#weelaunee forest

[thatsleepymermaid]

I haven't heard people talking about this much, but I feel like it's important for people to know. Especially since SB 63 essentially bans bail funds by not allowing organizations, charities, individuals, or groups to bail out more than three people per year and requiring them to register as bonding agencies.

This is a direct response to all the protests happening here in Atlanta. So far, spreading the word can help as well as donating to The Atlanta Solidarity Fund .

In the meantime, here's some phone numbers of politicians you can go bug.

Randy Robertson (Guy who's sponsoring the bill): +1-404-656-0045

Brian Kemp (Governor of Georgia): +1-404-656-1776

[kropotkindersurprise]

March 5, 2023 - Hundreds of forest defenders chased away police from a security post in Weelaunee Forest at the construction site of Cop City. The activists burned security and construction equipment and destroyed infrastructure. Thirty-five people were arrested by police, you can donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund to help them out. [video]/[video]/[video]

[decolonize-the-left]

This week alone saw Atlanta-area raids by law enforcement that took a woman out of her house with no shirt, left a naked photo of another woman on display after ransacking a room and dragged a man by his hair – while arresting none of them.

The pre-dawn raids on three houses on Thursday were the third Swat-style operation in residential areas of Atlanta and nearby unincorporated DeKalb county tied to a movement that began in 2021 – and the first in which the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) played a prominent role.

The fight against Cop City has attracted national and global headlines, especially after police shot and killed one environmental protester at a campsite in a public park – the first such incident of its kind in US history. At least one of the search warrants for Thursday’s raid seen by the Guardian authorized the FBI to confiscate dozens of items from the raided homes – including laptops, cellphones, “Defend the Atlanta Forest” stickers and posters and personal journals. The operation came after weeks of Atlanta officials promoting a campaign to catch activists linked to arson against construction and police equipment, all the while activists have been committing more acts of sabotage, alternating with nonviolent, civil disobedience.

COINTELPRO 2.0. if you don't know what that is:

See the rest here:

[probablyasocialecologist]

The report suggests that Manuel, who was killed during a clearing operation near the site for the future Atlanta police training facility, was in a seated position, “cross-legged,” with their hands showing “exit wounds” in both palms at the time of their death.

“What did we learn from this autopsy? Manuel was shot in the head through his right eye, in his left upper chest, his legs, through the abdomen and several times through the palms,” their legal team said.

“Manuel was looking death in the face, hands raised, when killed,” said Brian Spears, an attorney for Teran’s family.

[...]

“Protests by non-locals are inherently terrorism,” Second-in-command Atlanta Police Department Assistant Chief Carven Tyus was recently quoted as saying of the protesters.

[everlastingrandom]

Please Support the Atlanta Solidarity Fund!!

Within the last hour, an audio recording of Atlanta PD just dropped, with police admitting that the arrest of the three members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund (ASF) this Wednesday was a blatant attempt to disrupt support for the Defend the Forest Movement, by cutting off mutual aid and bail funds.

The first trial hearing today was to determine if the arrestees would get bail. Even the judge could tell the charges were BS—money laundering and charity fraud—When all their transactions are public knowledge. But the court still set bail at $15,000 each to appease prosecution.

The ASF has been forced to use their own funds to avoid being jailed over the weekend, and with one of them denied disability aids and medications! One of the stipulations of the bail is that they can’t use their resources to support (deliberately vague at to what counts as support) the Defend the Forest movement.

The police are worried that the timing of the arrest before the City Council’s final Cop City budget vote on Monday June 5th may have galvanized protesters instead of disrupting them. But APD will follow this pattern of targeting bail funds and charities on the grounds of “enabling violence.” There is a high likelihood of more arrests more coming, and they see it as an opportunity to get overtime pay.

Please boost this if you can!

Donation Link Here!!

[etakeh]

This is just how things are now I guess.

(source)

[lowcountry-gothic]

A band of activists has turned a fight over a forest in southeast Atlanta into a wide-ranging, no-holds-barred battle over the climate crisis, environmental justice, white supremacy, the future of policing, and the very nature of protest movements. But will it work?

Story by David Peisner at The Bitter Southerner. Photos by Fernando Decillis.

The story is about the fight against the building of a new training facility for police and firefighters on the land where a prison farm once operated, bordered by a forest called Intrenchment Creek Park, also known by its Muscogee name, the Weelaunee Forest.

[a-queer-seminarian]

In the latest episode of Blessed Are the Binary Breakers, Água shares the story of their lifelong relationship with Weelaunee Forest. After discussing the Stop Cop City movement's past and present, Água guides us through abolishing the cop in our own heads; recognizing the interconnectedness & sacredness of all bodies; and breaking down binaries of "us" versus "them."

Listen to Blessed Are the Binary Breakers wherever you get podcasts — or click here for direct links + an episode transcript.

See under the readmore for image descriptions + more quotes.

ID: Text on an orange circle with a tree canopy as a backdrop reads, "Stopping Cop City: Agua's story — The sacred interconnectedness of all life. From the Blessed Are the Binary Breakers podcast." A transparent photo shows Agua, a Chicanx person with brown skin, short black hair, sunglasses, and an orange crop top reaching upwards with one arm.

An illustration of Tortuguita smiling at the viewer, their arms embracing a mini version of Weelaunee forest. Text around them reads "They died as they lived - building a better world." A turtle constellation shines in the sky behind them, and white outlines of dandelions border them. Under this image is a quote from Agua reading, "May we taste abolition – now, and in the worlds that we're building for our children." / end ID

ID: the same photo of Agua from before, but this time the full background is visible; they are standing on a huge branch high in the air, one arm reaching to touch the tree trunk of the tree. A quote from Agua reads, "I have been a resident of Atlanta, on Muscogee territory, for most of my life. … I've been going to [Weelaunee Forest] for about a decade. It's become a place where I go and visit particular trees and particular mushroom patches, and it's like going to visit my friends."

ID: a quote from Agua reads, "[My spirituality] orients me differently to finding the root of what's really causing cycles of harm, and seeing what it does to bring love to that place. ...

So if we just look at [Weelaunee]...it's a recovering forest, from its use as a prison farm from the 1920s to the 1980s. Before that, it's a plantation... And then of course in the 1830s, there's the Indian Removal Act...So there's trauma on trauma on trauma, and trauma embedded into the soil of this land...

And...the root to me, when we get all the way to the bottom, is a disregard for the sacred: the sacred of Black and Indigenous bodies, the sacred of the interconnected ecosystem that settlers chose to not participate inside of, to see themselves inside of — that web of sacred life."

A quote from Agua reads, "The more we can really see ourselves inside of the living system, and disidentify with the systems that are living off of us – like, we are the living body, and the police state is living off of us, sucking life force; it's literally taking lives, it's literally stealing people's family members, and cutting down the other half of our lungs: If one part of my lungs is inside of my body, the other part of my lungs is in the leaves of the trees…

And so we, we are the living body. And that's where I can always come and find more strength and rest…and all of the things that it takes for me to be able to show up and make choices about how to be protecting that life, and resisting violence and oppression."

Água also has a podcast, which you can check out here.

[teachanarchy]

Watch "Defend the Atlanta Forest Week of Action" on YouTube

[toshootforthestars]

From the post by Israel Daramola, posted 27 Jan 2023:

Atlanta's Cop City is just one in a long line of highly funded police training facilities that are cropping up all over the country.

In 2017, in New York, plans were announced for a $275 million update to the police training facility in Rodman's Neck in the Bronx—alongside a new $1 billion police academy in Queens. Chicago has just completed its own $170 million fire and police academy, despite facing similar protests. These are cities with not only supposedly liberal city officials, but specifically black mayors. These facilities can be seen as a larger effort by Democrat lawmakers to appear tough on crime and serious about aligning with the police in areas with high black and brown populations—a clear attempt to continue to distance themselves from "defund the police" movements all across the country, instead pushing for more police and treating their cities as urban warfare zones.

If that statement sounds extreme, consider what exactly these facilities are "training" for. On the Atlanta Police Foundation's website, they include a video rendering, and it is essentially a giant campus complete with classrooms, an amphitheater, a giant athletics field and park area, and most worryingly, "a mock city for real-world training." It's a city-within-a-city for the police, disconnecting them further from the people they are supposedly sworn to protect.

These mock cities for cops have been popping up in places from Chicago to London, aimed to give cops the tools necessary to quell potential "uprisings." In fact, so much of militarized police training in cities is about preparing for uprisings against the police. Since the summer of 2020 and the George Floyd protests, there's clearly been growing anxiety among police and their supporters about being ready for any organized violent dissent against their reign.

Rather than recognize the cause of this discontent, or the danger of their paranoia against their own constituents, elected officials seem to think this is necessary—an arms race against their own citizens.

Atlanta is seeing the first major pushback against these cop citadels, but it won't be the last. The police are spending billions of dollars to prepare for more uprisings, seemingly unaware or unconcerned that their actions guarantee that more uprisings will be exactly what they get.

[thatsleepymermaid]

(via @southriverforest on Instagram)

The City of Atlanta is refusing to count the 116k signatures on the Cop City Referendum petition, denying Atlanta citizens the right to vote on Cop City and the destruction of Weelaunee forest. On Monday, February 5th 2024 Atlanta will be voting on an ordinance for making referendum a clear and fair practice

If you can make it to Atlanta or if you're registered to vote, please show up and vote yes on Ordinance 34482.

[kp777]

From NPR News

[acespoliticalwaffles]

This video didn’t get nearly enough views, so I’m sharing it here.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The struggle to Stop Cop City is not just a battle over the creation of a $90 million police urban warfare center. It's not just a fight to protect the 381 acres of forest land, known as one of the "four lungs" of Atlanta, currently under threat of destruction. It's not just a conflict over how the city invests the over $30 million it has pledged to the project, to be supplemented by at least $60 million in private funding.

The movement is all of those things. But even more fundamentally, the struggle to Stop Cop City is a battle for the future of Atlanta.

It's a struggle over who the city is for: the city's corporate and state ruling class actors who have demanded that Cop City be built, or the people of Atlanta who have consistently voiced their opposition and demanded a different vision for the city. It is a fight over who the city belongs to; over who Atlanta is run for and who it is run against; over who is welcome to live and enjoy life here, and who is expected to simply labor here for low wages and under constant surveillance.

In January 2023, Cop City claimed its first life when a joint task force of local and state police officers marched into the Weelaunee Forest and assassinated Tortuguita Terán, a 26-year-old queer, Indigenous-Venezuelan forest defender. The project has already claimed the lives of trees in the forest, as clear-cutting began in March 2023. Cop City has already stolen the freedom of 42 people who have been charged with domestic terrorism and dozens more who were violently arrested while protesting the project.

As the struggle to stop Cop City has gone national and international, it has also left many wondering: Given so much widespread opposition, why is the city of Atlanta so intent on building Cop City? And if they insist on building Cop City, why build it atop such precious forest land? And why now, when the plans were first proposed as early as 2017 and the city had previously committed to protecting and preserving the land in question?

Contribute to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund to support the legal defense of Forest Defenders facing domestic terrorism charges.

Learn more about the ongoing fight to #StopCopCity and Defend the Atlanta Forest.

[prole-log]

[etakeh]

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, targets organized criminal enterprises and was created in the 1970s to more effectively prosecute the mafia. Since then, RICO statutes have been used against participants in the 2019 college admissions scandal, anti-abortion groups, insider traders, and now, environmental and climate justice activists.

Rather than charging individuals with specific crimes they committed, RICO indictments target alleged criminal organizations in which people collaborate to commit a series of interrelated crimes in furtherance of a common criminal goal. For charges to stick, prosecutors must prove that those charged engaged in a “pattern of racketeering” activity involving “at least two acts” in furtherance of “one or more incidents, schemes, or transactions.”

This is a very interesting read.

A disturbing, annoying, ridiculous read.

It feels desperate, you know? Childish even.