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Tortuguita

Stop Cop Planet, Save the Surreal World

By Dan Fischer - New Politics, August 1, 2023

March 5, 2023: Approaching a construction site for Cop City, officially known as the “Atlanta Public Safety Training Center,” roughly 300 masked forest defenders cut through the fencing and chanted with conviction, “We are unstoppable, another world is possible.” Throwing rocks and fireworks, they caused cops to retreat. The crowd burned down several construction vehicles and a trailer, undoing about a month’s worth of work and causing at least $150,000 in damages.1

March 8: Reversing their ancestors’ route on the Trail of Tears, an official Muscogee delegation returned to Atlanta’s Weelaunee Forest. They announced to the city’s authorities, “You must immediately vacate Muscogee homelands and cease violence and policing of Indigenous and Black people.”

It can feel surreal watching such inversions of the common-sense social reality where police chase protesters and settler elites evict natives.2 Building on the communal and sometimes jubilant militancy of the Standing Rock and George Floyd uprisings, the Stop Cop City movement effectively declares: to hell with your thin blue line, your economy, your authorities. Such authorities include Atlanta’s Black mayor Andre Dickens and his Democratic administration, as well as the leaderships of the city’s historically Black colleges. Referencing his school’s funding of Cop City, a student denounced Morehouse’s complicity in “a system that does not serve Black people.”3

Among the crowds occupying city streets and among the Weelaunee Forest’s tents and treehouses, signs declare commitments to police abolition, decolonization, anti-fascism, radical ecology, and total liberation. “Stop the metaverse. Save the real world,” declares a banner hanging between two pines. The message went viral, ironically, and why not? What could be more worth defending than an urban forest? What could be more worth stopping than the metaverse, that comprehensive virtual reality concocted by profit-hungry, surveillance-friendly social media executives?

However, for those caught in the rhythms of capitalist time, centered around working or surviving among the unemployed “industrial reserve army,”4 we often experience the “real world” as precisely the social reality responsible for threatening Atlanta’s forest. Hollywood Dystopia is Shadowbox Studios’ murky plan to destroy more of the forest, apparently for a massive soundstage complex. Cop City, a $90 million police compound, would be the country’s largest academy of militarized repression. It’s being built despite 70 percent of public comments in 2021 expressing opposition, despite the immediately adjacent neighborhoods across city borders not being given a say. Cop Planet is the world of transnational capital’s “mass social control, repression and warfare,”5 where—for example—Georgia’s cops receive training from hypermilitarized Israeli police.6 It’s the brutal reality where U.S. police kill people every single day, where Atlanta cops murdered Rayshard Brooks in 2020, and where Georgia troopers murdered Tortuguita, a Venezuelan gender-nonbinary anarchist, in the forest this January.

Police Shot Atlanta Cop City Protester 57 Times, Autopsy Finds

By Natasha Lennard - The Intercept, April 20, 2023

It looks like Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán was executed by firing squad — underscoring why we must stop the massive police training center.

When 26-year-old Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán was shot dead by police during a brutal, multi-agency raid on the Defend Atlanta Forest, Stop Cop City encampment in January, the activist’s friends felt certain of two things: Tortuguita was murdered, and whatever narrative the police offered would be a lie.

Like clockwork, police officials claimed that Tortuguita shot first and hit a state trooper. In body camera footage that was later released — after police said none would be — one officer said that the cop had been shot by his fellow police. (Authorities dismissed the footage as speculation and said evidence did not support the remarks.) A previous, independent autopsy ordered by Tortuguita’s family found that the activist’s hands were raised when they were shot.

Then, on Wednesday night, DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office released its official autopsy report, which found no trace of gunpowder residue on Tortuguita’s hands. The young activist’s body was riddled with at least 57 gunshot wounds, including in their head, torso, hands, and legs. The medical examiner has ruled the death a homicide.

The abundance of evidence, including the government autopsy, doesn’t look like a group of police taking self-defensive action against a protester.

What it looks like is that the forest defender was executed by firing squad.

With so many gunshot wounds, the sheer brutality of Tortuguita’s killing is hard to fathom. Even if the autopsy report showed the activist had fired a gun, as police claimed, this would not have justified gunning them down in a storm of bullets.

#STOPCOPCITY March 2023 Week of Action

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

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.”

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!

Activists Demand Independent Investigation After Cops Kill Protester in Atlanta

By Mike Ludwig - Truthout, January 19, 2023

Web editor's note: Tortuguita was a member of the IWW. Please add your name to this protest letter.

An activist was shot and killed by police on Wednesday during a violent raid of the protest camp and community gathering space that has blocked construction of an enormous police training facility known as “Cop City” on roughly 100 acres of public forest in southeast Atlanta.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation initially said a suspect was shot and killed after allegedly firing a gun and injuring a Georgia state trooper during the raid, but fellow protesters and community activists doubt the official narrative and are calling on journalists and legal observers to investigate. Tensions between police and the tree-sitting protesters (known as “forest defenders”) have been rising for months, and activists said they had previously demanded police stop bringing guns and other weapons into the forest to prevent needless injury and death.

Statements from activists identified the person who was killed by police as a protester named Manuel Teran, who also goes by the name Tortuguita. Teran is described as a “generous,” “kind” and “fierce” activist who was a trained medic and ran a mutual aid group as part of the forest defense community.

The killing came as multiple law enforcement agencies swarmed the area Wednesday morning in their latest attempt to “clear” the protest camp. The effort featured search dogs hunting for activists, bulldozers and both lethal and non-lethal weapons, according to statements and posts on social media from accounts associated with the “Stop Cop City” movement. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation claims a handgun and shell casings were found at the scene.

The reportedly wounded state patrol officer was not identified as of Thursday morning, with law enforcement claiming the officer was in stable condition after being treated at a hospital and releasing few other details.

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