Garrison Davis

To quote from an anonymous Atlanta anarchist, quote,

Early stages of the movement were very intentionally defined by lots of sabotage and unapologetic militancy.

Just absolute, this is what we're doing, this is what we're about, this is the goal.

If you don't like it, that's cool, but then don't be a part of this.

That was just what we were doing, unquote.

In September 2021, the Atlanta City Council voted to approve the land lease ordinance authorizing the Atlanta Police Foundation to use hundreds of acres of city-owned land in the South River Forest to build Cop City.

After this vote, electoral strategy gets largely eschewed.

And soon after, the next phase fully kicks off that fall with the physical occupation of the forest and the start of the pressure campaigns targeting subcontractors working on the construction project.

To again, quote from an anonymous Atlanta anarchist, quote, persistent encampment occupation, lots of direct action happening, lots of sabotage happening, and the cops just not knowing what to do at all.

Small incursions would get made, but they just had not figured out what to do about it yet.

There was just kind of like free reign, unquote.

For the first half of this occupation phase, the Atlanta police and DeKalb sheriffs seemed to be stuck in a form of paralysis, not knowing how to disrupt the forest encampments or prevent equipment sabotage.

Meanwhile, the pressure campaign, inspired by the tactics of the animal rights group SHAC, showed early promise in getting some contractors like Reeves Young Construction and material suppliers to drop out of the Cop City Project.

But after this stream of steady success from fall of 2021 to May of 2022, the police were forced to up the ante and started conducting large-scale raids in the forest to remove forced offenders and damage encampment infrastructure.

Quoting an Atlanta anarchist, quote, May of 2022 is the end of the paralysis phase for the cops.

We had our first grid sweep raids where the paralysis phase is broken.

You're getting your multi-agency large sweeps where they're really coming in and putting in a lot of work.

That really leads up to January of 2023, so where Tort got killed, unquote.

Prior to the police killing of Tortuguita during a forest encampment raid on January 18, 2023, the occupation phase proved highly effective in preventing pre-construction.

But the killing of Tortuguita essentially marked the end of the continuous occupation phase.