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Correspondents’ Note: Cop City is the name people have given to the proposed largest police training facility/mock city in the U.S., in Atlanta, Georgia. To build it, the police foundation and corporations backing the project will have to destroy the largest urban green space in the country. For the past year, local abolitionists have mobilized and invited supporters from around the world to join the fight, and to experience and live in the forest in a continual occupation. It has so far disrupted and stalled attempted forest destruction even as the project is held up in court. In addition to Cop City, a part of the forest is also under threat for destruction by developer Ryan Milsap, who plans to build a soundstage for the film industry which will be one of the largest in the country.
In December 2022, six unarmed forest defenders were arrested in a raid in the forest and charged with “domestic terrorism.” On January 18, 2023, police murdered one protester, 26 year old Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, otherwise known as Tortuguita, and arrested several more on the same charges. Corporate media coverage reported offcer’s fatal shots as a response to Tortuguita’s gunfire, later claiming that no body cam footage existed. Since the murder, footage from police body cameras has been found and strongly indicates that the injured officer was hit by friendly-fire from another officer – not Tortuguita. In the protests following the murder, even more forest defenders were arrested on domestic terrorism charges.
As of this writing, there is currently a 5th Week of Action taking place in the forest. This mass mobilization has seen massive police repression in only a few days, with another 35 indiscriminately arrested, 23 of whom were charged with domestic terrorism and denied bond. This brings the total number of forest defenders facing domestic terrorism charges in Atlanta to 42. And yet, the Week of Action, as well as increasing local, national, and international solidarity, continues.
The following is an interview with Kei, a local resident of Gresham Park, the majority Black, working class neighborhood in the South Atlanta area, adjacent to the South River Forest and the Weelaunee’s People Park – the proposed site of Cop City. Correspondents for the People’s Tribune talked with Kei over the phone on January 19, the day after the police murder of Tortuguita.
People’s Tribune: Thank you for taking the time to talk with us, I know it’s probably been really intense. We’re curious as to how you’re doing, how it’s been going down there, what the needs are.
Kei: I’m okay, really sad and very, very angry. Down here it’s sad, it’s rageful. On one hand this is what we expect from the police because they are fundamentally violent, but on the other hand police murdering a protester for protesting is pretty unprecedented, so we’re pretty shocked. Both are true at the same time. This is exactly what we’ve been protesting, folks here are both deeply sad, and incredibly angry, and I think all the more determined, because it’s just a very clear reminder of what it is we’re resisting.
PT: What called you to defend the forest?
Kei: I have a not very unique story in that I live in one of the neighborhoods surrounding the forest. I’ve lived here about 7 years now, and when I first moved, I heard gunshots every day, all day. I didnt know for about a year [where they were] coming from, but then I moved a couple blocks closer to the forest, the gunshots felt more frequent and louder, and I thought “What was going on?” And I learned actually in 2020 under COVID, when everything shut down and I was at home during the day, I learned these gunshots were all day long. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t think.
And then I realized it was police practicing at the shooting range that was in the forest, which I didn’t realize existed. Actually since the movement started I learned that most of my neighbors believed that those gunshots are like gang violence – It’s actually the police, and they’re practicing shooting at a yellow school bus – I kid you not – in the forest by my house. And so when I learned that, I was obviously infuriated, and I was deeply concerned because most of my neighbors are children, and I thought: children now are at home, stuck inside hearing violence – if my nerves are shocked, their nerves are shocked. Nobody should have to go through this, and children should definitely not have to.
I started making phone calls to my neighbors, and knocking on doors – we’ve got to do something. I looked into news articles from the local paper from years before when people tried to get this shooting range shut down. At some point in this time, we learned about the proposal to build Cop City, in that same forest where that police shooting range already exists. I was like – Oh no they don’t, are you kidding me?
So a whole movement sprung up. Part of what brings me to movement is that I live there. I use that forest for recreation, to hang out with my friends, go on walks; my neighbors use it to walk their dogs, to go on bike rides, to stroll their children around. And so part of it was just feeling a connection to those woods in particular, feeling a deep frustration and anger with the police and the shooting range, and that daily reminder of violence. Knowing some of my neighbors are incarcerated, because there’s a juvenile facility and a women’s detention center in the area.
People who are incarcerated should not have to be reminded of police violence every day of their life. And I just already happened to be a police abolitionist, because I’m a person in the 21st century, and have lived through many rounds of anti-police moments. I’ve been in Atlanta for a long time, and when I moved here I learned about Katheryn Johnston, who was a 91 year old woman who was killed in her home by the police on a no-knock warrant. A raid, that was because of some bullshit, so-called war on drug policy of the time. They raided her home and they murdered her. They were in the wrong house of course. They planted drugs on her, and then they covered it up for years. It had been years since she was killed, but nobody knew the story until it came out.
And then I lived through so many people being killed by the police, so many people. Joetavius Stafford was one of the early names I remember. I was here when Troy Davis was executed in prison at Jackson State. I don’t know if you know the Troy Davis story, but Amnesty International was up in arms about it. Everyone in the whole world knew Troy Davis was innocent. There was a massive outpouring: internationally and in Atlanta. And they still murdered him, even though he was innocent. Seeing that, and then seeing Joetavius, who I think was killed at a train station he was I think 19 or 18, he was in highschool coming back from a school dance – murdered by police. Through the years the list goes on: Oscar Cain, and of course in 2020 Rayshard Brooks was killed by the police. My neighbor in 2015 was shot by the police, in the same neighborhood of the forest, Gresham Park. Same situation as Katheryn Johnston: they were at the wrong house, they busted down his back door, they killed his dog, they shot him in the leg. They tried to cover it up – they lied to my neighbors and said oh, there’s an armed suspect on the run, and it’s an active shooter situation, they shot a cop – the cops shot each other! Three police officers shot each other, and shot my neighbor. Nobody else had a gun, just the cops. Living through all of that, and then Rayshard Brooks – I just was already a police abolitionist. And then we learned about Cop City, I was like “wow, it’s in my very own backyard.”
PT: What is your perspective on the claim that this movement hasn’t drawn in enough local community support? What has community been like?
Kei: I really appreciate this question. As we’re talking, I am at a preschool in my neighborhood. The director of the preschool has opened it for folks who are mourning and want to be together, and want to think about next steps. This is in my neighborhood, by the forest, in Atlanta – this is as local as it gets. I am from the neighborhood, there are many, many, many of us who are involved, from the surrounding neighborhoods. I want to question this idea of community – what is community? I have lots of neighbors, and I have lots of neighbors who want to stop cop city. And I have some neighbors who don’t. Just because we live next to each other doesn’t mean we have the same ideas about the future of this world.
I’m at this one preschool, but we’re working with a network of preschools in South Atlanta who want to stop cop city. And the children who, 3, 4, 5 years old, are saying “don’t cut down the trees! Save the trees! The people need to speak out, we need to go tell the people about what’s happening. Why are these bulldozers here, why are the cops here?”
That’s our community, you know? It’s very, very much a community based movement. And it’s beyond community, it’s a national and international movement, because this facility has national and international implications. And we’re grateful for that – I’m super jazzed that people from New York and Greece and Spain and Chile are excited about this movement and are standing in solidarity with us. Because they recognize that this doesn’t stop here. But also, I’m from here, a lot of us are from here. We live here, we go to school here, we work here, we play here.
There’s a big mainstream narrative that it’s not local, but they are always going to say that. I’m from Atlanta, I know about Atlanta – they tried to kick out SNCC from Atlanta in the late 60s. They said they’re not from here…what does that mean? It’s SNCC, it’s the coolest thing that’s ever happened in this city! They’re always going to say “you’re not from here,” because they think it’s effective, but I think a lot of people see through it and they’re like “wait, where my kid goes to school, all of the teachers are down with the movement, and we are too.” And a lot of the kids are down with the movement. And not just down for the movement, they’re putting on protests and making banners. The children are making banners for the tree sitters that then get strung up in the forest so the tree sitters can see banners drawn by children, supporting them. The children aren’t just supporting the movement, they are in the movement, they’re a crucial part of the movement.
And so it’s infuriating, it’s really frustrating to hear from our city council members, so-called – which to be clear, not my city council members because I don’t live in the City of Atlanta, a lot of these neighborhoods are not in the City of Atlanta, and so we don’t have a lot of representation from City Council members – but then they say: “The community supports cop city.” Which one? Not my neighborhood which you don’t represent anyway, not the ones you do represent. So they’re spreading lies. The community overwhelmingly does not support cop city! They want to see the violence end which means they want to see no cop city.
PT: What strategies are being used? With the murder of Tortuguita, where do we go from here? What do you need from comrades across the nation, etc.?
Kei: It’s a really broad and decentralized movement. So there’s been people doing all kinds of different strategies based on what they think might be most effective, and everyone in the movement has welcomed that. We don’t know what will win to defeat the U.S.’s largest police training facility, so let’s try everything – let’s go! So some folks have been targeting city council, some folks have been targeting the Atlanta Police Foundation donors, which are these major corporations in the city of Atlanta, have a ton of power. Some people have been going on the state level, on the Dekalb County level, the commissioners, the permit office. Some people have been going the legal route – there’s currently a lawsuit that’s been on the books before the broader movement even began that’s against the Ryan Milsap or Blackhall Studios side of the forest. There’s many, many routes; many, many tactics. There’s protests led by children.
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Right now, the police really escalated heavily last month when they brought domestic terrorism charges to 6 protesters. They’re not being charged with anything that they’ve done. It’s under a state law which essentially says “you’re affiliated with a movement that we’ve said is a terrorist movement,” – based on no evidence. They’re not being charged with throwing a Molotov cocktail, and also domestic terrorism – no. Just domestic terrorism, and trespassing – in a public park. It’s total nonsense.
And they’ve been painting people with these ugly words, painting this picture. They’re throwing around words like arson, but no one’s been charged with arson, they’re just saying it.
This is a continuation of that escalation. I think they overplayed their hand by murdering one of ours. I think they know that they’ve really overstepped here. This is unprecedented, this is horribly evil what they’ve done.
What comes next? I’m not sure. I think people will continue to organize, to protest. People in other cities will continue to send solidarity however they see fit. What exactly that looks like we don’t know yet, but people are very determined to continue to fight. Even doubly so, because no one wants to see this person’s life be lost in vain. They were a really dedicated activist who wanted to see the end of cop city and wanted to defend those woods, and we want to honor that however we can. And right now I think most people will believe honoring that means fighting. Because that’s what they would have wanted.
So we’re going to keep fighting. That’s going to look like a lot of different things depending on who you are in the movement. It’s probably going to look like more children led marches, or solidarity actions in other cities. There’s vigils, protests; right now there’s a noise demonstration happening at Dekalb County Jail in solidarity with the people who are incarcerated and charged with domestic terrorism – 7 additional people at this point, so that’s a total of 13. The initial 6 are out on bond, but now there’s 7 more in there. People are in solidarity with them right now.
PT: Are people still in the forest and in the trees? How are people feeling on the ground?
Kei: Right now I don’t know. Yesterday, nobody could get anywhere near the forest, because my neighborhood was occupied by the police heavily. I was afraid to go home because there were police everywhere, and I didn’t until very late because I was so scared. So right now it’s hard to get information. We’re not sure if anyone is still in the forest. I’ll say that, they’ve done raids before, they’ve evicted people, and tree-sits popped right back up because they’re not hard to create. Tents popped right back up because they’re not hard to find. Everytime they think they have cleared us out, well, the next day the occupation has begun again. So I’m not convinced this is the end of the occupation or the end of tree sitting, because I think a lot of those folks who are doing that work are incredibly brave and incredibly determined, and not going to be scared away by police action no matter how violent it is. Because I know that seeing cop city be built is the scariest possibility, and we have to stop it.
PT: I was surprised to see how open the forest is, you can pretty much walk in on it from any section.
Kei: And keep in mind that a massive section of it is a public park! To our understanding of it right now the person who was murdered was murdered in a public park, they were on that side of the forest – they had every right to be there. South River Watershed Alliance has released a statement, they’re a non-profit environmental organization, saying: “at no point has anyone ever said that this is not a public park. This is public land.” Yesterday it seemed that people were arrested for being in the park who had nothing to do with the movement, presumably. I’m at this preschool right now, we go out there and bring the children all the time to plant trees, to go visit the mother tree, to go on nature walks. It’s a public park. It’s going to keep being used and it’s kept being used this whole time by neighbors, by teenagers, by children.
Yesterday, I think that was the scariest thing for a lot of us, that we heard that someone had been killed by the police, and we had no idea who, for hours and hours, over 12 hours – really until this morning. We recognized really quickly that any of us could have been there. Because it’s a public park, we could have been there walking our dogs, riding our bikes, taking our children. It’s terrifying: the police in the United States of America went into a public park and murdered somebody.
PT: We know what’s going to happen in the media, which is this war on ‘these radical folk being aggressive towards cops who are just trying to enforce the law,’ when really this is a struggle against oppression and violence and murder that’s been going on far before cop city even started.
Kei: That being said, what law were they even enforcing? Even from a liberal perspective, it’s unclear what law they were even enforcing, so-called, because it’s public land, it was 9am. Even that is nonsense, even their narrative doesn’t make sense because anyone could have been there. My neighbors were for sure there walking their dogs as they do every single day. It doesn’t make any sense.
PT: This happened in Intrenchment Creek Park, where Ryan Milsap, a corporate developer, is trying to build a sound stage for the film industry. He hasn’t even gotten the rights to it yet, and he and the police are trying to clear it out. That’s ridiculous.
Kei: Correct, because he swapped the land with the county, and immediately, a lawsuit was filed by local residents and nonprofit environmental organizations that said this was an illegal land swap. It gets kind of in the weeds, but basically the gist is that, for the county to swap land with a private entity, they have to do a more-than-fair swap. So the county has to get more than they give – and they gave more than they got. This is an illegal land swap, and it’s an unethical land swap, that endangers Intrenchment Creek, which endangers the South River, which is a vital river for this whole ecosystem in this region of Georgia. They immediately filed on that. And when they did, it was known then that this was public land until this lawsuit was resolved. The City of Atlanta (though again this isn’t in the City of Atlanta), Dekalb County, Dekalb County Police, judges, and lawyers have said that this is public land. No one has ever said that this was not public land, except for Ryan Milsap who’s trying to lay claim to it. But he’s not an authority figure, he’s just a private developer. The “authorities” here have said it’s public land and so it’s continued to be treated as a public park by residents, because it is, based on our knowledge. And because we’re using it, it’s public.
This lawsuit is not resolved and it probably won’t be for a very long time. But Ryan Milsap has claimed it’s his. He’s gone in and brought vehicles and said the GBI [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] “directed him to do so,” to tear up the parking lot of the park, tear up the path for several meters leading up to another section of the path, to tear down trees.
A beautiful moment was when he sent his cronies to destroy the park, the one thing left standing was a fig tree that the children had planted from their preschools. That was the one silver lining we could tell the kids, “the cops and the developers came and tore up the park, but your fig tree was left standing!” It was the one sweet thing you could say because the kids were freaking heartbroken, because they planted a people’s garden – that’s their park, that’s their land.
PT: So does that mean Ryan Milsap sent the police yesterday? Why were police on the land and what were they enforcing?
Kei: Our understanding as of right now is that it was the joint task force: GBI, FBI, Homeland Security, APD [Atlanta Police Department], Dekalb County Police, and at least one or two other agencies (the GBI report lists them all). They came out with the intention of doing a raid on the forest, to clear people out of the forest, including the public side, where they are legally allowed to be. That’s it, that’s all we know so far. I don’t think it was directed by Milsap, although it could have been. I think it was directed by the police who were very upset that people were protesting the building of their playground. That’s all we know – they weren’t there because they had a permit to cut trees, or because the lawsuits were resolved, it was just a raid to intentionally, violently attack protesters – that’s it. They’ve done this every so often, it seems to coincide with wanting to have something to say to their bosses or their press or something.
PT: Could you talk a little bit about what these raids usually look like?
Kei: The last few months it’s looked like using chemical weapons on protesters. Shooting, for instance, pepper balls at people in trees. I think for folks who don’t follow environmental and land defense movements closely, it’s important to note that tree sitting is an incredibly common, accepted practice for many, many years, many decades, all across the world as a land defense tactic. And if you’re sitting in a tree, and you get a chemical weapon shot at you, that’s extremely dangerous – you could fall to your death. They’ve done that many times. They’ve attempted to extract tree sitters by cutting off limbs of trees while tree sitters are in them, that’s what they did yesterday. The escalation yesterday was that they fired real bullets at a person. But the chemical weapons, this was not the first time, this was at least thesecond, but I believe the third time they’ve fired chemical weapons. They came in with SWAT gear, full tactical gear, heavy machinery, multiple agencies, raiding all at once, scouring the forest, hunting anyone out they could find, attacking them with chemical weapons. To our knowledge there were plenty of people that morning who were in the forest just existing, just doing their lives, recreation or exercise, or whatever.
We call it cop city because they’re building a fake city: it will have a barbershop, a nightclub, a grocery store, a laundromat. A small section of my neighbors will say, “wouldn’t it be better if they were better trained, because they’re so bad at their job, they’re killing people.” And I say, well, killing people is them being good at their job – that is their job. But with the training, they are going to be better at killing people in our city. That’s what they’re getting better at trying to do. Honestly the police response to this movement, up until recently, has not been very sophisticated. And they need to learn how to put down urban protests? No you don’t, that’s not your job – stop, back up. But that’s what they’re trying to learn how to do. And they want to do so by practicing on a city that looks just like any “old American city.” And not even any old – what’s a barbershop? That’s a Black business – you’re manufacturing Black businesses to think about putting down protests in a Black city, and that’s Atlanta, we’re a Black city. It’s deeply troubling. I don’t know if you saw their first propaganda video they released for cop city, but they used quotes from MLK, and they called it the “institute for social justice and 21st century policing” – you can’t make this up! They used only actors who were visibly people of color. This is not what MLK would have wanted, this is a whitewashed, watered down history of MLK. But we know better here, we’re not buying this. This is what they’re trying to do, they’re trying to use this whitewashed history of MLK, of radical Atlanta, to pass this horrible, horrible proposal to build the worst training facility in the U.S.
PT: What are some lessons and takeaways you can share from the movement to stop cop city and to defend the forest that would be useful for other countries around the world?
Kei: Today, after learning about Tortuguita’s passing, and living with the extreme violence of the police, I was just reminded of the Black Freedom Movement, and how they persevered. How incredibly violent their lives were and continued to be, and how being in movement means that you bear and you witness more violence than you would otherwise. And sometimes you bear and witness the same amount of violence you would if you weren’t in movement, depending on who you are. But people still persevere, and we have to do that.
I’m angry at the state, that we have to mourn and we have to fight at the same time. I’m deeply resentful about that. But I think the lesson is, that’s our lives: we’re going to keep mourning and we’re going to keep fighting. And we can’t separate the two, let them live together: we mourn because we have to fight, and we fight because we mourn. I think that’s the lesson. And I think the ask right now is for people anywhere and everywhere to do anything and everything to act in solidarity with what’s happening here, and recognize that what’s happening here affects the whole world. We know that they’ll use this police training facility here to train the Israeli Defense Force. This is international. We know they’ll send people from all over the U.S., all over the Southeast, to come train at this facility, and we want to stop it because we know that they’re trying to put down our attempts at resisting their violence, and so we have to keep fighting.
We’re asking for everyone to stand in solidarity however they can, to talk to their own communities about this, whoever that may be: their schools, their workplaces, their blocks. Talk to them and organize, and keep people doing stuff wherever they are. Because this is so much bigger than just Atlanta. And, it’s also so Atlanta. What happens in Atlanta matters, and this is such a clear example of that. And if folks want to come down, come down to be with us and mourn with us – because we just lost a real freedom fighter, you know?
I don’t know if you’ve seen the statements that have been out today. They were a Mutual Aid organizer that coordinated so much money coming to BIPOC folks in the city and in this movement, and to support them, whether they were in the movement or just trying to survive. They went down to Florida, and went back and forth trying to build low income housing in Florida for folks who were devastated by the hurricane. They were a real freedom fighter. Live that legacy, be who they were to carry on that legacy. And if folks want to come here and mourn the death of a freedom fighter, come. Because we’re a really big world, we’re a really big Left, and feeling that helps us feel stronger to keep fighting.
