[ The decades-long persecution of Forest Defenders]
[[link removed]]

BEATEN, BOMBED AND BURIED  
[[link removed]]


 

Don Kimball
March 17, 2023
Global Justice Ecology Project
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The decades-long persecution of Forest Defenders _

Tortuguita Memorial at entrance to Weelaunee Forest , Photo: Don
Kimball

 

On January 18, Southeast of Atlanta’s downtown, in an area once
inhabited the Muscogee (Creek) people in what they called the
Weelaunee Forest, now called the South River Forest, 26-year-old
Indigenous, queer, non-binary forest defender Manuel Esteban Paez
Teran, known to his friends and family as Tortuguita (Little Turtle),
was shot and killed in his tent by the Georgia State Patrol. Members
of the State Patrol were part of a SWAT team composed of the Georgia
Bureau of Investigation, the Atlanta Police, other local law
enforcement officers and, according to a GBI press release, the FBI. 

Carrying automatic weapons, accompanied by K-9s and with drone
surveillance support overhead, this militarized police force moved in
on encamped forest activists protecting some of the last remaining
canopied forest area in metropolitan Atlanta in a predominantly black
neighborhood. Claiming that Manuel fired first, this SWAT team shot
him 14 times, and for the first time in the history of the US
environmental movement, a forest activist had been killed by the
police. Not that they hadn’t tried before; more on that later. 

Tortuguita was one of a few dozen participants of a loosely knit
collective of forest activists, police abolitionists, Black-led
Community Movement Builders, anarchists and others from around the
country who have been engaged since April 2021 in direct actions
against the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest for a huge police
training facility. Reportedly using tactics such as tree sitting and
heavy equipment destruction, activists have been engaged in a furious
battle to stop the chainsaws, while legal challenges to protect the
forest wind their way through court. This collective of radical
resistors are attempting to protect the land from not just one, but
two proposed projects. 

TORTUGUITA’S PLAYLIST

_A friend of Tortuguita shared this Spotify playlist
[[link removed]] Tortuguita
had made, a four hour collection of radical music. _

“COP CITY”

The largest of the two projects threatening the South River forest is
a proposed police public safety training center that has been referred
to by the activists as “Cop City”. This futuristic police training
center is on the drawing board to become an 85 acre complex of
helicopter pads, shooting ranges and a mock city and would accelerate
the already dramatic militarization of police forces (the Atlanta PD
already has an armored tactical vehicle something along the lines of
an MRAP (mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle) which they’ve
nicknamed “The Beast”). Sponsored by the Atlanta Police
Foundation, which has contracted with at least three different
contractors to build the compound (a $90 million project). It is
reportedly funded by major corporate donors such as Delta Airlines,
Waffle House, Home Depot, Wells Fargo, UPS and Georgia Pacific. Coca
Cola was also a sponsor, but pulled out after a report issued by Color
of Change showed a direct connection between various police
foundations around the country and police violence against citizens
engaged in peaceful protest. That 2021 report was entitled: “Police
Foundations: A Corporate-Sponsored Threat to Democracy and Black
Lives”.  

70% DISAPPROVAL RATE

Funded by taxpayer dollars and the Atlanta Police Foundation, some of
Atlanta’s last forest canopy would be cut down and replaced by Cop
City. During the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War, this area
was a dairy farm and later the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. From 1920 to
1989, prisoners endured brutal conditions and lynchings there while
they raised food for Atlanta’s other prisons. Cop City was initially
given a green light by former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms. This was
despite a 70% disapproval rating by the general public; and many think
this project and the extreme reaction to protests against it are a
perverse police reaction to counter the Black Lives Matter and Defund
the Police movements which took root after the killing of George Floyd
in May of 2020. 

INTRENCHMENT CREEK PARK

The other project activists are opposing is called Intrenchment Creek
Park. This land-swap deal would give public land to Blackhall Studios
and result in the construction of the largest soundstage in the
country. Locals fear this dubious deal would accelerate the effects of
global climate change in the greater metropolitan area such as
flooding and increased temperatures. Concerns are also high that the
project would result in the gentrification of the predominantly
African American neighborhoods which border the project.

Atlanta Police bodycam footage with pistol and Tortuguita’s tent was
finally released 2 February

OMISSIONS AND HALF-TRUTHS

First reports of police-involved shootings are often fraught with
omissions and half-truths. A February 17 investigative story by
the _Washington Post_ found that the first draft of an incident most
always favors the police version of what happened, and the truth must
wait for reporters, journalists and concerned citizens to actually
force the real story to the surface. Philip Stinson, a criminal
justice professor at Bowling Green State University who researches
criminal behavior by police said that “the police own the narrative
in every interaction they have with the public, because they write-up
the reports, and sometimes the reports are written to justify the
actions the officers have taken and sometimes to cover-up what
actually happened.” In the shooting death of Manuel, the official
narrative is being challenged as more information surfaces. This 26
year old Magna Cum Laude graduate of Florida State University was
reported to have shot and wounded an unnamed police officer, and the
public was told that there was no bodycam footage to substantiate the
charges that Tortuguita was killed in a hail of gunfire in a reaction
by the SWAT team. However, on February 8th, just two days after
Manuel’s family and attorneys held a press conference outside the
DeKalb County courthouse calling for transparency on the part of the
police, the Atlanta police department released bodycam footage of
their officers involved in the raid, questioning who really shot the
unnamed Georgia State Patrol officer. An Atlanta law enforcement
officer can be heard asking, “Did they shoot their own in there?”
Another officer replies, “we don’t know what he got shot
by.”   

Tortuguita’s mother, Belkis Teran (left) and Timothy Pratt covering
COP City protests for the UK’s _The Guardian   Photo: Don
Kimball_

“IMAGINE THE POLICE KILLED YOUR CHILD, AND NOW IMAGINE THEY WON’T
TELL YOU ANYTHING“

 A second autopsy done at the request of the family revealed that
Manuel was most likely shot while he was in a seated position, and
that their body included exit wounds through the palms of both hands.
According to a March 11 NPR story, Tortuguita’s family has now sued
the GBI for more information on the shooting under the Open Records
Act.  “Imagine the police killed your child, and now imagine they
won’t tell you anything. That is what we are going through,” said
Belkin Teran, Manuel’s mother. This is the same GBI that has
instructed the Atlanta Police Department to not release any more
bodycam footage or other information on this tragedy.  In a March
10th press release, GBI defended the agency’s decision to restrict
information saying they want to “preserve the integrity of the
investigation and to ensure the facts of the incident are not
tainted.” 

A HISTORY OF FBI INFILTRATION AND OBSTRUCTION OF GROUPS AND
ORGANIZATIONS

_“I’M SCARED EVERY DAY”, JUDI BARI, EF! ORGANIZER ON HER
CONTINUED ACTIVISM AFTER A 1990 CAR BOMBING IN WHICH SHE WAS ALMOST
KILLED _

Poster for the movie Who Bombed Judi Bari?

Infiltration and obstruction of groups and organizations out of the
mainstream have long been a modus operandi for FBI agents. FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover’s infamous COINTELPRO operation began in
1956 originally to target the activities of the Communist Party of the
United States, but later expanded to include civil rights activists
such as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panthers. One FBI
document stated one of the purposes of the program was to “expose,
disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize the activities
of the Black Nationalists”. As years went by, some of these same
tactics would be used against Native American activists such as
Leonard Peltier, who still remains in prison after being framed for
the murder of two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973.
The FBI’s tentacles would eventually reach out to ensnare
environmentalists.  

THE CAR BOMBING OF EARTH FIRST! ACTIVISTS

Take, for example, the case of the car bombing in Oakland, California
of Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney. In May of
1990, these two forest activists were organizing for “Redwood
Summer”, a campaign calling for forest protectors throughout the
nation to come to Northern California to protect the last of the
magnificent ancient redwood trees from being clearcut. The brainchild
of Judi, and based on the 60s civil rights “Mississippi Summer”
where activist “freedom riders” traveled to the Deep South to
advocate for voting and civil rights for Blacks, EF! hoped to use
similar tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience to disrupt and delay
the destruction of the remaining redwood forests of which at that time
only around three percent remained. 

NARROWLY ESCAPING DEATH

Early one morning, as Judi and Darryl were driving in Judi’s Subaru
station wagon on their way to Santa Cruz, CA to recruit activists;
Darryl with his guitar and Judi with her fiddle, they were nearly
killed when a pipe bomb exploded underneath Judi’s driver’s seat.
Judi was seriously injured in the blast, and both her and Darryl were
hospitalized.  Almost immediately, the FBI and Oakland Police
Department charged both of them with possession and transportation of
explosives. This was largely due to the fact that FBI agent Frank
Doyle stated that the bomb had been in the back seat, and not under
the driver’s seat. This fabrication of the truth would result in the
two activists being arrested in their hospital beds for possessing and
transporting explosives. Weeks later, the District Attorney in the
case dismissed the charges for lack of evidence. This was not the
first time that Judi, the divorced mother of two, and Darryl had
narrowly escaped death for their activism. Nine months before their
bombing, the couple and Judi’s daughters were intentionally
rear-ended by a logging truck in what Judi described as “attempted
murder”. Photos also circulated in Mendocino County of Judi speaking
at a Board of Supervisors meeting with a rifle crosshair superimposed
on her face. A letter to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and signed by
“The Lord’s Avenger,” claimed responsibility for the bombing of
Judi and Darry later that year, but the case was never pursued by the
FBI. 

CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT

 In 1997 a civil rights lawsuit was filed against the Oakland PD and
the FBI for a violation of Judi and Darryl’s civil rights. In 2002 a
jury awarded Bari’s estate (Judi had tragically died of breast
cancer in 1997) and Cherney a total of $4.4 million. The award was
later reduced in 2004 to $4 million, with a stipulation that the
Oakland PD release all the evidence in the case to Cherney. Darryl
would go on to use the money awarded him by the court to produce the
2012 documentary, “Who Bombed Judi Bari”.

WHO BOMBED JUDI BARI?

Directed by Mary Liz Thomson, the documentary films Judi giving a
deposition from her deathbed about what happened to her as a result of
the bombing, and chronicles EF! fight to save the Redwoods. That same
year, before the FBI planned to destroy them, a federal judge ordered
the FBI to let an independent laboratory test fragments and other
evidence left over from the 1990 bombing. That evidence also included
the remnants of another, similar pipe bomb that, two weeks before the
Oakland bombing, partially exploded at a Louisiana-Pacific lumber mill
in Cloverdale, CA.  In response to the ruling Cherney said, the FBI,
“COVERED THE TRACKS OF THE BOMBER”, and never conducted a proper
investigation. Cherney went on to declare that, “they blamed us for
the bombing. I want to find out who that guy is. This evidence
represents the most promising opportunity to solve the case.” To
this day, “The Lords Avenger” remains at large.  

THE BRAVEST PERSON I HAD EVER MET

The 1990 bombing of Judi and Darryl shocked many in the environmental
movement, myself included. As a Sierra Club member at the time, I had
previously viewed EF! actions as a little too radical for my taste.
However, after the bombing I felt that EF! must be doing something
right if the opposition had tried to kill them. I made the trip  up
to Ft. Bragg from Southern California to Redwood Summer for a rally
and march to save the redwoods. This was my first experience marching
in a demonstration, and it was as anxiety-filled (cops from as far
away as Petaluma lined the parade route in riot gear)  as it was
inspiring. Hundreds of activists marched through the downtown streets
of Ft. Bragg chanting, “Earth First!, profits last”, as loggers
and their families looked on. It wasn’t until “Ecotopia Summer”
the following year that I got to meet Judi. As we were sitting in her
car with her two daughters in the back seat, I told her that I thought
she was the bravest person I had ever met. Judi looked at me and said
to me words that I will never forget, “I’M SCARED EVERY DAY”.
Those words don’t just haunt me still today, but also inspire me to
do more. To fight against those, “who know the price of everything,
but the value of nothing”. Now 33 years after the bombing , one of
our own has been killed outright by the police, and we must fight for
justice now just like we did back then. 

TOGETHER WE MUST FIGHT FOR JUSTICE

Outraged by Tortuguita’s shooting and the subsequent lack of
transparency by the GBI and a growing body of evidence contrary to
police accounts, there have been numerous actions, marches,
fundraisers and demonstrations resulting in many arrests with 20-25
activists being held, some even facing domestic terrorism charges
which can carry a sentence of up to 35 years. The Atlanta Solidarity
Fund has been at the forefront of jail support for those being held in
the DeKalb County Jail (a request to jail officials as to exactly how
many activists were being held was not answered).

MASS MOBILIZATION

From March 4th to the 11th, 2023 there was a “Mass Mobilization to
#StopCopCity”. People came from around the country to make their
voices heard against the killing of Tortuguita, and the continued
oppression of the protestors.  Among those who spoke out are
Muscoggee Creek and Lakota Sioux peoples, the Atlanta Community Press
Collective, and over 65 environmental, human rights and civil
liberties groups who on March 8th sent a letter to Georgia
prosecutors calling for the domestic terrorism charges to be dropped.
Ted Terry, a former Georgia Sierra Club director, has been the only
county commissioner to oppose the building of Cop City.  

A TAINTED INVESTIGATION

Tortuguita’s family and lawyers have held two press conferences
since his killing. On March 13th during the second press conference
asking for information and transparency from the GBI, lawyers decried
not just the Blue Wall of police silence, but how the county, city,
state and federal authorities were in “lock step” in a coverup.
Attorney Brian Spears said that the investigation is already tainted,
and that the family has had no access to an autopsy performed by
DeKalb County. Results of a private autopsy showed that Manuel was
shot 14 times, with some of the bullets converging and intersecting.
Tortuguita was shot through the right eye, in the right forearm, in
the abdomen, in both legs and in both palms, facing inwards. Attorneys
also said there were wounds in the legs of Tortuguita from two
different police shotguns. Belkis Teran, Tortuguita’s mom said,
“we don’t know anything, there is only silence. I am suffering for
my right to answers. My heart is destroyed.”  

SUPPORT FOR TORTUGUITA 

People interested in supporting Tortuguita’s family in their fight
for justice can contribute to their GOFUNDME PAGE
[[link removed]]

_Don Kimball has been a forest defender for over 30 years. His work
has also included anti-nuclear actions at the Nevada Test Site,
campaigns coordination for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, as a
cruelty investigator for Animal Protection of NM, and a board member
for the Maine Friends of Animals. Don was a leading advocate in Sierra
Club California for the passage  of the California Desert Protection
Act of 1994 which established Death Valley and Joshua Tree National
Monuments as National Parks. _

* Environmental Protests
[[link removed]]
* police brutality
[[link removed]]
* Cop City
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]