 My name is Michelle Edelman of Cormac. I wear many hats. Today I'm here as a cooperation in Vermont. My other hat is the general manager of the workroom cooperative at Marchfield Village Store, and I'm also an organizer, mostly a keyboard warrior with regeneration corps. And today we are joined by April Fisher with Food Not Cops. I'll take an extra special moment here for April, who's just freaking amazing, like, you know, the Stop Cops city stuff has been popping off, it's been heating up, and I'm just like, I feel like we should do something. Somebody should say something here in Vermont, like it should be a thing here too, right? So the first call I make is April, and April's like, fuck yeah, we're gonna do the thing. And so we're here doing the thing, and it's all because of April, and I really appreciate that. Next, we have Colleen Kuno from Cooperation Jackson and the People's Network for Land and Liberation, that Cooperation Vermont is also a part of, and then Colleen, who organizes with the Free Her campaign here in Vermont, and pieced together why the three of these folks, you know, would make sense on the same panel, right? So the idea is like, we're gonna show a couple of videos that it's gonna frame a little bit more for folks who may or may not be as familiar with the Stop Cops city movement and where it's currently at, and then we're gonna talk a little bit about the work of, you know, the organizations and Colleen is gonna talk, you know, from his perspective as part of PNLL about the work at, you know, Stop Cops city right now, and then Kamau is going to zoom in, all of the things, you know, being fingers crossed and got them freaked out, right, zoom in at 5.30, and we're, we wanted to have, I don't know if it's gonna be possible, because there's a lot of you, which is super exciting. We had plans to, like, break out sessions and do a thing, but we might flip the script a little bit, I'm gonna play it by ear, it's gonna be great, and, but yeah, so that, that's the thing, and the important thing that I wanted to, like, frame here in this moment is really linking what's happening at Stop Cops City in Atlanta with this move to, like, further, let's be clear, further militarize our police forces here in the United States. This is a place where, you know, police, you know, forces from all over the country are gonna be coming to train on urban warfare, okay, and how to, to further, you know, oppress and criminalize our populations and to continue to build our prison systems and that whole prison industrial complex, which is what freed her here in Vermont, is fighting. Is everybody aware that they're trying to build more prisons in the state of Vermont? Does everybody aware that they spent too many, just this year, $2 million, just on a feasibility study, right, to build a new women's prison here in Vermont? There's 90 to 95 women incarcerated right now in, in the prison here in Vermont, and do the math, right, and so they're trying to build a prison where they're like, whoa, fuck it, we should just think ahead, right, like, plan for growth, but only in our prison system, and double the capacity of this new prison that they're trying to build, and I'm gonna be quiet on it, but you get where I'm going with this, and also, has anybody heard that there's a high school here that's not in a school? Like a Macy's? Okay, so we're making languages. I don't think I need to preach the choir in this room, so I'm really hoping that we're gonna, like, get up to speed and be thinking really strategically about how we're going to mobilize here in Vermont, right, so our strategy for a housing program for people who I'm clear on are gonna be starting to migrate this direction because of climate change, right, is this new prison system that we're gonna spend $290 million, our solution to how we're gonna be treating internally displaced people? No, not fucking Vermont. Now, well, I'm here. How about you? You? You? So we need to mobilize before it's too fucking late. That's why I'm here today, and with that, I'm gonna pass the day bro. Police, out, police, construction, contacting companies, you hear them talk all the time, because there's a police firing range, and yet you hear them talk all the time. Occupying this force is how activists are resisting the construction of a $90 million state-of-the-art police train setter protestors called COPS-CITY. The facility will be developed on one of the largest green spaces in Southeast Atlanta, which has a history of oppression. All of it. It will be, they've got, they cannot wait. They just want to go in and bulldoze everything and write the history the way that they want to write it. The fate of the force is up in the air as a police and force defenders both refuse to back down. Those people, to me, through their acts are actually domestic terrorists. Major corporations are pouring millions into this project financially pressuring politicians to build COPS-CITY. Why did you go to a police facility? Surrounding neighborhoods that are more than 75% black say their concerns have been silenced. Our opinion doesn't matter. It doesn't count. Disrespect. And that's when folks who live here ought to be just enraged for back. Research shows and stills you can help them with their acts. That's nice to see. Hey, I'm Kayla, and I'm one of the AI voices from Revoisa. I still get anxious when I'm, like, coming down. This force defender who goes by fruit map has been living in truce for the past six months. You know, the benefits of stuff destroying her, the great thing also is that you don't have to destroy the tree to live in it. These force defenders are a coalition of activists operating without a centralized leadership. It makes me feel like I'm part of something greater than myself. Fruit map is using a pseudonym because he's afraid of getting tracked and punished by authorities. The police, FBI, and other agencies are currently investigating the movement against Cop City. You know, the SWAT team has come through here before and arrested people. Several protesters were arrested during a police raid after a confrontation in which activists allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at officers. Force defenders say authorities have continued to destroy tree houses during raids. As we tour the forest, we heard gunshots for hours. You can hear a gun firing. That's coming from a police firing range that already exists nearby. The plan is to expand that into an 85-acre campus. That's as big as nearly 64 football fields put together. The facility would be one of the biggest in the U.S. As you can see here in a video plan provided by the Atlanta Police Foundation, among the training features will be a bird tower for firefighters, a shooting range, and a mock village, including a school and residential homes. But residents who live nearby say they were blindsided by the city's plan to expand the massive police facility. Is that the living room right here? No, no one's used to that. I do see when they ask for votes. I do see that. Shenard owns a tow truck business near the proposed facility and lives in a neighborhood that is more than 76% black. The forest is literally probably about less than a mile. The police academy is kind of like over there where they train at. The existing gun range already disturbs his day-to-day life. Once the dogs hear fireworks, gunshots, they go ahead and all kinds of issues run away. I'm not sure they're trying to force us out of the community. I just take over the whole community overall, but that's what it looked like the way the path began. Atlanta's proposal to construct a police facility here speaks to the land's painful history. The site was a prison farm until 1995. Prisoners there were subjected to harsh punishments and slain conditions, including poor sanitation, nutrition, and overcrowding. Some critics say claims of unlawful raids have not yet been properly investigated. Before that, the land is thought to have been a plantation that enslaved at least 19 people. It was originally stolen from the Muskogee who lived there until the U.S. government forcefully displaced them to Oklahoma. Today, both activists and tribal members have reclaimed the Indigenous name as Mulani People's Park. Local advocates have long called for the area to be preserved as a historical site. They just can't wait. They cannot wait. They just want to go in and bulldoze everything and write the history the way they want to write it and be done with it. They haven't even done proper ecological surveys yet. But Cop City isn't the only facility that the residents have opposed. Around the force is a Hollywood studio, sanitation center, juvenile prison, and asphalt and trucking factories. So, let's key role Glenfield. Nobody wants to address the environmental injustice of this. Those issues had never been vetted. The facilities have severely polluted Entrenchment Creek, which flows downstream to the South River. Jocelyn Eccles is trying to prevent the construction of Cop City from an environmental perspective. When we were here about a month and a half ago, we pulled a great 50 bags of trash. When you look at the river, not the free water quality standards, in the cheapest way to improve water quality, it's a protected rich place. In a 2017 report by the city's planning department, the South River force was designated one of Atlanta's four major lungs. Now, the city is walking back on its vision to conserve the forest. To just turn around and have to just disrespect the community, because they never cared about the river, so we can accept that. But you're disrespecting the people who live in South Atlanta. And that's when folks who live here are being just enraged about it. Some neighborhoods around the forest are more than 90% black and are low income with health challenges such as asthma. Getting rid of the green space will also leave them vulnerable to impacts like storm water flooding. As a full-time roller skater, I would be attached to the board, the eye lines, the invoices. Now keep in mind, during the few times we have concerns, the overwhelming majority express opposition. In fact, one hearing in September 2021 lasted for 17 hours where around 70% of comments were against Cops City. Regardless, City Council passed the plan in a 10 to 4 vote. What is going on with the city? Ordinarily, you would have a city who has control over the police. So why did Council members approve this facility? It's important to understand the Police Foundation in Atlanta. It's considered one of the most powerful police foundations in the country. For instance, when the mayor was elected, the CEO of the foundation served on his transition committee. Among those sitting on its board are leaders of corporations like UPS, Wells Fargo, Chick-fil-A, Home Depot and Delta Airlines. The APF raises investments to finance police projects like Cops City. Of the 90 million dollars needed to build a facility, 60 million will be funded by the foundation's corporate donors. The remaining 30 million will likely be paid by taxpayers. Well before the council voted on the facility, the police foundation had been lobbying council members and the cost? The city leased the land to the foundation for just $10 per year for the next 50 years. Two of the council members who approved the plan agreed to sit down for an interview. Why did you vote to approve this facility? It's going to be a big recruit pool. We have a duty. We have an obligation to provide our employees with the best in class, everything. But you also have an obligation to listen to what the community is saying, right? Do you feel like you've done that? Yes, I feel that I've done that. I presented it around the city constantly with multiple chances for public speak. I've never been to a neighborhood planning meeting or a neighborhood meeting where I have been told we don't want this. So why here? One, it isn't what I see as a quote unquote forest, especially not an old growing forest. If you go out to the land, which I haven't been too many times, a lot of places, species. Those who frequent the park daily see it's brought unique value to the neighborhood. So to them it may not be a problem but to some I guess it does be something. And to say it's true one man's young is another man's church. But these are the same things that don't even live in the community. They don't live in the community. They don't care who they are. They don't care about excited city councilman. Would you allow any government? Would you allow us to take place near the community? Would you allow landfills in New York City? Would you allow a police a character of this man to be built in New York City? The city is determined to proceed with building Cops City. Meanwhile forest defenders have demolished equipment that they say attempted to destroy the forest. If I just come back around like that, significantly this is the area that I've been said to be going to destroy the forest. The districts that I've been in everyone agrees with the way defenders have been resisting. Some of them have embraced militant tactics vandalizing police and private contractor vehicles. Other critics say they do not represent the communities living in Southeast Atlanta. We don't see eye to eye on everything but we are here trying to defend the forest. The city's spokesperson told AJ Plus the current facilities where officers is inadequate and that the new campus is necessary to give officers quote urban training. We have gangs, et cetera. We have to be at the very least at that level of monoclocking. Less than three weeks after the police killing of George Floyd, an Atlanta officer fatally shot Mayshard Brooks in the parking lot of the Wendy's. His death reverberated nationwide calls to defund the police eventually resulting in the burning of the restaurant and the resignation of the city's police chief. But the city's response afterward was to increase police funding to improve officers morale. Atlanta is one of the most surveilled cities in the U.S. with extensive technology financed by the police foundation. Our neighborhoods are essentially occupied by police. Organizers and majority black neighborhoods have been looking for internal solutions to combat violence such as de-escalation tactics. Community movement builders says the most pressing issues affecting residents are actually food insecurity and homelessness. This note for being a black mecca is note for having a lot of black politicians that a lot of times those decisions that they make are not in the interest of the black masses here that are overwhelmingly poor and working faster rather than in interest of their funding. The police foundation has said it's incorporated public opinion by promising 265 acres as green space and that it will also invest in trails for the public. Let me put it this way. We would not believe the notion that you can create a park-like environment next to a police training facility. You can go out and walk along the trail and just hear the dust by your own. I mean it's almost like that's what you're used to anyway right so we're just getting home. The police foundation says it will move forward with the construction and open by the end of 2023. The families and schools are refusing to let that define the future. They're hoping increased awareness will stop the construction. Not all protesters we spoke to were anti-police. Some were hopeful officers could receive better training to deal with non-violent cases involving mental health issues. But they collectively agree they're done letting the city sideline their voices. The movement forced defenders hope to delay construction by nurturing a communal space. People are supporting the movement with water and food donations. From all angles of resistance people living both in and around the forest are determined to embrace the green space as the anchor of community. I've just had so many great experiences in those woods. At least these people are out there enjoying it right now. We're envisioning a society that we want in the future and the only way to get there is to envision it, to name it, to show it and to gather people who believe in that vision. You know, the nature to preserve the wildlife, all that kind of stuff they have brought to this community and they're saying, hey, we're just going to take it away. That's not right. That's not right. This is Democracy Now, democracynow.org The War and Peace Report. In Atlanta, Georgia calls for an independent investigation into the place killing of an activist Wednesday during a violent raid on an encampment of protesters opposed to the proposed 90 million dollar cop city training facility in a public forest. Law enforcement officers, including a swamp team, were clearing protesters who'd occupied a wooded area outside the center when police claimed they were fired on and fired back. Police say Georgia State Trooper was wounded by gunfire. Activists have now released the name of the victim of the police shooting. Long-time activist Manuel Tehran who went by the name, Tortugita. In an audio statement sent to Democracy Now Thursday an Atlanta forest defender describes what happened and who Tortugita was. They asked to remain anonymous and for their voice to be distorted for security reasons. On Wednesday, January 18th, multiple police departments descended upon We Lied Tugol's Park in unprecedented numbers and force They blocked access to the park on both roads and white trails. Some people were arrested for attempting to document police actions that day that the park gunfire was heard at 9.04 a.m. About a dozen shots fired in rapid succession followed by a loud boom about a minute late assault and arrest our brave forest defender the house which stored food and water cup from beneath them food and water for over 12 hours up in the tree as police waited at the base of the tree to capture them. Tree-sitter continued to stay in their tree until the next morning when they were arrested by police dogs and flee for their lives all the while with the Nazi even knowing that they were in a sacred land that we call home. Tortugita was a a law on tirelessly to honor and protect the sacred land of the Boulogne forest They took great joy and caring for each and every person that they came across Tortugita brought an indescribable turbulence to each and every moment of their life Their passing is a preventable tragedy The murder of Tortugita is a gross violation of both humanity and of this precious earth which they love so fiercely Do not turn away from this violence Do not allow the callousness of the police state to numb your heart Honor Tortugita by bravely witnessing the ongoing injustices the police and corporations are adapting upon the Boulogne forest Honor Tortugita's legacy by embodying their choice bravery Tortugita's presence on this earth is a gift that will keep on giving for generations to come It is time for people to join this movement and to say no to this pointless escalation by the police Beth was an anonymous statement by an Atlanta forest defender sent to democracy now his voice disguised vigils for the slain forest defender Tortugita have taken place from Los Angeles to Minneapolis to Charlotte to Chicago and Atlanta activists held the vigil the night of the shooting and are planning a march on Saturday for more of the we're going to stop there in this footage a bunch and I've seen a bunch more of it maybe this is tickable it's this and shit like this it's already in all of our communities it's like the degree of intensity the degree of the scale the escalation that varies but it's here we see it here in Vermont it is a matter of scale and where our resources are chosen to be put and by whom I think it's going to continue to be a struggle and I think that struggle is going to continue to get more and more intense as natural resources become more scarce and I'm going to be quiet for a moment that's what I'm going to do and I'm going to turn to April and then Kali and then Kalia to talk about the work that each of their organizations do but focusing more on South for you and then just tell those individual stories and then we're going to have a conversation about how that links and then I have some thoughts and then we're going to get into discussion April do you guys want to go before me or do you want me to go yeah, first of all thank you all for coming to this oh yeah thank you all for coming to this yeah, obviously it's really up and it's really scary like Tortuguita could be any of us and I think it's really incredible that we're all here showing up in solidarity with the folks in Atlanta we had a guest from Atlanta back early fall and a lot of you were there for that and I think that there's yeah it's really important I think that we're all here and I really appreciate that I guess I'm going to focus on talking about some stuff that's happening in Vermont which like a lot of you already involved with but I'll just start talking about that and maybe we can kind of make connections between all these things that we're talking about I'm part of Food.Cops which is a mutual aid organization that has been going on before I got here a year and a half ago they started in the pandemic and we've been doing free lunch every single day it is at the marketplace garage parking garage on Cherry Street across from Walgreens and all sorts of folks come to the other free lunch a lot of unhoused folks just food insecure people in general and it's been like an incredible space for people to come together I know for myself like I didn't like have friends who are unhoused really prior to joining this organization I think it's I've learned a lot from our comrades housed and unhoused and I think it's really been a jumping off point for a lot of actions that have happened in this town and like a lot of and I'll say one more thing about the Oregon that one other thing that we sort of launched about a year ago now is like the daily cooking night which has been cooking for the daily dish drill every night at a different person's house if you are interested in getting involved in cooking let me know or you could go to Food Not Bombs for my Instagram and get you involved and we got cooking every single night so people often will ask why is it called Food Not Bombs and like there's a million ways to answer that question for me it's about creating these community structures so that we can one have political power to resist the police and two have the community power so that we need the police anyway but we definitely don't need the police and we have each other and like a concrete example there have been like multiple like emergency situations that have happened in the community that even when the police were called the police were not helpful and we called on the people who we knew from Food Not Bombs and it was because we already knew each other from cooking every night and going to this dish drill because we already had these connections that we were able to like de-escalate the situation and we didn't need the police and the other way is a lot of people in this room were also at the Sears Lane encampment which happened last year which is for folks who don't know it was an encampment of unhoused people in the south end and the police bulldozed the camp but we were able to delay the bulldozing for a month because their activists camped out there and the overlap between the folks there and Food Not Cops was very strong so I think the importance of mutual aid like Food Not Cops was able to build the community power to both resist the state and then also keep each other safe and there's still a lot of work to do on both those fronts but I think that we have a structure in place that we are working off of to accomplish those goals so yeah I'm going to turn it over to Kami Livingston I use she, her pronouns I apologize for the low energy today you are seeing real life burnout so I have a bit of anxiety but I'm happy that I was invited to be here I am a Vermont resident I was born and raised in Burlington and I currently am one of the campaign organizers for the Free Her Vermont campaign which is ran by the National Council of Graded Informally Incarcerated Women Girls and that is an organization that was founded by Andrea James in 2010 and our hub is out of Massachusetts so the mission of our organization is to end incarceration for people in women's prisons and to do that we tackled that work through three bodies of work which is reimagining communities policy work and our Free Her campaign the Free Her campaign is a New England-wide campaign so here in Vermont we are focusing on the Vermont Carceral State and a little bit of what Michelle mentioned earlier in the state it's trying to build 40 prisons for $250 million and we are advocating to stop that construction and reinvest that money into our communities and the many needs that we have in our communities housing being number one substance use education and services things for wellness and for humanities in general we all know what we need in our Vermont communities instead of prisons and we shouldn't be expanding the Carceral State why I'm here today is to talk about the the excuse me the connection between what's happening in Atlanta with no cop city and with them wanting to build this strongly built harassed institution where they plan to train police all over the state we're seeing how in Burlington the police have been defunded but they are advocating to get that funding back and expand the police state so we're seeing how what's happening in Atlanta can very much affect what's happening here in Vermont and we can see how that militarization can take place here while they're also trying to expand the Carceral State with these 40 prisons I feel like I'm kind of going on a tangent but I'm like I said I'm a little bit burnt out so I'm kind of going on a run on but I just really wanted to come here and connect with other people in the community and talk about work that other folks are doing because I believe that what we need to do to reimagine Vermont communities is happening and we haven't quite built that bridge to really bring our movement together and get to a place of abolition so I hope that we can start having more of these conversations and connecting our work and seeing how all of you and all of us on the ground can have abolition in mind as we are doing the different things that we do in our social justice movements I might have a little bit more to add if people have questions but I'm going to leave it there for now I appreciate you all being here and I'll give it to you let me start with a couple of very subjective questions for you all you answer how you feel free to answer the first question is how many people in here consider themselves creatures of the left now to be clear because you know people use that term very differently I use it to mean people who identify and attempt to practice some form of anarchism, socialism, communism or revolutionary nationalism right that's how I use it you may use it differently you got to write to your perspective on that so about half the room raise your hand so how many of you will consider yourself to be liberals you said the same thing obviously they're not the same well I mean he said a lot he said a lot originally I don't really trust Democrats or Republicans so they're just caught up with the politics of it but yes, socially yes community building over it so yes, liberal but depending on whose perspective and how you define it so I'm asking this this question for very practical reasons around political clarity and the type of clarity I think we need in a time like this I mean if you didn't really know that much about Atlanta you would assume that their place was being run by Donald Trump or DeSantis right from the type of policies and things that they're pushing Atlanta is a Democrat run city right and it's a black Democrat run city right a city run by black Democrats since the 1960s the late 1960s right it was noted for having the first major cities in the south particularly the deep south to have a black mayor who then shepherded in one of the most major economic transformations in the deep south by bringing the Atlanta airport securing that contract and then bringing the airport to Atlanta that airport was originally designed in Alabama and why is this important although it sounds local we've got to put a lot of this stuff from geopolitical perspective right and so the US military and US government wanted that airport and one of those two particular places because of its strategic location both relative to how the US geography fits within itself so production and transportation in the United States but also its positioning relative to the broader game of how they monitor and utilize their military access to try to control the world so when you see Atlanta you've got to put it in that context and understand that cop city is not just a local little trivial thing this is a deep international project something that the capital and the state in both of all these little factions are both deeply invested in right and so one of the things I think is sorely missing, I lived in Atlanta for five years worked for the US Human Rights Network for the time that I was there and in the time that I was there worked with a group of students at Georgia State University to tackle a program called GILLI I want to try to look it up I had to look it up again my substance has been a couple of years but GILLI stands for Georgia Law Enforcement Exchange and this is a program that's been going on basically since the late 1980s that directly interfaces Atlanta Atlanta PD Atlanta Sheriffs and the sheriffs around that region that get directly trained by Israeli military forces and have been for many years now now this is just one of those particular little sinkholes so if you think this is just about what they need a larger shooting range that ain't got nothing to do with what this is about and without a deeper an analysis and presentation of this this piece while the AJ piece is good it's totally out of context because you just think they killed because they were mad or upset or they're pursuing this because they just don't like anarchists right this is a vital project that they need particularly to go through because they are very clear both sides of this Democrat in Republican corn that the next phase of governance domestically is going to have to be a brutal one right they are going to have to govern or attempt to govern through more direct application of force against all of us not just black folks indigenous folks not just Latinos all of us reason being despite how they want to portray the economy it's got the lowest unemployment rate since the 1950s and the jobs are growing and expanding but they themselves didn't tell you on MSNBC and CNN supposedly is doing great most of the American public is totally uncomfortable with the economy so you got figures that don't add up to reality right and they totally misaligned the figures like if I got to work three or four jobs just basically to make and meet and then have other little side hustles whether they legal or illegal you know to make things meet something is deeply wrong with this society and where it's going and it cannot deliver on the goods or the imperial promises they used to make to white folks like y'all go with this program and we'll give you these material rewards well when you can't get the material rewards anymore what does that lead to if that's what so much that they were banging their rule on right and this is critical for us I think to understand because they it is about ideology to a large degree why there's so many reactionary forces that have come to the fore and why fascism is growing but there's also a material dimension to this like the empire cannot deliver on the goods and services it once promised right and if you want to break it down in some simple ways they can't promise white men that they would have what their grandfathers once had you know in the position that they once had and once that promise is gone the last thing that's available for them to really consolidate their rule is the stick big building sticks everywhere this is just one of more advanced columns like one of more advanced columns and I think the piece that we have to really figure out in terms of political query why I ask that very subjective question because we have to figure out I think those of us in this room whether you consider yourself left or liberal really doesn't matter the question is what are we trying to advocate what is our program in the society a different society a humane society, a egalitarian society how do we work on that together despite our political differences because that's what it's really going to come down to real quick and what's happening over at Rilani People's Park there's a small little exercise in there because folks should know the cop city struggle has actually been going on for a couple years now it's starting to get a little bit more currency which is a good thing but one of the reason why if we're being truthful it hasn't gotten a lot of covers that I think is rightly should have been getting for years is because it's primarily been led by a group of young white anarchists who have been occupying the forest and a bunch of liberal forces, I'm going to call them liberals be they black or otherwise who are born in mainstream with political activism being directed and guided through nonprofit organizations don't want to have been avoided about getting engaged or being involved in something that directly necessitates direct action and sustained direct action right and it wasn't until there was you know an execution and then some direct action and response that has now blew up but this is something like if we wait too long to figure out these pieces we wind up getting involved in the struggle at a high level when it's practically almost over so there's a lot to be learned from this that it's going to have to be you know I think really applied and I'm asking this question primarily for Vermont because the studying from afar some of the stuff around the prison stuff was talking to Michelle the other day I remember when if she first sent me or somebody if somebody one of y'all may have done it because I know some of the listeners I'm now involved in and they had to stop her campaign I admitted it was like they ramping up certain elements of Vermont are ramping up the constructions of prisons because this is how they are getting prepared for the shifts that are coming so to me it's not just a campaign that's just about abolition of approaching from an abolitionist perspective to me that's a starting point the larger point is what does this mean for the vision of Vermont and who's going to basically win that that struggle about what the feature of this place looks like and should look like and then how are you going to organize the various social forces to execute that vision that's a question that we have to answer together that I think this should bring into some particular focus and then we need to be and then I'm going to stop we need to be mindful while I brought up the international peace and the militarism peace that's here in Vermont that's very much here in Vermont and looking at some other plans that that I've seen here recently that Biden is trying to move through you know with Bernie one of the critical things that they seem to be trying to put on the plate around this new infrastructure there's a lot of military stuff that's in there a lot right and in my view that's a piece that Bernie has always been a little bit weaker to put it bluntly or put it mildly so I think you know we need to start doing some deep homework on what they're proposing coming down the pipeline so we can get ahead of it get ahead of the curve and try to start blocking it that's the fight dimension and then get much more clear about what it is we want to build it how it's going to take us organizing together to actually execute that so I'm going to stop there I guess for any of us well I have a couple of comments about how the Atlanta City Council did what we saw I don't know why I didn't point this out in the YouTube video South River Forest is an unappropriated part of the county which is actually not in Atlanta they have no representation on the Atlanta City Council so these people will really screw the other than they were about to put representatives on the advisory council but they were told on the advisory council you have no vote you can make recommendations about trees that will be planted or trails and but absolutely no power to a vote of whether day or day but this happened a representative on the advisory council has resigned and she is appealing the environmental on the watershed of the environmental study and she's probably going to get standing because her home is 250 feet from the forest so there might if possible there could be at least the temporary stop or ordered on this there's just been a lot of cover-up and a lot of whitewash and there's a regular article in the New York Times a couple of weeks to go from with your power my comment on it when I wrote in was follow the money Atlanta corporations are funding this and exactly what you were saying follow the money I've been writing to see news we just got up on far these people and exposed them for what they were doing the last thing I want to comment I don't know if I can do this without crying my daughter was a good friend of Turkey just and they worked together and she was with his family today and they had his final service and his ashes were placed in the forest I remember the forest defenders were calling for solidarity actions across the country just like a map published all the connected contractors with the construction of the forest and their subcontractors and I was hearing something the other day about a protest or a calling being called about the Atlas construction companies I think they're over in Willisley I don't know what day that's happening or what exactly is going on I think Atlas wanted to do it on the 7.20 that's something we were talking about but there's something else that's been going around on social media but I haven't heard specific stuff so anybody know about that I know they have a subcontractor in Willisley and I've heard about a protest at this point I heard a starting term Extinction Rebellions Plan something for the week of February 20 I heard that up when I know more information I'll let you know spread it around I think about everyone e-mails in here and if you didn't put your e-mail on the list talk to Andrew in the back corner there he's been collecting e-mails to get you on the e-mail list and then you can plug in about this thing in Willis in the week of the 20th four years I've seen a couple of things floating around on that that may be a question for Kamau when it gets on being much more sensitive to the planning on the ground in Atlanta I have a question I guess for all of you I'm curious if you have a take on like the corrections officer union and the understaffing that is happening in New Vermont prisons or whatever according to their thing and if there's like not crazy but some sort of unlikely alliance between like I don't know but I just feel like the corrections officers are kind of the front line of the drug war dealing with the opioid crisis which is one of the major problems that I think is afflicting in Montana and so yeah I don't know if there's a way to like throw a curveball and like do something somehow collaborating with the force of the corrections like corrections officers are not great obviously but like they're already like only from the labor perspective they're already understaffed and they're trying to build more surgeries like yeah only from the labor perspective no, corrections officers are bad I don't know too much information about that union specifically but I have a little bit of information just in general about the career of being a corrections officer and there have been studies that have shown that being a corrections officer takes I think 60 years off of the average 75 years that person would get in this country so there really isn't an incentive even to be working in a prison so I think that that is something that should be considered and why are we building new prisons that people don't even want to work in them they're not beneficial to their health we're herding vermonters the people that you're putting in the cages as well as the people that you're trying to employ in these places I do but of course was that a question? I just wanted to to get on to my you know some of these are uncomfortable conversations and the space that we're moving into strategically is not a space that we've been in historically and that space sometimes looks like and specifically in spaces like Vermont where there are not a lot of people of color and folks always asking what can we do well that type of work that Mike is proposing is a very uncomfortable type of work that is actually needed but nobody actually really wants to do it no one wants to go to another white person who he's just asked who's in the room none of those people are in the room none of the union for the officers are in the room so it's part of our job to actually go to them and I know that's been very uncomfortable historically in these spaces is for us to go across the line outside of the choir that we preach and listen to and especially if you're white or European and have that ability to actually cross that line and them not even know that you cross the line so that level of work is needed yes you're going to be uncomfortable yes you're going to be sad I'm sitting here with the police trying to convince police and prison guard unions to not be police and prison guard unions but yes because I work with organizations for what we do that's the work that we do so mitigating racism for a person like me looks like that all the time but it also looks like me working with the victims but it also looks like always thinking about the uncomfortable work because this is what I was going to add on that coming from growing up in California two things I would say about that actually about this is in the 70's and 80's you can track the growth of prisons by the complaints of the prison that particular set of forces that was always indication that California was about to do another they would always start complaining typically about four years before the next cycle for our organization they would start complaining that we understand we're stressed out about the plot and then they would use that as a negotiating tactic they'd settle in the contract typically about two years before the announcement of we're going to expand Montpaco we're going to expand some new division of San Quentin we always do that it was a piece that at least the elders that trained me that really helped you in the late 1980's about this is a way that we can kind of track how this is going to play out and flow and try to get ahead of it and what I don't think it worked that well but I know there was an effort in California to infiltrate that union from an active side and so folks were recruited and trained to war in to that union and then in the early 2000's some of them I think got exposed for that movement kind of history but that came about in progress because the movement started to question some of the people they sent in like y'all have actually gone to the other side like they're not doing what we actually do so but the deeper part and I'll stop like look someone isn't Vermont specific right so it's a very particular question and folks people kind of have to tend to figure out I would tend to agree a year from when I would not know which is limited should it be some form of organizing pursuit but then put it in the national context that we just witness and experience around the George Floyd rebellion right and how that changed so many of the conversations about police funding and partial funding and all that stuff and how right now at least the dominant wing of the Democratic Party has doubled down on we don't want to defund we don't want to defund we don't want to defund so put that in the context that's what you mean real quick I think like my the focus is like to throw a problem there's a series over there and I want a non-carceral solution and I think that's the build part right and like if it's possible to get the correction of which we're already talking about where we can't incarcerate the problem where we can't prisons are not the place to deal with drug crisis and it's a fact you've lost to me that is Alana that would be if you could pull that full that would be prison that would be at least a day in the morning it sounds like a challenge though I gotta speak up whether I want to or not there's no one connected to the corrections unit in the room but actually I'm a retiree of the Vermont State Employees Union the VSEA that is the union that the corrections unit is part of and my last 12 years of working was for the Department of Corrections I did retire in 2013 so it's been a long time and my last 12 years were out of the facilities in the victim services program out of very probation parole but for a few years from 1998 to 2002 I was in the facilities and for the first year and a half of that I was a temp CO so I do I entered in my mid 50s with my gray hair I was a little unusual but I do have the experience of being a CO in the Vermont system I'll just say one other thing that actually connects I think to the possibility of working with these folks what got me in there I needed a temp job and I was tired of being a temp secretary and so I ended up being a temp CO it's really screwed up that Vermont has all these temp CEOs it's a mess but anyway that's how people get in as temp but the reason why I decided to actually do it and stick with it is that I learned I learned that in the Vermont state statutes somewhere in the mid 90s it was put in statute that the state of Vermont believes in restorative justice so that was taught to us in the academy and then you graduate from the academy and you get into the facility and then you see that 99% of the COs are coming from a different place so but I really fear that you brought that up and there are some possibilities thank you and would you be willing to stay? because it's very rare that we get that perspective when we're having conversations I think it's really valuable and I did raise my hand being a future collect oh oh do I miss you? you first and then you I like the idea of giving ahead of some of these policies that are in the works and we all see the writing on the wall just wondering what are some positive examples of what community organization looks like and also maybe like an opinion on the centralization of the organization or the decentralized people working together basically going up against a highly centralized but yeah I want to build the thought let's do something together I'm going to ask one thing if I can and then I'm going to ask you because there was a two part question it was like decentralization are some examples of possible models and I have a short group of person complex also what are like what does it look like what's a good model of what an organized community looks like how do we do that so the second part I just want to because this is something I've been thinking a lot about lately probably often but really a lot lately right we'll need to be able to walk into them at the same time and the need in a mill figure out using this term can have to use all the tools in our toolbox but none of us is the master of all trades and so sometimes I think in our spaces some of us will be like oh policy and electoral politics work or oh the people who are just like hanging out trees just this segmentation and stigmatization of people who do different kinds of movement work at different levels and there's criticism about their effectiveness in all the directions and whether that's too disruptive or it's just like not disruptive enough and it's like I feel like we really really really have to be able to work together like I don't know it's like a revolutionary thought and to give space to each other to do that work we have to use all the tools in our toolbox and again none of us is going to be the master of all trades we cannot all be policy experts and be people who are learning how to build fair case in the forest we're not the same skill set but we all need to be talking together collaborating, strategizing and giving each other the respect in the due course to do the work that we do but we have to be talking to each other folks, we just have to thank you both of those questions you asked can be deep rabbit old questions I'll try to answer this second one by saying I'm a person who believes that form follows function so I'm not wedded either to a decentralized form of organizing or higher I'm really not it really depends on what we're trying to accomplish and what it will take to get that particular mission and task things done now as a general principle there's a difference is that you want to be as democratic as possible as time, energy and conditions will allow to live to the elements and you fight for that principle but there are some things that look is it possible for a highly decentralized force to defeat something that centralizes the United States government in all of its military from a quantum mechanics perspective yes yes that might be possible right but in a general sense there's no way it's going to happen right just because they have so much command and control over the resources that all of us need to survive and we just don't have the capacity to efficiently sufficiently withhold resources from them to execute their violence that don't mean it can't happen but for that to happen you're talking about a level of unity and a level of organization you've never come close to attaining so if you're asking me whether that can defeat that not at this particular point in time but to get to a point of also having something that's centralized enough to take that head on it will not allow that to happen so we're left with a quandary right now you're going to need a little bit of both right I think to take that on and the question becomes when and where and to do what keep your principles to the great extent possible but at some point like if for like what's going on here right now to me honestly yeah that needs to be decentralized you know for a lot of different reasons one of them to a certain extent you know security I would assume the reason I would say that just to put it to a point of play I would assume that the state has already infiltrated that game right and it's got people in there doing disruptor stuff setting up stuff tort may have been set up just be honest we don't know but at least in terms of some people being able to have mobility being able to walk away being able to come in and out be somewhat anonymous you need to be centralized because if there's too much of a centralized point and it's too many one or two people who hold all that central information infiltrate that you got everything you want so having to be centralized helps for this particular tactical range isn't going to be able to withstand the military pressure if it's just the forest defenders trying to defend themselves right without a broad encirclement from the community that's able to at least provide a front line and provide both moral and a certain level of material support to them like if those two things come together we have the possibility of winning this trouble if it's just the forest defenders that's not going to last I'm just going to be real with you it's not going to last that long it'll be bold, it can be inspiring but it will go down to defeat if you learn a lot of lessons from this I'm not saying it's not worth doing but it will ultimately wind up losing inside outside has to be coordinated and to me the inside that being the forest that should be as decentralized as possible to scale up the outside though that needs to be more centralized coordination of that so form follows function you got to reach the masses too that seems like that's and there's different ways to do that right and I think they're like some audiences are going to respond to a call from a famous person some audiences don't give a shit about that I'm just inspired by what it's actually about not some celebrity encouraged me to come right but I think you need both going back to Michelle's point we need a little bit of both and it just be clear about what role to me being mature and left is revolutionary just being clear about what your role is right but this is the role I play at this particular point in time five years from now I might be in a different role right fall out of different reasons some of them are choosing and making some not like that's just the way this thing you know kind of plays out but it's being willing to shift this is what a democratic principle comes in you might be the best spokesperson for this like Kamau we go back good comrade would be in Russia for a long time and I think he's playing a particularly good role in what's going on now but it's also very clear I'm not in for it I'm not ever going in for it right I'm good I'm good at what I do rock this mic I'm a trade lawyer I can do X, Y, Z this is my role right but I'm not going to speak I'm not speaking for the people in the force that's their role right so you have a kind of division of labor that I think helps we got to be clear on that then it keeps that ego and the competitive shit down and we're going to clear about what our roles are and what we want to play and people democratically choosing to play those roles rather than being assigned those roles that's a particular piece now your second question again depends on what you are looking for right it's kind of like these ideal communities kind of thing I would say for this is one of the big contradictions that we got to figure out in terms of being able to operate on high levels of unity that typically comes when the people confronting a certain situation are very clear on the necessity of having to be organized on that level having to have a community having to rely on each other I would wager in the United States anyway I'm going to keep examples there the tightest examples you're going to find are that are actually in migrant communities for them to survive and deal with the raids and you know shit got to be tight you know be deported or work so what are the lessons that we learn from looking at the contradiction is the reality of a lot of the situation is when that necessity for that tightness is that community typically breaks and so a large part of what folks are trying to organize is for all the creature conflicts that we have that are endowed by a certain level of citizenship so it's like how do you keep the urgency and build a unity and to me that's why I want you to be frank with you that's why I ask the political clarity question so like to me if I hear a lot of people talking about fascism is coming, fascism is coming yeah it is coming we know it's always but ok it's coming in a more obvious and direct fashion if this is our analysis we ain't organizing ourselves as if that wasn't political reality let's be real we're not right and there's still even amongst folks who call themselves britches of the left there's still just thinking that we should both harder and we're going to keep the Santas or Trump or the rest of these fascist folks from acquiring another power to either enslave us in some new formal fashion or old formal fashion or just outright kill us we thinking that the electoral and bourgeois politics and the bourgeois legality and the law is going to defend us when fascists get empowered the only way they get out of power is when they get killed so if you understand if you really know that and you're a student in history ain't no fascist ever gotten power left being left on their own accord because somebody voted in my office it don't work that way it don't work that way and we're not that's one of the most difficult conversations that we don't have we don't have that hard conversation we need to one quick question and then can I ask a question can I ask a pop mom whenever she pops on I just want to speak really quick to like you asked about like examples like of things happening like you mentioned migrant organizing if you don't know if the organization might be in justice in Vermont check them out they do amazing work they're looking for volunteers particularly volunteers who can drive I've done it before it's cool hit them up you don't have to speak Spanish though it helps read his book Jackson Rising you want to hear about kind of organizing happening in Jackson Mississippi um really I was trying to tell us are we going to move on hi I just wanted to say one thing on the last question that was asked with the free her campaign we are organizing from a decentralized lens we have a campaign called the Distribute Organizing Campaign where we are trying to build a community a community that's a campaign where we are trying to build an autonomous movement regardless of who's involved where we are going into the community and spreading awareness about this prison construction and just trying to shift public opinion in general about incarceration and as we bring people into our movement they we're empowering them to be leaders themselves to spread this message themselves and I think that has been we've been doing this for about six months it's myself and another campaign organizer Jaina Ossoff and we have a group of core team volunteers as well who work with us and um it's like I said we've been doing this for about six months and we've seen um a fair amount of movement and the solidarity that we've been able to build in the community has been a success for me at least it's hard to know what is successful and how to like see that in a tangible way but like Michelle was saying earlier I think that um moving from all different angles is important um one thing that we're focusing on right now is policy work and we're pushing a prison moratorium bill which um we're asking for a five year pause on all jail and prison construction including juvenile prisons in the state um and that doesn't include any renovations in any current buildings that exist um in the state actually also has a moratorium on school construction so we're asking for that to be lifted while simultaneously um we're asking for a prison moratorium so um the idea is that we want to get everybody as many people who are interested in involved in this and that this is something that you can pick up and spread in your networks in your community and really get this the momentum going because this is our state where this is our movement and no one can um monopolize on that so I think that is important that everybody can see their role in in these in these movements and um pick up the work whatever they can but I'll just leave that um um I think um sorry can you see everyone in the room there's a lot of people there now yeah I mean I thought I was about to make jokes there's gonna be a little you know like there's many people it's like oh wait a minute there's a whole group of people there uh hi my name is Dr. Mount Franklin I am an organizer and the founder of a group called community movement builders we do grassroots organizing in Atlanta and we have a few smaller chapters of some other places we do a lot of work around sustainable development um which means doing things along the lines of having mutual aid work that we do with the community sustainability fund to help folks um yeah it's great for the utility bills uh we have co-operatives um in fact uh the my store may be selling our c-malls hopefully it's sold out right now but um if not we should hopefully after this you guys will go buy some um and then we also do a lot of organizing we organize around issue of gentrification particularly in southwest Atlanta where there's a lot of you working class for black communities that are contacting Atlanta and we also do a lot of work to stop cop city and around issue of police violence in general and update on the latest and greatest for the stop cop because we're we're flagged behind on like whatever we can catch in the media not actually we're actually we're not quickly let folks know so comedy was something that was in different parts of the Atlanta police foundation for a number of years probably dating back 2017-18 but it was something that was a high priority at the uprising of 2020 which happened before it's around the country if not even around the world um where people like um Richard Brooks in Atlanta was killed, re-autated, uh George Floyd were killed by the police here in Atlanta part of the reaction that became to build uh what we've done to cop city basically uh one of the largest military uh police militarized training zones in the country um and we see that as a direct reaction of the 2020 uprisings because it seems to be rushed out really after those things took place um in addition as the rest of the country was talking about uh abolition of police defunding police and or finding alternatives of public safety uh here in Atlanta they sort of dug down so the idea of cop city their words that I was their words being the city officials wanted us to build the morale of the police backup right so this was a morale booster in addition to what Ben said it was what we also think that's been earlier that the idea of cop city comes out of the idea that they want to militarize the police even more to fight back against movements that challenge police violence and other uh demonstrations in the streets we think it's further going to over police again blacks and brown communities uh the facility itself is going to have over a dozen shooting ranges two mock cities to practice urban warfare and fire control uh it's going to have a landing pad or a black bar helicopter uh it's going to have bars and restaurants and places for the police to congregate it's going to have a space for explosive devices to be set off uh and it's going to be military training in terms of the build up uh 40 percent of the police that are going to be so-called trained at this facility are going to be from outside of Georgia uh in addition to that Georgia police already do trading with the Israeli police force and so for us we say that that means that the same tactics that are used against Palestinian communities are going to be used against movements here in black and brown communities and the same tactics here that are used against movements in black and brown communities are going to be boarded out to Israel so it's in this state at least the least and so we think this is not of course the only way in which the police are going to rise in the first way but we think this is a way in which we think a national strategy around common tactics uh ideas and the implementation of strategies which is what impact all of us who are involved in movement politics protesters hit the ground almost as the beginning of the announcement of cop city we did what you would call standard organizing campaign tactics everything from town halls petitioners to rallies to demonstrations and even during that time I really wanted to make the police to question up some of those values for data rest we had over 17 or 18 arrests during that time for a year and a half of organizing against cop city we had a whole bunch of arrests but those charges were mostly by the administration so the standard charges were organized things that you face all the time after the legislation was passed by the city which granted the lease to the Atlanta police foundation which is a private foundation which is going to run the training for the police the police giving them access to this land for the next 20 years at $10 a year and I should also say the place where they're putting what we've done is cop city and it's in what we call the Weline Forest and so it is one of the essentially one of the poor areas in Atlanta that are forested that's referred to as one of the lungs one of the poor lungs in Atlanta it is a forest that was next to adjacent to a working class black community that community was promised the use of that forest as an intact for purposes of hikes, parks walking trails a creek that promise was destroyed and this land was turned over to the Atlanta Police Foundation as I said we started protesting the city itself loaded the city council loaded the port in the end we turned about four or five boats but they still loaded the port overwhelmingly and then new tactics began and those tactics were the forest defenders people who actually were conducting civil disobedience and direct action by going to the forest and staying in the forest and living there and putting tents and tree hikes and so forth to defend the forest against them and the trees cut down and over that time there definitely increased the city vote would all go away but we increased and kept going and it also increased sort of the national propros this particular battle we started receiving more national media even international media and we kept on struggling around the mission and I will say there were similar disobedience which included trucks that came to to knock down trees those trucks were disabled those company trucks were disabled they were taken apart the police the local the city government joined into a task force with the Atlanta Police Department the county police department the county prosecutor's office the state controlled Georgia Bureau of Investigation the federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security and we know this because there was a FOIA request a freedom of information request from the Atlanta Police Foundation which we received material that showed that this task force existed and that showed that the purpose of this task force was to criminalize the movement criminalized not only in terms of propaganda putting out information in local media to try to turn people away from the organizing that was happening but also it was the first time that we learned that they were contemplating using domestic terrorism state domestic terrorism charges against organizers and I will also say during the initial city council vote there is an open line before the vote with citizens of Atlanta to get the call in over 70% of those citizens that called in that they were opposed to capsity being built and numbers would have been even greater than that if firefighters and police officers did not also call in we know they were from firefighters and police officers to identify themselves as such in the neighborhood that capsity is supposed to be built surveys have showed that over 90% of the population is opposed to this militarized structure being built so they are going ahead in spite of the fact the public opinion has been against it to build it anyway in December and I'm going to wrap up very soon in December the task force did a raid in the force and arrested approximately 8 force defenders all of those force defenders were charged with domestic terrorism these folks when they were arrested they were sitting in tree huts and they were in their encampment they were not doing any activities because civil disobedience by just being there in January, January 18th they did another raid and during that raid they arrested 8 more organizers and also charged them with domestic terrorism and in addition to that that's when they killed Twitidita who was also the force defenders so quickly on Twitidita's death they put out an immediate narrative that Twitidita shot at a state trooper basically and they returned fire and so that was their narrative which the local media picked up right away and abandoned somehow with 5 or 6 of these different agencies involved they claimed that there was no body camera footage of any of this that took place right so the Atlanta police department is required to have body cameras on when they interact with the public or have these kinds of interactions they said they had no body camera footage of it whatsoever from reports in the community at the time we heard, good folks told us that they did not hear one shot and then it said return fire they heard a burst of fire thirdly we don't believe the narrative that a force defender sitting in a tent decided to shoot one bullet basically at over a dozen cops and basically signing a death warrant and that those cops had opened up a return fire and so we're calling for an independent investigation recently they did release videotape which we think even backed up our scenario even more because you can hear the burst of fire is being immediate burst of fire they know one shot and then maybe a blip or a second and then a quick return of fire you have the police officers themselves speculating that somebody might have shot their own because of the type of fire was mistaken for that fire which in their vernacular means fire from the police so since that time we have continued to deny the active folks have been pushed out of the force but we continue to as folks know try to get immediate attention around it continue to then do demonstrations continue to do petition rise I'll watch this late February I'll put up some what's in some links for you guys but they prefer we're doing a week of action to begin to force defenders and in March we're also doing another week of action to encourage the acts and some people to come where they're at participate in every good action and they don't watch that night we're scheduling a day of action against police violence which we're trying to have people do anything they can to demonstrate resistance to cop city police violence and killing in Memphis wherever they're at all across the country and so I know it spoke a lot but how many of you hear of that? Our votes for the cop city page are the dates on there and the calls to action in February and March, is that delineated there? That should be there it should be either there or the force defender website those are the two main places you're applying to act there's other call to actions that we also have in case of violence, community movement builders at our stop cop city page which is individual acts that folks can do including calling the mayor's office even if you don't even have an act of calling corporations and telling them to back out of the funding I didn't mention but at middle of this project it doesn't make it to cost $90 million we think it's going to cost much more of that than they're taking loans out for but at middle of it there's $90 million that's been raised for this project $60 million of that they're raised through corporations corporations like Delta UPS Waffle House all these all these different corporations are raised money for it that you can also fund the website we've asked people to call and to say that there are opposed to these corporations putting in these sources for this we also want folks to call the action developers and tell them to get out to get off the plan or stop going forward with this plan we've had some success in having some corporations need and we've had some success in having developers need but particularly once they get a lot of emails and such we're also calling for the midair to basically take back the lease or basically just take back the lease or whatever terminate the lease is what I'm trying to say we also have people in the city council to potentially go back and go again to retract the lease thank you so much you know how incredibly super busy you are these days and we have to be out of the library by six plus we have to work all at six everybody clap we're going to put these QR codes and the QR codes are to be as I said yes QR codes one is to the stop publicity action site for community movement builders which the oh yeah and the other one is the action site for the Vermont Supreme Court campaign their national