. Activists hoped that placing fliers at the home, street, investment properties, and post office box of Millsap would, in their words, “inspire others to research and take the fight to those directly responsible for the destruction of the forest.”
\n\nTwo days later, on June 26, the final day of the first week of action, fifty or more protesters marched to the headquarters of the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF). As the crowd emerged from Five Points metro station, a small contingent of officers attempted to arrest someone. The crowd engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with the police and successfully repelled them. Continuing behind a banner reading “Another Word for World is Forest,” a reference to the Ursula K. Le Guin book The Word for World is Forest, the group descended on Deloitte Tower on Peachtree Street. Advancing past security, they marched straight to the APF office and smashed the glass doors and windows before overturning tables in the tower lobby. The participants successfully dispersed into the city center without arrests, while dozens of police vehicles frantically established a perimeter—effectively shutting down the central downtown corridor.
\n\nCorporate media coverage of the action at the headquarters of the Atlanta Police Foundation on June 26, 2021.
\nThe movement expanded over the following months. New organizing groups were announced as activist organizations and independent media outlets developed a framework enabling them to orient themselves to the struggle. While corporate news and the Police Foundation failed to present a coherent media narrative following the vandalism of the APF offices, organizers got to work circulating informational fliers and online graphics, conducting interviews, knocking on doors, and organizing phone-in campaigns during subsequent City Council meetings. For nearly all of August and September, the “Stop Cop City Coalition” and others worked to introduce tension and contest the City Council process. Following the intervention at the home of Joyce Shepherd, protesters gathered outside the homes of possible “yes” voters on the nights that the vote was slated to take place, causing further delays in the process. For a moment, it seemed possible that the campaign could achieve an easy victory.
\n\nUnfortunately, it was not to be. As those who study revolutionary movements know, the police perform an essential function in class society, without which many other hierarchies and exploitative relations could not exist for long. This is not simply an economic or civic issue that can be worked around with some clever ideas and a bit of pressure. Despite the efforts of organizers, which culminated in 17 hours of oppositional public comment, the ordinance was passed on September 8 while police arrested protesters outside the home of councilperson Natalyn Archibong. The land hosting the Old Atlanta Prison Farm was turned over to the Atlanta Police Foundation.
\n\nMany sincere people were demoralized by this turn of events. Some turned their attention to the upcoming local elections, hoping that the city government could be stacked with abolitionist or progressive candidates who might strike down the project. As it turned out, Mayor Bottoms did not run for re-election, and the former mayor, Kasim Reed, lost to current mayor Andre Dickens. Joyce Shepherd also lost her campaign for re-election. Yet since the elections, nothing has changed regarding the Blackhall and APF developments.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/12.jpg\")
Outside of the home of Jon Keen, Chief Operations Officer of Atlanta Government.
\nThe Atlanta Police Foundation has contracted at least three companies to build their compound. The surveying appears to be the work of Long Engineering, while the construction itself is to be done by Reeves Young Construction and Brasfield & Gorrie. It is not clear yet who will clear the land in Intrenchment Creek Park, where Blackhall Studios hopes to expand.
\n\nThe information that is known to date was hard won by diligent activists on the ground. Shortly after the City Council vote in September, surveyors and small work crews began entering the site near Key and Fayetteville Roads. The trucks and uniforms revealed the names of the contractors, which once again gave opponents of the Cop City the chance to initiate a struggle on their own terms.
\n\nOn October 8, about two dozen people entered the work site from the forest and confronted contractors who appeared to be clearing land for the purposes of taking photographs and samples. When the workers left, a surveillance tower erected by the police was toppled. Forest defenders dispersed with no detentions.
\n\nHad forest defenders utilized only virtual or bureaucratic channels to collect information, they might not have learned that Reeves Young were being called in to do the actual destruction until it was publicly announced much later. The ability to break news to the public before the city government has been a consistent advantage.
\n\nIt’s a widely observable point of failure in movements when the protagonists lose the initiative and resort to attempting to recreate an earlier phase of events. Nostalgic for the heady days of open revolt, the chaos of fiery nights and smoke-filled shopping districts, people resolve to call together a coalition of the willing to kick things off again. Hoping it is enough to set a clear time and place, preparations are made, and a crowd assembles—but falls short of expectations, consisting chiefly of dedicated militants or friends.
\n\nAs the weeks pass, this becomes the new high-water mark. With a more serious attitude, a group of friends or a network of crews calls together another demonstration “like the last one,” but perhaps in a different location or with a more ambitious intention. This may work a few times—but new roles and rules of engagement are being established, the euphoric sense of power that animated the early days is gone, and nothing can bring it back. The large crowds have dissipated and the police are learning every step of the way. Eventually, even this comes to an end, and the participants devise all kinds of theories to explain why. The conclusion typically involves finger-pointing, resentment, denunciations, and splits as the rebels blame each other for their shared failures and limitations. An entire book could be written about this phenomenon. But if participants in struggles can become aware of this general tendency, that awareness might open up space for more creative efforts.
\n\nFollowing the City Council defeat in September, it wasn’t clear how many people would continue to oppose the developments, though the small confrontation on October 8 suggested that some wished to. Sensing the difficulty of this moment, organizers announced a second Week of Action for mid-November.
\n\nThe second Week of Action was similar to the first, but there were innovations. Once again, various groups organized cultural events, information nights, bonfires, and meetings—but this time, many of these occurred in or near a more publicly advertised encampment at Intrenchment Creek Park.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/defendATLforest/status/1458631384931700739\n\n\n
The organizers of the first Week of Action had welcomed a small cluster of participants to camp, essentially in secret, on a stretch of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. This time, a few dozen people pitched tents, erected tarps and make-shift kitchens, hung banners, and constructed a bona fide protest camp in the woods. This camp persisted in some form for six weeks. Unsurprisingly, the overall diversity of those who gathered had decreased compared to the first week of action, a general tendency of movements and mobilizations. When a struggle contracts as a consequence of disorientation, repression, or other setbacks, the movement oriented towards it often divides back into its constitutive elements, usually along ethnic, generational, gender, and class stratifications, despite the efforts and good will of the participants.
\n\nNow that Reeves Young had been identified as the contractor hired to destroy the forest and build the police training compound, many participants in the movement shifted to focusing on them. On November 12, 2021, immediately after the second Week of Action, thirty people descended on their offices in Sugar Hill, Georgia, forty miles outside of Atlanta. Holding banners and chanting slogans, this group walked right into the offices, disrupting a board meeting involving company president Dean Reeves and CEO Eric Young. The executives did their best to appear unfazed, commenting on the millions they would line their pockets with. Slowly, the atrium filled with workers concerned about the protests and the aggression and violence of their bosses, who had begun shoving and even punching protesters, going out of their way to target the smallest people present. The protesters had already accomplished their goal of applying direct confrontational pressure to the Atlanta Police Foundations service provider.
\n\nThree days later, two more excavators were burned on the parcel of land currently owned by Blackhall studios. These were the eleventh and twelfth pieces of heavy machinery to be sabotaged, reckoning by the claims of responsibility that appeared online. Unlike the previous anonymous statements, the statement accompanying this action was succinct, stating only what had occurred and why.
\n\nThe movement had faced setbacks, but it had not collapsed into a private grudge match between hardened militants and the Police Foundation.
\n\nOn November 27, 2021, 250-300 people gathered in Intrenchment Creek Park to observe and participate in a ceremonial stomp dance and service of the Muscogee (Creek) people. This particular delegation came from the Helvpe Ceremonial Grounds in eastern Oklahoma, invited to their ancestral homelands by a local indigenous organizer.
\n\nThe Muscogee people were once organized into a confederation of tribes spanning much of what is now Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. The Muscogee peoples and their Mississippian ancestors in this region, known as “mound builders,” maintained a network of towns, each preserving political autonomy and territorial independence, allocating resources and making decisions in a consensus process unknown to their later European antagonists. The concept of private property that reigns supreme in our society was anathema to the Muscogee peoples, who held essential goods and lands communally. Nearly all of what is now Alabama was taken from the Muscogee in 1814, following the defeat of the Red Sticks revolt in which many Muscogee people allied with Tecumseh and the insurgent Shawnee peoples against colonial expansion into their communities. Between 1821 and 1836, the Muscogee were forcibly removed from their homes to Oklahoma, where many still live.
\n\nWhen the November 27 delegation came to the South River Forest, or Weelaunee, to perform their dances and speak their language, they shared some of their knowledge and histories with those gathered. But their goal was not simply to share culture in a depoliticized way. They encouraged the current residents of Atlanta to stop the destruction of the forest and halt the Cop City and Blackhall developments, understanding these as the latest chapters in a long story of destruction beginning with the European colonization.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/9.jpg\")
The Muscogee (Creek) delegation performs a stomp dance in the Weelaunee Forest on November 27, 2021.
\nIn the weeks following the ceremony at Intrenchment Creek Park, participants in the encampment in the forest outfitted it with a field kitchen and sitting area and erected banners and signs in the forest visible to mountain bikers, hikers, and others who passed through the park. Establishing a semi-permanent presence in the forest was a way to gather information on an ongoing basis and to provide an immediate deterrent to developers.
\n\nThe encampment was evicted on December 17, after six weeks. That morning, about a dozen people blocked the entrance to the existing Blackhall Studios site, located on Constitution Road. This contingent subsequently burned a flag, chanted slogans, and “hexed” the media company before dispersing into the forest. In the following hours, presumably at the urging of Blackhall, Dekalb County Police entered the forest en masse, mobilizing police cruisers in the parking lot, officers on foot, helicopters and drones overhead, and unmarked vehicles on the streets. The officers were likely intimidated by the low-visibility terrain; in any event, all of the forest defenders based in the encampment escaped without being detained. This was the first time a concerted effort was made by law enforcement to engage protesters in the South River Forest.
\n\nA month later, on January 18, 2022, Reeves Young and the Atlanta Police Foundation entered the forest near Key Road with a bulldozer. They began knocking down trees so that their associates in Long Engineering could survey the land, placing stakes and marking trees for removal. Approximately a dozen people in dark clothing approached the workers and APF representative Alan Williams, ordering them to leave. The bulldozer was subsequently vandalized.
\n\nSeveral people quickly built multiple impressive tree houses near the surveying site and climbed into them. News of this new tactic spread rapidly. It couldn’t have come at a better time.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/atlanta_press/status/1510278635705487363\n\n\n
In the confrontations with contractors on October 8 and January 18, small, dedicated groups were able to halt work without resorting to force. It is possible that this period has ended, or else that the timeline for surveying and sample boring now requires business executives and police chiefs to expose their employees to greater risks in pursuit of their respective bottom lines.
\n\nFrom January 25-28, repeated efforts were made to stop tree felling and soil boring, all to no avail. In some instances, only a handful of activists were on the scene behind makeshift barricades. Reinforcements could not arrive rapidly enough to assist those on the ground. Later in the week, on January 28, around 60 people marched to defend the forest at 10 am on a weekday. This crowd, the largest to gather in any one place in many months, marched into the forest, onto the Prison Farm property, around erected barricades and tree houses, and directly confronted construction workers who were boring holes in the ground.
\n\nPolice attacked the march, tackling several people; the other demonstrators did not mount a proportional response to this aggression, despite outnumbering the police. Perhaps some of the tactics popular during the 2020 rebellion, such as mass use of umbrellas or makeshift shields, could have equipped the participants to feel more capable of decisive action. Alan Williams of the Atlanta Police Foundation was filming protesters, looking a little anxious as he did so.
\n\nThis was the first time that protesters were arrested in the South River Forest, on either the Prison Farm or Intrenchment Creek sides. Each new phase of the movement has been constructed out of elements missing from the phases that preceded it, developing out of the contradictions and limits of the previous phase. It may be possible to chart a new path forward from this point starting from the most resilient aspects of the previous stages.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/15.jpg\")
They go low, we go high. A treehouse in the forest.
\nEvery movement needs both offensive and defensive strategies. In this case, defensive strategies would enable activists to withstand repression and protect the forest. Offensive strategies would enable activists to impose their own timelines, battlegrounds, and confrontations, demoralizing those who seek to destroy the forest and eventually forcing them to abandon the planned developments.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/defendATLforest/status/1494339171887943690\n\n\n
As of the beginning of April, it appears that on-the-ground resistance to construction is not currently a viable offensive strategy. The presence of activists and organized groups in the South River Forest should be understood as the most sophisticated defensive strategy available to the movement. The forest will remain a site of contestation as long as the APF and Blackhall Studios seek to destroy it. The more activists understand the forest and its specific terrain, the more prepared groups will be to carry out actions there; the more practices and infrastructures participants establish that newcomers can make use of, the better. By continuously connecting a struggle to the fate of a particular place, participants foster an emotional and sensuous relation to the land that is seldom found in movements around abstract goals.
\n\nSome components of a coherent and efficient defense:
\n\nDefense cannot substitute for offense, but it is a necessary aspect of all fights. If on-the-ground defense becomes the sole focus of a movement, that movement will eventually be defeated. In this case, that would mark a step back from the beginning of the movement, in which the participants set the terms of the entire conversation. If large-scale development does not begin for many months, it could be disastrous for embattled activists to spend that period accumulating charges and injuries fighting uphill battles against an increasingly emboldened and militarized opponent.
\n\nTherefore, other means are necessary.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/efjournal/status/1503767540463329281\n\n\n
Whoever sets the terms of a fight can arrange the dynamics to the disadvantage of their adversary. When police drive hostile crowds into empty corridors, parking garages, or alleys, that is what they are trying to achieve. This is what governments do by continuously framing conflicts as discrete “issues” and “debates,” conferring agency to those best situated for generating public consensus and structuring the consumption of information (i.e., politicians and the electoral machinery that promotes them). For those with less means, the best strategies catch their opponents off guard, compelling the adversary to respond in ineffective or imprecise ways. Ideally, the adversary should not even understand what is happening.
\n\nParticipants in direct-action-oriented movements generally have an overdeveloped focus on offense. Gathering information, audacious frontal engagements, surprise attacks, swarming tactics, hit-and-run maneuvers, striking unprotected targets or infrastructure, targeted online campaigns, setting the pace with both concentrated groups and decentralized crowds… all of these are more or less familiar to those experienced in riots, rebellions, and direct action campaigns over the last decade.
\n\nYet there is more to say about the principles of offense and how they relate to this movement.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/10.jpg\")
Old Atlanta Prison Farm. The land has been slowly healing from centuries of violence.
\nTo date, the movement to defend the Atlanta forest has not coalesced around a single coherent strategy. The participants have employed several parallel strategies in tandem, with the strengths of one approach filling in for the weaknesses of another. This works best when the participants tolerate those with different tactics and priorities. In a movement that accommodates a diverse range of approaches, particular strategies can succumb to “evolutionary pressures” without that jeopardizing the movement as a whole.
\n\nAs alluded to earlier, there have been tensions in the movement regarding the priorities of different groups, the presumed identities of the participants, and the alleged connections between their respective experiences of oppression and their political ideologies. At times—and this is hardly unique to this movement—single-issue mentalities have undermined some participants’ ability to imagine a struggle cohering around overlapping but distinct aims and motivations; at worst, this has led some to claim that those with different priorities are not worth collaborating with. Many movements have been hamstrung by this kind of mentality over the past half decade—and police departments, city governments, reactionaries, and liberal opportunists have not missed the chance to exploit this. Both experience and common sense suggest that it is not wise to place all of one’s eggs in one basket—and that redundancy is not always a sign of disorganization, as some centralizing tendencies imply, but can be an expression of a more resilient approach to organization, as long as the general goals remain in focus.
\n\nCritical, inquisitive attitudes will generally serve us better than any form of dogmatism. If one group or tendency can accomplish their goals alone, then let them do so. Since none has, yet, in this case, it must be necessary to work alongside others, even if one would prefer not to. If one can only work with those one can bully, intimidate, or shame, it should not be surprising if one’s allies lack conviction, courage, and intelligence. The clear articulation of differences, criticisms, and concerns is a strength in movements, but ideally, they should be articulated in a spirit of mutual education and learning, lest they become a part of the repressive landscape itself, serving police and developers as various tendencies and cliques slowly cannibalize each another.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/defendATLforest/status/1452666819240734728\n\n\n
In this general spirit, it is worth spelling out a strategy that has been latent in the movement since last fall—from the demonstrations at the houses of Joyce Shepherd and the other city council representatives to the pressure directly leveraged against Reeves Young and Ryan Millsap of Blackhall Studios. This approach could be summarized thus: hold those responsible for these projects personally liable for their decisions and the decisions of the companies they own. Because the entire system of rules and norms we live under dictates that exploiters, warlords, mass murderers, and those who destroy ecosystems must not face pressure at home as a consequence of the decisions they make at work, this strategy is bound to be controversial. It rejects the entire logic of “limited liability” that forms the basis of corporate rule in our society.
\n\nAt the beginning of the 21st century, animal rights activists in the United Kingdom and the United States set out to take down the biggest animal testing corporation on the planet, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). The campaign to stop HLS, “Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty” (SHAC), formally disbanded in 2014, is best known for its period of ambitious international participation in the early 2000s. The methodology of this movement, which encompassed direct action, symbolic protests, cultural events, sabotage, pranks, and more, included many features that have since been used in a wide range of campaigns. The overall strategy of SHAC involved mobilizing a few hundred people to maximize their effectiveness against a major enterprise by focusing only on their ability to function economically. The methods and outlook of the “SHAC model” could be instructive to opponents of the Cop City and Blackhall Studios development in the South River Forest today.
\n\nThe SHAC model is centered around tertiary targeting, i.e., isolating service providers from third-party contracts in order to limit their ability to provide services to the client, which is the actual target.
\n\nThe SHAC model isolates the service provider (e.g., Reeves Young and whoever is contracted for Blackhall) from all their third-party clients: from the other construction contracts they have, from the companies that manage their landscaping or data, and from any company that provides them labor or supplies.
\n\nThe service provider depends on many third parties. Those third-party contracts provide the service provider with insurance, materials, equipment, security, catering, cleaning, mail service, data maintenance, and more. All of those third parties can be pressured to drop the service provider. Furthermore, the service provider is likely a company with more than one client, and those other clients can also be pressured to drop the provider. Any company or contractor that is able to move their money away from the service provider because they have other economic opportunities can be pressured to do so.
\n\nEssentially, this strategy does not directly challenge the bottom line of any of the third-party companies; it only isolates and demoralizes the service provider and, therefore, the client. To date, it remains uncertain who the service provider is for Blackhall, although that information will come out sooner or later.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/defendATLforest/status/1483867828935610380\n\n\n
In actions outside the forest—at some distance from the object of their efforts—it might be more difficult for activists to maintain a sense of urgency. Targeting individuals at their offices and homes will chiefly bring out those who are excited about such confrontational methods, rather than those who prefer to maintain welcoming spaces of encounter, to build tree houses or clean campsites or cook for others, to cultivate the kind of collective imagining that is needed to transform society.
\n\nIf they fail to do proper research or mapping, activists could waste time targeting minor institutions and companies that are unwilling or unable to drop their contracts. They could spend months facing down insignificant companies with many possible replacement subcontractors. The forces bent on destroying the forest may be able to ensnare activists in legal battles. Laws are always biased in favor of profiteering.
\n\nParticipants in this kind of strategy sometimes develop a warped idea about the nature of power. While our society is ruled by corporations and states, and those entities are run by real human individuals, patterns of exploitation, abuse, destruction, and violence are not simply caused by the malevolence of specific people. Holding individuals responsible for their actions can be an effective tactic in protest campaigns, but the ultimate goal is to emancipate all humanity and the earth, including those who profit on the current arrangement, not to pass judgment or punish evildoers.
\n\nAll real proposals can be put to the test through practice and judged by the outcome. The proposal to employ this strategy to defend the forest is built on a simple hypothesis: if Reeves Young is forced to drop the contract with APF, APF investors will lose the confidence required to find a replacement and the project will fail. The same goes for the Blackhall project. If activists defeat Reeves Young by means of direct action and self-organization, even if the project finds a new contractor, the sophistication and confidence that the movement will have developed in the process will likely help it to evolve once again.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/defendATLforest/status/1473374883811934211\n\n\n
Many struggles against infrastructure projects have taken place in the United States over the past two decades. Grassroots movements have halted pipelines, industrial developments, new jails, mountaintop removal projects, and deforestation efforts. We can also learn a lot from movements that failed, such as the fight to stop the construction of Interstate 69 and the struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock.
\n\nIn the movement against I-69, the so-called “NAFTA superhighway,” a small group of anarchists and environmentalists developed a strategy focused on material disruption. Utilizing direct action and outreach efforts in the part of southern Indiana where the construction was slated to begin, activists hoped to nip the project in the bud. In the end, the industrial interests behind the highway project out-maneuvered the autonomous groups and their allies. The strategy of nipping the project in the bud committed organizers to extending themselves hours away from their homes, in an often hostile region. They were able to build strong relationships with the farmers directly facing land seizures by the highway, but the FBI worked to isolate those farmers by visiting their churches and speaking with pastors who did not feel threatened by the highway but were primed for anti-anarchist panic. Had those organizing against the highway done more to build momentum and participation further along its projected route, in friendlier farming regions, college towns, and larger cities further north, it is possible that a broader and more robust struggle could have emerged. This strategy would have relied on digging in and inhabiting camps over the years that it took for the state to reach them, rather than attempting frontal confrontation at the beginning of construction.
\n\nIn the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, a powerful network of Indigenous groups, environmentalists, anarchists, and protesters coalesced alongside spiritualists, lawyers, and local politicians seeking to stop the construction of an oil pipeline across Lakota lands. Despite the efforts of early organizers and activists, the movement generally centered the voices of trained activists and politicians operating within the colonial structures over the voices of young people and working-class Lakota people in general. This contributed to a tendency to condemn effective tactics—“nonviolent” or otherwise—in favor of symbolic actions and legalistic strategies.
\n\nIn the end, a confusing series of announcements by then-President Barack Obama implied that the movement had succeeded, when in fact the construction was only delayed. After this, David Archambault and others within the movement utilized identity-based arguments to demobilize the encampments and disaggregate the movement as a whole. Archambault was rewarded generously for playing this role, while other participants in the movement were imprisoned. This coincided neatly with the strategy of Tiger Swan, the private security contractor hired by the pipeline company, which aimed to divide the camp along lines of identity in order to polarize it and isolate radicals.
\n\nThe defenders of the Atlanta forest should continue to invest in mass-oriented strategies, not specialized campaigns, using cultural means to cultivate the kind of widespread support that will enable them to replenish numbers and withstand repression. At the same time, they should popularize decentralized tactics that directly empower individuals in order to limit the damage that authoritarians and opportunists can inflict on the movement.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/14.jpg\")
Forest Defenders confront Long Engineering and Dekalb County Police.
\nWe win more than we realize. Across twenty years of resistance, expressed in direct action movements on both “local” and “global” scales, attitudes have shifted throughout our society. The efforts and ideas of social movements have been instrumental in this transformation. We have seen the results in widespread approval of Indigenous and environmentalist resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016, in the unprecedented participation of white and non-Black youth alongside Black rebels in the George Floyd Uprising of 2020, and in the general consensus, across an entire cross section of political tendencies, that the neoliberal order that existed from 1980 on is in crisis and that a new chapter in world politics is desirable as well as inevitable.
\n\nIn many environmental defense movements, it is very difficult to accomplish the short-term goals; the protagonists often proceed as if they do not expect to win. The mid-range goals, though rarely articulated aloud, typically include more general aims such as:
\n\nWhen we consider the past decade through this lens, it is hard to argue that anarchists, abolitionists, anti-fascists, environmentalists, feminists, prison organizers, and Indigenous and Black radicals have failed. Some of these goals have been achieved to such an extent that tactics and proposals that were confined to the radical fringe 20 years ago have been adopted by millions.
\n\nLong-term goals—world revolution, decolonization, the abolition of capitalism, the destruction of borders and racial hierarchies, the abolition of police and standing armies, the advent of real community—do not seem immediately attainable, but they too may be closer. Since 2018, according to the International Monetary Fund, the tides of revolution, insurrection, upheaval, and mass disobedience have reached historic proportions. Thus far, most of these rebellions have been suppressed or appeased, confirming the classical revolutionary doctrine that only a worldwide revolution can truly emancipate us, as the ruling order now commands forces of repression with global reach. Nonetheless, as we are seeing in Ukraine right now, there are limits to what even the most powerful of those armies can do.
\n\nBut what about those of us engaged in concrete struggles today, struggles we are determined to win? Paradoxically, it appears that nowadays, it is easier to achieve mid-range goals than short-term goals, and people focus on long-term goals more often than short-term ones. Somehow, thousands have participated in destroying shopping districts, establishing temporary cop-free zones, and blockading airports, but it is still very difficult to imagine protecting a single wildlife corridor at the outer limits of one city. This is unnerving, but it should not be demoralizing. As we have already seen, it is more likely that thousands of people will rip up paving stones and use them to fight the police than it is that the Atlanta City Council will heed the demands of its own constituents. It was precisely this dramatic sequence of events, spiraling outward from the ruins of the Third Precinct in a storm of riots, that made it possible to talk about restructuring law enforcement across the country—not the reformist organizing campaigns of the preceding decades.
\n\nIn light of this, those dedicated to defending the Atlanta forest find themselves in a difficult predicament, though not an impossible one. On the one hand, they must develop a framework that distributes agency broadly—something that many groups can participate in and influence. The aims of these groups must be immediate enough that small victories can enable people to build confidence and momentum. And they must proceed as if victory is possible—for surely, it is—while bearing in mind that another revolt against the police, gentrification, climate collapse, or racism could erupt everywhere, informed by experience emerging from a struggle that is, for the time being, a local affair.
\n\nThis is an immense responsibility—and a gift. The influence of intentional groups and organizations can get lost in the chaos of massive uprisings, as millions take hold of their own lives. Yet in the past decade, we can see how the innovations of radicals and small groups in local movements can shape the imaginations of the mass movements that follow. The defense of the Atlanta forest will influence struggles to come. What we do now will set a precedent for what happens later. Let’s not back down.
\n\nNo Cop City, No Hollywood Dystopia!
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/defendATLforest/status/1513380231460974597\n\n\n
In 1821, after coercing the Muscogee to leave Georgia in a forced march, the government of Georgia extended a rail line west to the area near the border of Muscogee and Cherokee lands, where the city of Atlanta now sits. Industrial development was a major contributing factor, including the desire to establish trade outposts and a national rail system connecting the agricultural zones of the South with the industrial zones of the Northeast.
\n\nUsing labor and infrastructure from neighboring Decatur, which had been established in 1822 following the seizure of Muscogee territory, residents and businesses rapidly expanded around the terminus of the rail line. It became a major logistical hub, arguably the biggest in the southeastern United States.
\n\nIn 1864, during the US Civil War, Union General Sherman attacked Atlanta, torching nearly all of the railway and surrounding buildings, effectively destroying the capacity of the Confederate Army to move troops and resources through its territory. In the years following, the population of Atlanta exploded. It became one of the largest cities in the Southeast, with a large Black and working-class population.
\n\nDuring Reconstruction, the borders of the city expanded to accommodate the waves of new residents, including emancipated Black people arriving from plantations. With this growth, the power of the municipal government expanded in conjunction with local capitalists’ efforts to attract investments to the new state capital. The government was given the right to open public workshops, mills, factories, and parks.
\n\nIn 1920, the government of Georgia turned a municipal dairy farm located on Key Road into a jail. The transformation of the dairy works from city-owned factory into forced labor camp illustrates the relationship between production and statecraft in the US. Despite the hopes of early reformers and ideologues, the state is not a vehicle for conflict resolution, nor an instrument for class reconciliation, nor a means of establishing social peace. The chief function of the state is to enforce hierarchies in knowledge (sacred, legal, or otherwise), control of resources (including land, raw materials, capital, means of production, labor, armies, and the like) and decision-making (bureaucracies, courts, congresses, and so on). As long as a state controls a territory, it will reserve the right to transform any element of that territory into a police operation or facility.
\n\nWe can see this in the history of the former dairy works on Key Road. As the Atlanta Community Press Collective documented in their 2021 article, “Slave Labor, Overcrowding, and Unmarked Graves”, the Atlanta City Prison Farm rebranded itself again and again over the following years, while extending its authority and resources under successive phases of “humanitarian” reforms and restructuring.
\n\nIn the beginning, the opening of the Prison Farm was justified by a false narrative about economic stagnation at the dairy works, as well as moral outrage surrounding the egregious conditions at a nearby stockade on Glenwood Avenue. Subsequently, in 1944, the prisoners were forced to erect a new building, a hospital. This hospital was meant to provide medical relief for prisoners, who were overworked, sexually abused by guards, tortured, and sometimes killed by prison authorities. Once it was completed, the authorities put prisoners to work cleaning and maintaining it, but the medical infrastructure itself was used to treat those afflicted with venereal diseases in the city at large, not the prisoners who built it—continuing a longstanding strategy of providing social benefits to one section of the working class by intensifying the exploitation of their unemployed and racially targeted neighbors.
\n\nThe prison was used for the systematic incarceration of loiterers and “drunks,” driven by the moralistic notion that solitude and hard work would renew the “honor” of the captives. Overcrowding, a favorite excuse of the carceral state, was used to justify expanding the prison six times from 1929 to 1960.
\n\nIn the early 1980s, pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union compelled the Prison Farm to replace its solitary confinement units with twenty additional cells; reformers who do not understand the need to destroy these facilities often consequently function to introduce a more rational and efficient cruelty. Around that time, the sentences for alcoholism and other “quality of life” crimes began to shorten, just as the population of Atlanta began to contract. Between 1970 and 1990, the city lost 21% of its residents—most of them white—as industrial reorganization and racial segmentation in the working class provided jobs for white workers in the clerical, service, and logistics sectors further outside of the city limits, while Black workers remained concentrated in the increasingly destitute and abandoned urban core.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/04/11/7.jpg\")
The ruins of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm have long been the haunt of rebels and visionaries.
\n\n\n\n“Carceral reformists hope to use this opportunity to introduce adjustments that will stabilize the regimes of confinement and control for another century. But at this juncture, inspiring actions could catalyze a confrontational movement that pushes for abolition rather than reform.”
\n\n\n
\n- Storming the Gates
\n
For over a century, demands to reform the carceral system have preserved its underlying logic of control, smuggling it into the future time and again. The developers of Cop City promote the idea that it will train officers in “less lethal” policing techniques. Following the 2014 revolt in Ferguson, Missouri, civic groups stepped up demands that police officers be outfitted with body cameras, hoping to curb extrajudicial killings of Black people. This did not limit police violence, but it did enable the police to secure even more resources.
\n\nAs the Fulton County Commissioners channel over a million dollars towards the creation of a new jail, John Keen and others in the city government are justifying this with a “humanitarian” discourse about overcrowding. It’s possible that they intend for this new jail to appear in the vicinity of the Cop City compound.
\n\nOver the past half decade, abolitionists have gained ground against these tactics, fighting to overturn, defund, or shut down carceral institutions rather than simply to reform them. But if these efforts are to succeed, ordinary people must understand themselves as the agents of social change—like the thousands of participants in the siege of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis—rather than looking to political representatives or non-profit organizations. Even the sincerest politicians are bound by procedures, laws, and back-room deals that do not influence most people. Grassroots action is simply more efficient than institutional change, even if institutional change is your only goal. This understanding informs the current struggle to stop police expansion in the South River Forest.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2019/09/19/the-wrong-ice-is-melting-the-wrong-amazon-is-burning-no-government-will-save-the-planet-for-us", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2019/09/19/the-wrong-ice-is-melting-the-wrong-amazon-is-burning-no-government-will-save-the-planet-for-us", "title": "The Wrong ICE is Melting, The Wrong Amazon is Burning : No Government Will Save the Planet for Us", "summary": "A flier about what we can do to interrupt the causes of climate change ourselves via direct action rather than petitioning the state.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/09/19/header1.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/09/19/header1.jpg", "date_published": "2019-09-19T16:17:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:40Z", "tags": [ "direct action", "ecology", "climate change", "environment" ], "content_html": "From September 20 to 27, tens of thousands will take to the streets to denounce the causes of climate change and call on governments to address what may be the most drastic crisis facing humanity in the 21st century. These mass actions will showcase the growing anger of a new generation that has known nothing but crisis, war, and the threat of environmental collapse. We have prepared the following text as a flier encouraging climate activists to consider how to interrupt the causes of climate change via direct action rather than petitioning the state to solve the problem for us. Please print these out and distribute them at climate protests and everywhere else you can.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/09/19/government-wont-save-us_print_color.jpg\")
Click on the image to download the color PDF for printing.
\nFinally, people are filling the streets to call on governments to address the climate crisis, the most serious threat facing humanity in the 21st century. This is long overdue. But what good will it do to petition the same sector of society that created this problem? Time and again, we have learned that the state does not exist to serve our needs but to protect those who are profiting on the causes of this crisis.
\n\nThe most effective way to pressure politicians and executives to address the climate crisis is to show that whatever they fail to do, we will do ourselves. This means moving beyond symbolic displays of “non-violence” to build the capacity to shut down the fossil fuel economy ourselves. No amount of media attention or progressive rhetoric can substitute for this. If we fail to build this capacity, we can be sure that the timeline for the transition to less destructive technologies will be set by those who profit on the fossil fuel economy.
\n\nSeveral examples from recent social movements show that we have the power to shut down the economy ourselves.
\n\nIn 2011-2012, the Occupy Movement demonstrated that tens of thousands of people could make decisions without top-down organization, meeting their needs collectively and carrying out massive demonstrations. On one day of action, participants shut down ports up and down the West Coast, confirming that coordinated blockades can disrupt the global supply chain of energy and commodities.
\n\nIn 2016, people converged to fight the Dakota Access Pipeline, a corporate project threatening Native land and water. Tens of thousands established a network of camps to block construction, demonstrating a new way to live and fight together. The Obama administration canceled the pipeline, causing many occupiers to go home, but the Trump administration reinstated it—confirming that we must never count on the government to do anything for us.
\n\nIn France, occupiers blocked the construction of a new airport at la ZAD, the “Zone to Defend.” Farmers teamed up with anarchists and environmentalists, establishing an autonomous village that provided infrastructure for the struggle. After years of struggle, the French government gave up and canceled the airport.
\n\nWe have seen train blockades in a variety of struggles. In Olympia, Washington, anarchists blocked trains carrying fracking proppants in 2016 and in 2017, forcing the company to stop transporting the commodity. In Harlan County, Kentucky, coal miners have blocked a coal-carrying train after the Black Jewel company refused to pay wages they owed to workers. It only takes a few dozen people to shut down a key node in the supply chains of the global fossil fuel economy. Imagine what we could do on a bigger scale!
\n\nGovernments serve to protect the economy from those it exploits. The state exists to evict, to police, to wage war, to oppress, and above all to defend the property of the wealthy few. The perils of climate change have been known for years, but governments have done little in response, focusing instead on fighting wars for oil, militarizing their borders to keep out climate refugees, and attacking the social movements that could bring about the sort of systemic change that is our only hope of survival.
\n\nThe capitalist economy is literally killing us. Let’s begin the process of shutting it down.
\n\nAnother end of the world is possible!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/09/19/government-wont-save-us_front_black_and_white.jpg\")
Click on the image to download the black-and-white PDF for printing.
\nScientific consensus has finally emerged that global warming is taking place as a result of industrial capitalism and with dire consequences for life on earth. Corporate efforts to bribe scientists to argue otherwise are attracting fewer and fewer takers; this is especially telling in view of how many researchers depend on industry backing. But rather than engaging with the fact that capitalism itself is destructive, governments and liberal environmentalists are promoting corporate responses to the problems posed by climate change.
\n\nOur comrades have published a full-length critique of the prevailing narratives around climate change, Introduction to the Apocalypse [PDF, 1 MB].
\n\n Click on the image to download the color PDF for printing.
\nIf we really believed what scientists are telling us about global warming, the fire engines of every fire department would sound their sirens and race to the nearest factory to extinguish its furnaces. Every high school student would run to the thermostat of every classroom, turn it off, and tear it out of the wall, then hit the parking lot to slash tires. Every responsible suburban parent would don safety gloves and walk around the block pulling the electrical meters out of the utility boxes behind houses and condominiums. Every gas station attendant would press the emergency button to shut off the pumps, cut the hoses, and glue the locks on the doors; every coal and petroleum corporation would immediately set about burying their unused product where it came from—using only the muscles of their own arms, of course.
\n\nBut it appears we’re too out of touch to grasp what’s happening. And as long as that continues, we’ll be powerless to stop it.
\n\nThose who learn about the destruction of the environment from books or the internet can’t hope to rescue anything. The decimation of the natural world has been going on around us for centuries now; it takes a particularly bourgeois brand of blindness to drive by felled trees, spewing smokestacks, and acres of asphalt every day without noticing that anything is happening until it shows up in the newspaper. People for whom reality is composed of news articles, rather than the world they see and hear and smell, are bound to destroy everything they touch. That alienation is the root of the problem; the devastation of the environment simply follows from it.
\n\nWhen profit margins are more real than living things, when weather patterns are more real than refugees fleeing hurricanes, when emissions cap agreements are more real than new developments in our own neighborhoods, the world has already been signed over for destruction. The climate crisis isn’t an event that might happen, looming into view ahead; it is the familiar setting of our daily lives. Deforestation isn’t just taking place in national forests or foreign jungles; it is as real at every strip mall in Ohio as it is in the heart of the Amazon. The buffalo used to roam right here. Our disconnection from the land is catastrophic whether or not the sea level is rising, whether or not the desertification and famine sweeping other continents have reached us yet.
\n\nAs usual, the people who brought this crisis upon us are eager to explain that they are the best qualified to remedy it. But there’s no reason to believe that their motives or methods have changed. The results are in that smoking causes cancer, but they’re still trying to sell us low-tar cigarettes.
\n\nForget about nuclear power, solar power, clean coal, and wind turbines. Forget about carbon trading, biofuels, recycling programs, organic superfoods. Forget about new legislation, along with every other inefficient, insufficient response involving ballots, petitions, or some other proxy. Our only hope is to fight with our own hands, to take a stand on the ground beneath our feet—rediscovering in the process what it means to be a part of the world, not separate from it. Every tree they try to cut down, we can stop them. Every poison they try to release into the atmosphere, we can block them. Every new “sustainable” technology they introduce, we can unmask them.
\n\nThey aren’t going to stop destroying the planet until we make it too costly for them to continue. The sooner we do, the better.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/climate/climate2_b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/climate/climate3_b.jpg\")
From the makers of global warming— “sustainable” energy!
\nWhere others see hardship and tragedy, entrepreneurs see an opportunity for financial gain. Putting the “green” in greenhouse gases and the “eco” in economy, they greet the apocalypse with outstretched wallets. Are natural disasters wrecking communities? That’s great—sell the survivors disaster relief and put up luxury condominiums where they used to live. Are food supplies contaminated with toxins? Slap “organic” on some of them and jack up the price—presto, what was once taken for granted in every vegetable is suddenly a selling point! Is consumer culture devouring the planet? Time for a line of environmentally friendly products, cashing in on guilt and good intentions to move more units.
\n\nSo long as being “sustainable” is a privilege reserved for the rich, the crisis can only intensify. All the better for those banking on it.
\n\nMany conservatives deny that our society is causing global warming; of course, some still don’t believe in evolution, either. But what they themselves believe is immaterial; they’re more concerned with the question of what it is profitable for others to believe. For example, when the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its 2007 report, an ExxonMobil-funded think tank linked to the Bush administration offered $10,000+ to any scientist who would dispute its findings.
\n\nThat is to say—some people consider it a better investment to bribe experts to deny that anything is happening than to take any steps to avert catastrophe. Better that the apocalypse snatches us unawares so long as they can maintain their profits one more year. Sooner the end of life on earth than the possibility of life beyond capitalism!
\n\nCertain do-gooders would like to claim credit for bringing global warming to the attention of the public, even though radicals have been clamoring about it for decades. But politicians like Al Gore are not trying to save the environment so much as to rescue the causes of its destruction. They are pressing for government and corporate recognition of the crisis because ecological collapse could destabilize capitalism if it catches them off guard. Small wonder corporate initiatives and incentives figure so prominently in the solutions they propose.
\n\nLike their conservative colleagues, liberals would sooner risk extinction than consider abandoning industrial capitalism. They’re simply too invested in it to do otherwise—witness the Gore family’s long-running relationship with Occidental Petroleum. In this light, their bid to seize the reins of the environmentalist movement looks suspiciously like a calculated effort to prevent a more realistic response to the crisis.
\n\nSome people attribute the crisis to overpopulation—but how many shantytown dwellers and subsistence farmers do you have to add up to equal the ecological impact of a single high-powered executive?
\n\nFor centuries, socialists have promised to grant everyone access to middle class standards of living. Now it turns out that the biosphere can’t support even a small minority pursuing that lifestyle; one might expect socialists to adjust their notion of utopia accordingly. Instead they’ve simply updated it to match the latest in bourgeois fashions: today every worker deserves to eat organic produce and live in a “green” condominium. But these products only came to be as a marketing ploy to differentiate high-end merchandise from proletarian standard fare. If you’re going to think big enough to imagine a society without class differences, you might as well aim for a future in which we share the wealth of a vibrant natural world rather than chopping it up into inert commodities.
\n\nIn practice, Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism served as a convenient means to swiftly jerk “underdeveloped” nations into the industrial age, utilizing state intervention to “modernize” peoples who still retained a connection to the land before eventually dropping them unceremoniously at the margin of the free market. Today, party communists have gotten no further than blithe assurances that new management would take care of everything. Sing along to the tune of “Solidarity Forever”:
\n\nIf the workers owned the factories, climate change would not exist
\nAll the smoke from all the smokestacks would be changed to harmless mist …
An individual or community can live a completely “sustainable” lifestyle without doing anything to hinder the corporations and governments responsible for the vast majority of environmental devastation. Keeping one’s hands clean—“setting an example” that no statesman or tycoon will emulate—is meaningless while others lay the planet to waste. To set a better example, stop them.
\n\nToo many radicals respond to the crisis with despair or even a kind of wrongheaded anticipation. There’s no reason to believe the exhaustion of the planets petroleum supply will put an end to patriarchy or white supremacy. Likewise, it’s all too likely that hierarchy can make it through ecological collapse intact, so long as there are people left to dominate and obey.
\n\nWe’ll get out of the apocalypse what we put into it: we can’t expect it to produce a more liberated society unless we put the foundations in place now. Forget about individualistic survival schemes that cast you as the Last Person on Earth—Hurricane Katrina showed that when the storm hits, the most important thing is to be part of a community that can defend itself. The coming upheavals may indeed offer a chance for fundamental social change, but we have to come up with a compelling vision and the guts to implement it.
\n\n![abruptly cancelled](\"https://i0.wp.com/atlpresscollective.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-24.png\"){kind=link}