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The Abolitionist Struggle to Stop Cop City: History, Geography, Intersections

By Micah Herskind, Kwame Olufemi, Sarah Haley, and Stuart Schrader - Haymarket Books, March 14, 2023

'Tomorrow Is Too Late': Climate Strikers Target Fossil Fuel Financing Worldwide

By Jessica Corbett - Common Dreams, March 3, 2023

"The capitalistic system continuously puts profit over people," says Fridays for Future. "The Global North's fossil finance is the cause of the climate crisis, neocolonial exploitation, wars, and human rights violations."

"It's time to end fossil finance because #TomorrowIsTooLate!"

That's the takeaway message from climate strikers who took to the streets worldwide on Friday to demand an immediate end to the financing of all fossil fuel projects amid a worsening global emergency largely driven by coal, gas, and oil.

"The capitalistic system continuously puts profit over people," the youth-led Fridays for Future movement said in a statement. "Corporations' greed for more profit is driving the destruction of ecosystems and the climate. At the same time, frontline communities are paying the highest price while being the most affected by the climate crisis."

Defending Abundance Everywhere: A Call to Every Community from the Weelaunee Forest

By Abundia, Jesse, Jordan, & Mara - Weelaunee Web Collective, March 2, 2023

In the following text, participants in the movement to defend Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta, Georgia describe some of the values that animate this struggle. For background on the movement, start here.

This is a collection of short essays reflecting on the abundance that exists in our communities and in the more-than-human world, and how we not only can practice gratitude for this abundance but embody it as a way of approaching the world.

We dedicate this work to our friend, Tortuguita, who was part of these conversations. Georgia State Troopers killed Tortuguita on January 18, 2023 at the forest they loved so dearly. This piece is for them and for all past, present, and future Warriors defending and loving the Sacred Web of Abundance everywhere.

With profound love and admiration,
The Weelaunee Web Collective: Abundia, Jesse, Jordan, & Mara

Introduction

The threads of our lives have been slowly woven together through meals cooked communally, organizing meetings, bonfires and late conversations, foraging, harvesting, taking care of each other, and, lately, mourning a fallen comrade and friend. We all came together to protect Weelaunee Forest: the trees, waters, people, and all beings of this land. We came together to Stop Cop City and the violent military occupation of police in our communities, especially the Black and Brown ones, in Atlanta, Georgia. We came together amid COVID, when we felt the loss of closeness with our people, knowing we had to find creative ways of fostering community. We have come together to build the world we want to live in, even as we recognize we are all swimming in the extractive and oppressive systems of colonization, white supremacy, and capitalism, programmed for convenience and quick rewards. We keep coming back together, gathering with each other, to live in the joy and rest and wellness of community care.

The topic of this piece is the Sacred Web of Abundance (SWoA). The larger Sacred Web of Abundance is the sum of the vast, intricate system that sustains all life on this planet. Your Sacred Web of Abundance is the place that you live, the ways in which it sustains you, and the ways in which you sustain it. We are here to be part of this web and invite in others who are on the same land. What we have found is that the Sacred Web of Abundance, with her billions of years of wisdom, is there for us, waiting for our gratitude, delight, offerings, rituals, and ceremonies—waiting to build a relationship with us.

These unique ways of considering abundance emanate from a particular place, the South River Forest, known as the Weelaunee Forest on old maps of Georgia. These ideas come from conversations among a group of people as they adapt to living in that place.

Often overlooked, we feel that the Sacred Web of Abundance is a powerful idea for radical organizing. It is here for us as a force for liberation—as it has existed since time immemorial—and to help us fix the mess we are in by reclaiming our community power and centering it around the land that the community inhabits. In these times, we are all called to create new forms of organizing and direct action; new language, perspectives, and modes of being; and infrastructure for healing, care, and safety that centers the SWoA as key praxis for autonomous communities to build on.

Abundance points to the interconnected reliance on both self and community to provide for all; therefore, re-creating and reconnecting to our Sacred Web of Abundance are both essential collective actions for a new political project aimed at freedom and autonomy. Abundance is here, already, alive around us, if we open ourselves to its presence. We do not take this reliance on abundance for granted, as we did with the gift of human contact and proximity pre-COVID. Instead, we want to nourish and be nourished in its care, find inspiration from it to build new mutual aid infrastructure, gather strength to defend it from extractivism and capitalism everywhere, and create new cultures and ways of being and relating to each other and all the members of the SWoA.

An Obituary for Tortuguita

By Tallahassee IWW - European Trade Union Institute, February 24, 2023

Manuel “Tortuguita” Teran
They/It
4/23/96 – 1/18/23

Manny was a close friend, comrade, and above all, a constant fighter for working people. I knew them in Tallahassee through the IWW, Food Not Bombs, and Live Oak Radical Ecology and I will never cease to be amazed by their tireless activism, their extreme empathy, and their ability to make everyone feel welcome in radical spaces. They died as they lived, fighting for a better world and defending the forest from destruction in the name of a fascist militarized police force. I hope their name will not be forgotten, and that their killer is brought to justice, but more than anything I hope the cause that they fought for is victorious. Now we mourn this great loss to the Tallahassee and Atlanta communities, but tomorrow we will fight back twice as hard against Capitalism and the State so that Tortuguita did not die in vain. We love you and miss you Manny. Solidarity Forever!

Legal Support for Protesters/Activists

Support for Manny’s Family/Funeral Costs/Immigration

Public Petition to Support the Defend the Atlanta Forest Movement

This obituary was originally printed in Atlanta IWW’s South Paw newsletter by the Tallahassee IWW and has been reprinted here at their request.

Forest Defenders Vow Resistance After Court Green-Lights Phase I of “Cop City”

By Candice Bernd - Truthout, February 22, 2023

A judge denied a restraining order against initial construction of the $90 million militarized police training complex.

The Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, issued an order last week denying three plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order to halt clearing and construction work at the forested site of a planned police training facility that activists in Atlanta have dubbed “Cop City.” The ruling paves the way for construction activity even as the DeKalb County Zoning Board of Appeals considers the merits of the plaintiffs’ legal appeal of the project’s land disturbance permit.

The 85-acre, $90 million police militarization and training complex is being spearheaded by the Atlanta Police Foundation. If built, the compound would be one of the largest police training facilities in the country. The site would contain several shooting ranges, a helicopter landing base, an area for explosives training, police-horse stables and an entire mock city for officers to engage in role-playing activities.

In September 2021, the Atlanta City Council approved the project despite nearly 17 hours of comments from more than 1,100 constituents across the city, 70 percent of whom expressed firm opposition. Black working-class communities who actually live in the proposed area of unincorporated DeKalb County, and therefore aren’t represented in Atlanta’s City Council, also vocally oppose the project.

Judge Thomas Cox sided with the Atlanta Police Foundation’s argument that, “Property owned by a governmental entity for governmental purposes is exempt from local zoning ordinances.” Judge Cox, however, ordered the Foundation to “immediately coordinate daily inspections of the property and pay for the same.”

Where Do Railroad Workers Go from Here?

By Jay, Marilee Taylor, John Tormey, Matt Parker, and Maximillian Alvarez - In These Times, February 10, 2023

After a three-year saga of stalled contract negotiations between the country’s freight rail carriers and the 12 unions representing over 100,000 railroad workers, ​“pro-union” President Biden and Congress ​“averted” a national rail shutdown by overriding the democratic will of rail workers and forcing a contract down their throats. So, what happens now? 

In December, shortly after the Biden administration and Congress intervened, Working People convened a special all-railroader panel to break down the events of the last week and to discuss where railroad workers and the labor movement go from here.

Panelists include: Jay, a qualified conductor who was licensed to operate locomotives at 19 years old, and who became a qualified train dispatcher before he was 23; Marilee Taylor, who worked on the railroads for over 30 years and retired earlier this year from her post as an engineer for BNSF Railway, but is still an active member of Railroad Workers United; John Tormey, a writer and BMWED-IBT member who works as a track laborer for the commuter rail in Massachusetts; and Matt Parker, a full-time locomotive engineer who’s worked on the railroads for 19 years and also serves part-time as Chairman on the Nevada State Legislative Board of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century: Reviewed

By Steve Ongerth - IWW Environmental Union Caucus, February 8, 2023

While the IWW is not an explicitely anarcho-syndicalist organization, much of its praxis fits comfortably within the anarcho-syndicalist tradition. It's not the only revolutionary organization or union that does, either, and it's evident that anarcho-syndicalism as a living, breathing revolutionary practice is alive and well in the first couple of decades of the 21st Century. It's therefore somewhat puzzling that nobody has bothered to write a book that provides an updated overview of anarcho-syndicalism for a modern audience in well over seven or eight decades.

While there have been no shortage of books that have updated the history of anarcho-syndicalism, including the much covered (but contentiously debated) Spanish Revolution of 1936, as well as numerous revolutionary union organizing efforts throughout the last century; and there have been many books detailing the history, workplace and industrial organizing campaigns, methods, and praxis of syndicalist and/or syndicalist-adjacent unions, such as (but not limited to) the IWW, the IWA-AIT, and many others, there hasn't been an English Language book laying out the basic ideas of anarcho-syndicalism since Sam Dolgoff's and Rudolph Rocker's works of the mid-20th Century.

Fortunately, Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century, by Tom Wetzel, AK Press, 2022 finally attempts to fill that void.

How To Combat The Cumbria Coalmine and Other Retrograde Energy Projects

Family of Forest Defender Killed by Police Demands Answers

By Kenny Stancil - Common Dreams, February 6, 2023

Family members of climate activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán are demanding answers regarding the January 18 police killing of their 26-year-old relative, commonly known as "Tortuguita."

At a press conference held Monday morning outside the DeKalb County courthouse in suburban Atlanta, family members and lawyers discussed the results of a private autopsy and demanded access to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's (GBI) full record of events amid its ongoing probe.

According to the private autopsy, multiple officers from a joint task force shot Tortuguita at least 13 times during a raid on an encampment in the Weelaunee Forest. Tortuguita was part of a collective that occupied the forest in an attempt to prevent the construction of a $90 million, 85-acre police and fire training facility popularly known as Cop City.

The GBI alleges that Tortuguita fired a weapon before officers killed him. The GBI claims that it has traced the bullet that wounded a state trooper to a handgun found at the scene and has reportedly provided documents showing Terán purchased the firearm in 2020. However, law enforcement officials continue to evade basic questions about the fatal shooting.

"Manny was a kind person who helped anyone who needed it," Tortuguita's mother, Belkis Terán, said in a statement shared ahead of the press conference. "He was a pacifist. They say he shot a police officer. I do not believe it."

"I do not understand why they will not even privately explain to us what happened to our child," she added.

In Memory of Fellow Worker Tortuguita

By staff - IWW Freelance Journalists Union, January 30, 2023

On January 18, 2023, Manuel “Tortuguita” Páez Terán was murdered by the Georgia State Patrol in Atlanta, according to comrades with whom they were defending Weelaunee Forest from the construction of an 85-acre police training facility appropriately derided as “Cop City.”

As a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Tortuguita belonged to the countless ranks of Fellow Workers who seek, in the words of the IWW Constitution, to “take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.” In death, Fellow Worker Tortuguita joins the long list of IWW martyrs who have been murdered by the forces of the state and capital, which exploit all workers and our planet.

To support Fellow Worker Tortuguita’s family in this moment of need, the IWW Freelance Journalists Union encourages all of our members and supporters to donate to, and share widely, the fundraiser established for their funeral expenses.

We also encourage our members and supporters to donate to, and share, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which continues supporting Fellow Worker Tortuguita’s comrades who are yet being prosecuted by the state for defending Weelaunee Forest against Cop City.

Fellow Worker Tortuguita may be gone, but if we are able to defeat Cop City, then their spirit can live forever in the hearts of all those who visit Weelaunee Forest for generations to come. To paraphrase the words of another IWW martyr: Don’t mourn — organize!

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