‘People Have Been Protesting Against Cop City Since We Found Out About It’

Janine Jackson interviewed Community Movement Builders’ Kamau Franklin about the fight against Cop City for the March 17, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. 

Janine Jackson: The clearing of land, including forests, in South Atlanta, to build a gigantic police training complex brings together so many concerns, it’s hard to know where to begin.

NPR (3/11/23)

The January police killing of a protester and environmental activist known as Tortuguita, whose autopsy suggests they were sitting down with their hands raised when cops shot them multiple times, is a flashpoint illuminating a constellation of harms proposed by what’s been dubbed “Cop City,” as well as resistance to them.

Our guest is in the thick of it. Kamau Franklin is founder of the national grassroots organization Community Movement Builders, and co-host of the podcast Renegade Culture. He joins us now by phone from Atlanta; welcome to CounterSpin, Kamau Franklin.

Kamau Franklin: Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Cop City seems to bring together so much that is wrong and painful for Black and brown people. But we can actually start with the land itself. The place where this paramilitary police camp is planned has some meaningful history, doesn’t it?

KF: Yeah, this land, which has been dubbed by us the Weelaunee forest, was originally the home of part of the Muscogee nation. The Muscogee nation was the native occupiers of that land, the original occupiers of that land, and they were removed in an ethnic cleansing war by the United States from that land and pushed off.

And since that time period, the land has been used, initially, partly as a plantation, where enslaved Africans were brought to the land and made to work on that land. Later, the land was transferred into a prison farm, where working-class people and poor people and, again, particularly Black folks were put on the land to continue working for the state at, obviously, no wages, being punished and harassed and brutally treated.

The land has also served as a youth imprisonment camp, and the police have done trainings on that land.

So that land has been, over a time period, used for the brutal and harsh treatment of Black people in particular, but also of poor and working-class people.

One quick thing I want to say, also, is that that land, in terms of it being a forest before the invention of Cop City, was promised to the adjacent community, which is 70% Black, as a recreational and park area, particularly as the land re-forested itself over time, park areas where there were supposed to be nature trails, hiking available, parks available, and when the idea of Cop City arose, from the Atlanta Police Department, the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Police Foundation, all of those plans were scrapped immediately, without any input from that adjoining community, and instead they decided to move forward with this idea of Cop City.

New Republic (3/9/23)

JJ: I think that’s why folks are talking about, I’ve heard a reference to “layers of violence” at work here. And I think that’s what they’re getting at is, there’s what this place would be for, its purpose, and then there’s also the process of how it is being pushed on people that didn’t want it. And then there’s also the physical, environmental impact of the construction. It’s a lot, and yet they’re all intertwined, these problems.

KF: Yeah, this is a perfect illustration of how the state, vis-a-vis the city, the state government and even, in some ways, the federal government, operate in tandem, and a lot of times, most of the time, it doesn’t matter what party they are, but operate in tandem at the whim of capital and at the whim of a, relatively speaking, right-wing ideological outlook.

And, again, it doesn’t matter which party it is we’re talking about. It doesn’t matter whether or not those folks are Black or white, but an ideological outlook that says overpolicing in Black and brown communities is the answer to every problem.

And so here in particular, you talked about the process. This process of developing Cop City came after the 2020 uprisings against police violence, the 2020 uprisings that were national in scope, that started after Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and, here in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks was killed by the police, and it caused a massive uprising and movement across the nation again.

The response by the authorities here in Atlanta was to push through their plans on building Cop City, to double down on their efforts, again, to continue the overpolicing of Black communities, particularly here in Atlanta. Atlanta is a city that is gentrifying at an astronomical rate. It’s gone from a 60% Black city to one that’s less than 50% in only a matter of 20, 30 years, all of that under Black leadership.

It’s a city that, in terms of those who are arrested, 90% of those who are arrested in Atlanta by the police are Black people; its jails are filled with Black people.

And so this is a city that doubled down on police violence and police militarization after these uprisings.

In addition, we feel like the part of Cop City, in terms of its militarization—over a dozen firing ranges, its mock cities to practice urban warfare, its military-grade structure that it’s bragging about—the fact that its past facility is called the Paramilitary Center, and this one is also going to be a paramilitary center.

In its earliest iterations of what it was supposed to be, it included a landing pad for Black Hawk helicopters, something they’ve now said that they’ve taken out.

This, for us, has been put forth to harass and stop future mobilizations and movements and uprisings against police brutality and misconduct.

Guardian (2/9/23)

It was pushed through the City Council. Seventy percent of the people who called in on the night of the vote voted against Cop City, but yet the City Council members decided to still enact this. And so this has been run over the heads of the community, without community input.

And it is something that we think is dangerous for both the overpolicing, and, as you restated earlier, the environmental concerns of stripping away a forest of 100 acres immediately. This particular area is something that is given to having floods. Once they start stripping even more of the forested area away, there’s going to be even more and increased floods.

The loudness of the shooting, the other things that’s going to be happening, this is going to be something that’s extremely detrimental to the environment, and the continued degradation of the climate, if it is allowed to take place and happen.

JJ: I think folks listening would understand why there are multiple points of resistance, why there are a range of communities and folks who would be against this. Some listeners may not know, people have been protesting Cop City for years now.

But now, Tortuguita’s killing amid ongoing protests has given an opening for corporate media to plug this into a narrative about “violent activists” and “clashes.” And this is par for the course for elite media, but, and I’m just picking up on what you’ve just said, it’s especially perverse here, because we’re seeing community resistance and rejection of hyper-policing presented as itself a reason for more of that hyper- and racist policing. It’s a knot. It’s a real complicated knot here.

KF: No, you’re exactly right. And we should say, again, that people have been protesting against Cop City since we found out about it in 2021. And our protests have been, since its beginning, met with police violence.

When we were protesting at City Hall, doing petition drives, town halls, contacting our legislators, when all that was happening and we were doing protests at City Hall and other places, the police would come and break up our protests.

They conducted over 20 arrests during the early stages of our protest movement against Cop City. At that particular time, people were being arrested for charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, obstruction of governmental administration.

LA Times (3/15/23)

After they passed the resolution to grant the lease to the Atlanta Police Foundation, and part of our tactics began to have—there were folks who moved to the actual forest and became forest defenders as an act of civil disobedience.

Then the policing agency in Atlanta basically hooked up and created a task force. So the Atlanta Police Department, DeKalb County Police Department, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security actually formed a task force where they first began having discussions on bringing charges of state domestic terrorism.

And so in December of last year, they conducted a raid in the forest and arrested approximately five or six people. And those were the first folks who were charged with domestic terrorism.

On January 18, they did a second raid, and they charged another five or six folks with domestic terrorism, and that was the raid in which they killed Tortuguita, the forest defender, activist and organizer who, again, as you pointed out earlier, through a private autopsy done by the family, because the Georgia Bureau of Investigation refuses to release information on their supposed or alleged investigation into this matter, the private autopsy is the first indication we have that the police narrative on how they were killed was a complete lie.

Tortuguita was sitting cross-legged and hands were up to protect their face from the firing directly into their body, they were hit approximately 13 times. And it may be more, but the second autopsy could not determine which were exit wounds and what were entry wounds.

After the killing of Tortuguita, another six or seven protesters were arrested at a rally downtown. And then this past Sunday, during our week of action against Cop City, another 35 arrests took place; 23 of those people were charged with domestic terrorism.

So we now have approximately 41 or 42 people who have been charged with domestic terrorism. And this is a scare tactic meant to demoralize the movement. And it’s also meant to criminalize the movement in the eyes of the larger public.

And this is something that’s been a tactic and strategy of the state since day one. But with the help, as you said, of corporate media, they’re trying to get this narrative out there. And we’re left to fight back against this narrative, which is obviously untrue.

JJ: And it’s been long in the works, and long on the wish list. I remember talking to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard about J20, about people who had been arrested protesting Trump’s inauguration, and the slippery tactics that, not just law enforcement, but also the courts were using to say, you were near a person or dressed similarly to a person who we believe committed a crime against property, and therefore you are swept up in this dragnet and charged with felonies, and with a lifetime in prison.

And let’s underscore, it’s a scare tactic. It’s a way to keep people in their homes. It’s a way to keep people from coming out in the street to use their voice on issues they care about.

Kamau Franklin: “These domestic terrorism charges are purposely meant to put fear in the heart of organizers and activists, not only on this issue, but in future issues.”

KF: Yes, definitely. I think it’s important what you pointed out, I’m sure viewers may have seen pictures of property destruction.

And, again, this movement is autonomous, and people are engaged in different actions. We don’t equate property destruction with the violence that the police have rained on Black and brown communities over centuries, to be clear; we don’t equate the idea of property destruction with the violent killings that led to the 2020 uprisings and the prior violent killings by the police of unarmed Black people over, again, decades.

But what’s important to point out even in these arrests, is that the folks who have been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism, who are actually involved in acts of civil disobedience at best, the people in the forest who were arrested during the first two raids we spoke about, were people who were sitting in tree huts and sitting in camps under trees, that police had no evidence whatsoever to suggest that they had been involved, either at that time or prior, in any destruction of property.

And even if they did have such evidence, then the correct legal charge would be vandalism or destruction of property. These domestic terrorism charges are purposely meant to put fear in the heart of organizers and activists, not only on this issue, but in future issues, when the state levels its power, it’s going to say that you tried to, and this is how broad the statute is, attempt to influence government policy by demonstrative means—so civil disobedience can be interpreted as domestic terrorism.

And this is the first time in Georgia that the state statute has ever been used. And the first choice to use it on are organizers and activists who are fighting against police violence.

JJ: And are we also going to see, I see Alec Karakatsanis pointing out that we’re also seeing this line about “outside agitators.” You know, everything old is new again. In other words, all these old tropes and tactics, it seems like they’re all coming to the fore here, and one of them is the idea that this isn’t really about the community. This is about people who are professional activists, professional troublemakers, and the phrase “outside agitators” is even bubbling up again. And that’s a particular kind of divide-and-conquer tactic.

KF: Most definitely. We should be clear that the heart of the Stop Cop City movement has been organizers and activists and community members, voting rights advocates, civil rights advocates, who have either been born or who have lived in Atlanta for a number of years.

But that movement has welcomed in people from all across the country to try to support in ending Cop City, whether or not that’s national support that people give from their homes, and/or whether or not that’s been support that people have traveled down to Atlanta to give support to either forest defenders or the larger movement to stop Cop City.

We see the language of “outside agitators” as being, as you said, a trope that is born from the language of Southern segregationists, that were used against people like Dr. King, the civil rights movement, Freedom Riders.

And so when we have Black elected officials parroting the language of Southern segregationists, it tells us how far we’ve come in terms of having representative politics, where basically you have Black faces representing capitalism, representing corporations, representing developers who have turned their back on the working-class and poor Black communities who they’ve helped pushed out of the city, in favor of these corporations, and in favor on strengthening a police apparatus that, again, is going to be used against every Black community that they claim to represent.

JJ: Well, finally, one of the corporate investors in Cop City, along with Home Depot and Coca-Cola and Delta, is Cox Enterprises, which owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which I understand is editorially supportive of Cop City.

I wonder what you’re making of local media that may be in contrast to national media or international media. And then, as a media critic, it’s strange, but a lot of what I want to say is, don’t follow them, don’t look to media to tell you about what’s happening, about what’s possible, about who matters, because it’s a distortion.

So I want you to talk a little about the resistance for folks, but also, maybe they’re not seeing that resistance in their news media, and there are reasons for that.

KF: We have a couple of reporters, I’ve singled them out, who have attempted at least to give a fair hearing to the struggle around Cop City.

However, the overwhelming local reporting has been in favor, and has led continually with the police narrative, with the city narrative, with the state narrative on this benign training center, as they present it, and these “outside agitators” we spoke of earlier, organizers who are coming in. That’s been the central narrative.

So even when we talk about police violence, they never use the term “police violence.” They only use “violence” in conjunction with the organizers and activists, that’s whether or not a so-called peaceful protest has been taking place and the police arrest organizers. And that’s whether or not there’s this quiet civil disobedience by staying in the woods. Anytime organizers or activists are brought up, they don’t hesitate but to use the word “violence.”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution (8/21/21)

And so we understand that not only the media that’s directly connected to Cox, which is a funder of the Atlanta Police Foundation and a funder of Cop City, and, as you stated, editorially, has put out four, five, six, editorials that have all been supportive of Cop City, and that have all tried to label organizers and activists as “violent.” But other corporate media, local corporate media, has been on that same bandwagon, except for a few notable exceptions.

We’ve gotten much better press, much, much more favorable hearings, that at least tells our side, from national media, from outlets who have a perspective and understand what organizing and activism and capitalism is vis-a-vis the way the society works, and from international media.

The things that have helped us get the word out to talk about the struggle has been media platforms like this, and others which have a perspective that understands the role of the United States, and the United States government entities and corporations, and how the world is run.

Without that perspective, we would be completely at a loss to get the word out in any way that could be considered fair and/or accurate.

Truthout (3/14/23)

JJ: You want to shout out any reporters or outlets? I would say Candice Bernd at Truthout has been doing some deep and thoughtful things on it. And, internationally, I’ve seen a few things. But if there are reporters or outlets that you think deserve a shout out, by all means.

KF: The Guardian has done a good job of representing organizer and activist concerns. As you said, Truthout. Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, as a podcast, has done a fantastic job. Cocktails and Capitalism has done a fantastic job. We’ve had some good reporting in Essence magazine, actually.

And so there have been outlets that have given us, again, a fair hearing on our views on the history of policing, on understanding capitalist development and capital development and corporate development here, not only in Atlanta, but in other urban cities across the country.

And so we thank those outlets for at least the opportunity to give voice as we fight back against a dominant corporate narrative that is all about supporting the police, supporting violent and militarized policing, and supporting the continued criminalization of movements that fight against it.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Kamau Franklin. He’s founder of the national grassroots organization Community Movement Builders. They’re online at CommunityMovementBuilders.org. He’s also co-host of the podcast Renegade Culture. Kamau Franklin, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

KF: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Originally published on FAIR.org, March 24th, 2023. Reprinted with permission.     

You Don’t Stop Police Killings by Calling them ‘Fatal Encounters’

By Julie Hollar and Janine Jackson, February 2, 2023

It’s hard to find words after yet another brutal police killing of a Black person, this time of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, captured in horrifying detail on video footage released last week. But the words we use—and in that “we,” the journalists who frame these stories figure critically—if we actually want to not just be sad about, but  end state-sanctioned racist murders, those words must not downplay or soften the hard reality with euphemism and vaguery.

The New York Times (online 1/27/23) writes of the “enduring frustration over Black men having fatal encounters with police officers.”

Yet that’s exactly what the New York Times did in recent coverage. In its January 28 front-page story, reporter Rick Rojas led with an unflinching description of the brutal footage, noting that Nichols “showed no signs of fighting back” under his violent arrest for supposed erratic driving.

Yet just a few paragraphs later, Rojas wrote: “The video reverberated beyond the city, as the case has tapped into an enduring frustration over Black men having fatal encounters with police officers.”

People get frustrated when their bus is late. People get frustrated when their cell phone’s autocorrect misbehaves. If people were merely “frustrated” when police officers violently beat yet another Black person to death, city governments wouldn’t be worried, in the way the Times article describes, about widespread protests and “destructive unrest.”

By describing protest as “destructive,” while describing state-sanctioned law enforcement’s repeated murder of Black people as “Black men having fatal encounters with police officers,” the Times works to soften a blow that should not be softened, to try to deflect some of the blame and outrage that rightfully should be aimed full blast at our country’s racist policing system.

That linguistic soft-pedaling and back-stepping language was peppered throughout the piece, describing how police brigades like the “Scorpion” unit these Memphis police were part of are “designed to patrol areas of the city struggling with persistent crime and violence”—just trying to protect Black folks from ourselves, you see—yet they mysteriously “end up oppressing young people and people of color.” Well, that’s a subject for documented reporting, not conjecture.

The New York Times (2/1/23) doubles down on its new euphemism for “killing.”

When a local activist described himself as “not shocked as much as I am disgusted” by what happened to Tyre Nichols, the Times added, “Still, he acknowledged the gravity of the case”—as if anti-racist activists’ combined anger, sorrow and exhaustion might be a sign that they can’t really follow what’s happening or respond appropriately.

Folks on Twitter (1/28/23) and elsewhere called out the New York Times for this embarrassing “Black people encounter police and somehow end up dead” business, but the paper is apparently happy with it. So much so that the paper came back a few days later with an update (2/1/23), with the headline: “What We Know About Tyre Nichols’ Lethal Encounter With Memphis Police.”

In it, Rojas and co-author Neelam Bohra wrote in their lead, “The stop escalated into a violent confrontation that ended with Mr. Nichols hospitalized in critical condition. Three days later, he died.”

Journalism school tells you that fewer, more direct words are better. So when a paper tells you that a traffic stop “escalated into a violent confrontation that ended up with” a dead Black person, understand that they are trying to gently lead you away from a painful reality—not trying to help you understand it, and far less helping you act to change it.

Originally published on FAIR.org, February 2nd, 2023. Reprinted with permission.     

Related Posts:

Book Review: We Do This 'til we FREE US

BLACK AUGUST REMINDS US THAT COINTELPRO DIDN’T END…

Please support and visit The Brooks Blackboard's website, our INTEL page, OPEN MIND page, and LIKE and FOLLOW our Facebook page.

Follow me on Twitter at @_CharlesBrooks   

Vigils For Tortuguita: Land Defenders Erupt In Solidarity

Land defenders and justice movements everywhere will not be terrorized into silence. They will not let the story of their sibling’s murder be controlled by their killers, nor by the powers who hide behind the killers.

On the evening of January 21, a couple dozen people came out in the rain and grouped together in a circle outside of Whatcom District Court, in Bellingham, Washington. These members of the Bellingham Forest Defenders, a group working to defend a public forest called “Box of Rain”, peacefully gathered to mourn the death of a fellow forest defender on the other side of the country.

The vigil was held to mourn the death of Tort, a protestor in Atlanta, Georgia who was killed on January 18 by police while defending the Weelaunee Forest from clearcutting and construction of a massive police training facility, known as Cop City, to those who oppose it.

A Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesperson claims that Tortuguita, a nonbinary person who had been a vocal proponent of nonviolence, refused orders to leave a tent and shot a state trooper. Other law enforcement officers then returned fire, killing them. No body cameras captured the event. “Although we have bodycam footage from the day of the operation, we do not have bodycam footage of the shooting incident. The law enforcement officers wearing bodycam were not close enough to the shooting itself to capture it,” GBI’s Nelly Miles said. Calls for an independent investigation are growing.

Forest defenders, like Tort, are occupying the forest by living in trees and destroying equipment to resist the building of the campus. The city calls them “domestic terrorists” and police treat them like enemy combatants.

Cop City will be a $90 million state-of-the-art police training facility into which major corporations are investing millions of dollars and financially pressuring politicians to push the plan forward. Though the land designated for Cop City is owned by the City of Atlanta, the nonprofit Atlanta Police Foundation is working to raise millions from private sector companies to fund over 80% of its construction. The Atlanta Police Foundation’s Board is filled with executives from nearly all of Atlanta’s big-name companies like Delta, Waffle House, the Home Depot, Georgia Pacific, Equifax, Carter, Accenture, Wells Fargo and UPS, among others. It reads like a ‘who’s-who’ of corporate Atlanta.

defendtheatlantaforest.org

Thousands of miles away, at the edge of another precious forest ecosystem endangered by capital’s encroachment, Bellingham’s vigil participants did more than grieve. They honored their comrade by learning about the movement work being done in Atlanta and shared stories, songs, and poems of love and grief for protestors, for the forests, and for their communities. Information was also shared about ongoing local work to protect old, ecologically significant forests in Whatcom County and Western Washington.

One member of the Bellingham Forest Defenders, Hayley, commented, “While none of us knew Tort personally, his death by police has certainly hit many of us hard. We offer public solidarity with the movement in Atlanta while reminding ourselves of why we actively struggle to protect public forests here in Whatcom County. We hope that folks in Atlanta might see this coverage and know they are in our hearts and minds.”

Over the last few days, a growing number of such solidarity vigils have been held across the US, from Cincinnati to New Orleans to Los Angeles, by organizations and communities on the front lines of ecological destruction and racialized violence, where brutal, militarized police response to protesters has become commonplace. Declarations of international solidarity have come from as far as Germany, the UK, and Kurdistan. Tort’s death has made it clear that there is no place left on Earth where people do not share the pain and rage of ecocide and murder carried out on behalf of corporate and state powers.

These are just some of the multiplying events now sprouting up in cities and towns across the world…

Cincinnati

New Orleans

Knoxville

Los Angeles

Akron

Dallas

New York City

Chattanooga

Miami

Tallahassee

Massachusetts

Philadelphia

Pontiac

St. Louis

London

Berlin

Anonymous

Rojava

Solidarity Vigil Images Courtesy of @DefendAtlantaForest

The international outpouring of rage and solidarity at this most recent act of police brutality has a common thread – that land defenders and justice movements everywhere will not be terrorized into silence. They will not let the story of their sibling’s murder be controlled by their killers, nor by the powers who hide behind the killers. The Atlanta Forest Defenders and other local organizations like Community Movement Builders have begun publicly demanding an independent investigation into Tort’s death, into the charges of domestic terrorism for arrested forest defenders, and into the wider police raid of January 18th.

Further outrage and support is coming from diverse groups beyond land defenders and social movements. It turns out, you don’t need to be a police abolitionist or even an environmentalist to oppose Cop City – but Cop City is creating more police abolitionists and environmentalists. On Jan 23, Doctors from Emory’s School of Medicine published this scathing condemnation:

“As health care workers, we strongly condemn the repeated escalation of police violence in their interactions with members of the public protesting the construction of Cop City. On various instances, in both the streets of Atlanta as well as in the Weelaunee Forest/Intrenchment Creek Park which is under threat of destruction, police have used violence including reports of toxic chemical irritants such as tear gas, rubber bullets and now live ammunition which most recently resulted in the police killing of one of the forest defenders, Manuel ‘Tortuguita’ Teran. A year after police in the U.S. killed more people than any prior year since records started to be tracked in 2013, we recognize violence perpetrated by police to be harmful to public health. We are also concerned by the detentions and the charges of domestic terrorism levied at individuals arrested while protesting the destruction of the forest. This fits within the context of a disturbing pattern and threat to public health whereby the USA has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world; perpetuated by a judicial and legislative system that targets Black and Indigenous peoples, migrants, those living in poverty, those who are unhoused, as well as environmental and social activists.

The construction of Cop City will not solve a government’s failures to listen to the wishes of members of the community, its failure to stop the widening gap between rich and poor, the lack of affordable housing, the negative effects of gentrification and racism, or the poor and unequal access to nutritious food, healthcare and mental health services. As physicians, we recognize that these failures have negative consequences on the public’s mental and physical health. Instead of strengthening community health, Cop City will be a dangerous attempt to invest in harmful and violent solutions, strengthening the corporate and political powers that seek profit over the well-being of the people, while simultaneously eroding and transforming natural and public spaces into privately owned property. The public health evidence for developing healthy and thriving communities strongly opposes the expansion of policing and its subsequent violence. All Atlanta communities deserve more life affirming investments, not those that value private property over human life.

For the well-being of the city and its residents, it is imperative that all police forces cease their continued escalation and violent activity by permanently withdrawing from the forest. We call on Georgia State University to end its support of the Cop City project and also the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) project. We also call on Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens, the Atlanta city council and the Dekalb County government to withdraw from all plans regarding the construction of Cop City; and for the Dekalb County government to withdraw from the land swap with Ryan Millsap and instead keep Intrenchment Creek Park a public park. We also call on Brasfield & Gorrie to end their contract with the Atlanta Police Foundation and cease all construction that furthers the destruction of the forest which has and will harm the community and the public health.

Signed,
Michel Khoury, MD, Co-director of Georgia Human Rights Clinic
Amy Zeidan, MD, Co-director of Georgia Human Rights Clinic
Mark Spencer, MD, Co-Leader, Internal Medicine Advocacy Group
Suhaib Abaza, MD, Co-founder, Campaign Against Racism ATL chapter
Social Medicine Consortium”

Weelaunee Forest Defenders “tree-sitting”

If one life might become a beacon to galvanize a movement, we owe it to that life to pause and mourn their death. Rejoining the circle of forest friends holding hands in the rain, the below speeches were shared during Saturday’s vigil by Bellingham Forest Defenders in memory of Tort and in solidarity with all who are on the front lines of direct-action…

Carly, Bellingham Forest Defender:

“In the anarchist group Invisible Committee’s piece To Our Friends, they say:
“’Friend’ and ‘free’ in English … come from the same Indo-European root, which conveys the idea of a shared power that grows. Being free and having ties was one and the same thing. I am free because I have ties, because I am linked to a reality greater than me.”

Forest defense movements in Bellingham have given me freedom through my friends. My friends have shown me how radical love can be fuel for movements. In bowls of homemade soup, in tightly linked arms on frontlines, in holding my hand when news like Tort’s death comes. My friends trust each other to keep momentum building, to bring each other along, especially when we falter in the face of everything working against us. I want to share with you some words from Tortuguita’s friends and comrades in hopes that by sharing parts of their love and grief, we can help carry everyone touched by Tort’s death along with us as we keep building momentum for a more just future, one that Tort lived and died fighting for.

The first reads:
“I remember Tortuguita as one of the softest and most generous people in the woods, a perpetually positive presence, ready with a smile and anything else they could offer to brighten your day. They were an optimist, assuming the best of people and demonstrating through their own actions just how good humans can be. I miss them already. Condolences and solidarity to all their family, friends, and comrades. We lost one of our best.”

The second reads:
“I didn’t know Tort for very long, but I am honored to have met them. In the short time I knew them, they were constantly putting a smile on my face, they had a laugh that was so infectious and always wanted to help others however they could. They had a deep love for music and would send me whatever their favorite song was at the moment. They were sweet, kind, and believed in a better world for all and the generations that will come after us, free from violence, destruction, and evil. Their love for the forest should be instilled in all of us, and their passion for protecting human life is an example we should all look up to. You fought hard, friend, and brought so much good to this world; now it’s time for you to rest, we will carry on your legacy and ensure you are never forgotten.”

Building strong community ties and a deep connection to place is vital in standing for the protection of old forests across the country and in Western Washington. We would love to have you along in this work, which involves seeking out threatened forests and standing up for them in front of decision and policy makers. This momentum for forests and for the communities that depend on them for clean water and air, connection to place, and habitat support is building. Moments like this, when we lose a comrade, however far away, offer time to pause, grieve, and gather ourselves to keep the fight going. Thank you for being here.”

Weelaunee Forest

Sophie, Bellingham Forest Defender:

“Tortuguita was a friend, lover, street medic, mutual aid organizer, and forest defender. They were loved and cherished deeply by the people in their lives and the movements they were a part of. Known as Manual Teran, they chose the alias ‘Tortuguita’ for themselves because it means Little Turtle, and is a nod to the Indigenous man who led victorious Native American resistance to white settlement in the Ohio river valley.

On January 18th, Tortuguita was tragically killed at the hands of the police while camped in the Welaunee forest in Georgia, where they and other protestors had been living in community since November of 2021 in order to stop the development of what is nicknamed “Cop City”. Cop city is proposed to be the largest police training facility in the United States, which plans to include military-grade training facilities, a mock city to practice urban warfare and riot control, and dozens of shooting ranges – it’s not a coincidence that cop city is being built in Atlanta, a city that lost two thirds of its police force in the midst and wake of the BLM riots.

The death of Tortuguita is a heart wrenching and brutal reminder that the work people do to preserve and generate life can be dangerous, traumatizing, and sometimes even fatal – especially when it’s effective, especially when we are winning. We mourn the death of Tortuguita because they were a kind, brave, and loving person who did not deserve to die, and we also mourn their death so that the work they did and the example they set is not forgotten, so that we remember the power and importance of resistance and relationship. The protests in the Welaunee forests are not just about stopping one violent project or saving one forest, they are about the collective power and responsibility we have to implement, for ourselves, the systems of care and community that will sustain our world.

In Tortuguita’s honor, we will keep creating poetry and art, participating in mutual aid, fighting for abolition, mending, knocking down borders, transitioning, putting our bodies in between the state and its victims, and building radical models of care and community. At the foundation of all this is deep and loving support for one another, until the systems in place become irrelevant. The state’s interests are not and have never been the preservation of life, equity, or prosperity. The state’s aims are to maintain power and generate capital, and in its attempt to do this it does not care about who or what is hurt along the way.

Today and everyday we remember those who were killed at the hands of the police. The following names are a few of those who have died because they were either working to rebuild a faulty nation, or simply surviving in it. May they inspire us to continue to work towards a world where there are no police and no need for cop cities or coal terminals or prisons.

George Floyd
Breonna Taylor
Trayvon Martin
Fred Hampton
Mark Clark
Oscar Leon Sanchez
Keenan Anderson
Dante Wright
Andre Hill
Manuel Ellis
Aura Rosser
Atatiana Jefferson
and Manual Teran, or Tortuguita

Please join me in a minute of silence. In this time, if you would like to speak out a name to add to this list, please feel free to do so.”

Reach out to Weelaunee Forest Defenders or Community Movement Builders in Atlanta, to bellinghamforestdefense@gmail.com or the Center for Responsible Forestry in Bellingham, or to an organization close to home. 

Please support and visit The Brooks Blackboard's website, our INTEL page, OPEN MIND page, and LIKE and FOLLOW our Facebook page.

Follow me on Twitter at @_CharlesBrooks