Antifa protestors conducted a violent coordinated attack on March 5 on the proposed $90 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, throwing "large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers." The proposed construction for first responders was announced in 2017. The construction has been a bone of contention from a "broad coalition of community associations, environmental groups, and racial-justice organizations," according to reporting from Rolling Stone. Antifa calls the area "Cop City."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the "official reason for the protests is an environmental concern for the Weelaunee Forest. The center would cut out 381 acres of the woods." Antifa protestors were there to "stop cop city" and Defend the Atlanta Forest. The campaign began in the spring of 2021, and eventually, the Antifa "forest creatures," as they call themselves, set up an "autonomous zone" to block construction. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for Antifa to be "declared domestic terrorists."
Violent Rioters Set Fire to Construction Site in DeKalb County
On March 5, rioters set fire to construction equipment and vandalized the site in the Weelaunee Forest. According to the press release from the Atlanta City police, "35 agitators have been detained so far." 23 were charged with Domestic Terrorism by the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI). According to journalist Andy Ngô, "one of the suspects is a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) staff attorney, and another is a Canadian academic."
GBI/23 Antifa charged with Domestic Terrorism in Atlanta
Reporter Andy Ngô who has consistently reported on Antifa attacks and autonomous zones, posted footage of masked agitators throwing explosive fireworks at police officers.
Ngô says the attacks were well-organized and planned. The rioters are allegedly members of an "extreme far-left group" called @defendATLforest who have been, according to Ngô, "using Twitter to fundraise" and coordinate their activities. Members of the group seem to acknowledge they are terrorists, proclaiming "Terrorism Until We Win" in a graphic from a blog associated with rioters called Scenes from the Atlanta Forest that tracks their activities.
Maybe we are Domestic Terrorists/https://scenes.noblogs.org/
Ngô has reported on the attacks in Atlanta and nationwide for months now. He says Antifa "descended on a forested area southeast of Atlanta in June 2021 to create an autonomous zone" for the express purpose of sabotaging the construction of the first responder training center. Other attacks around Atlanta include one on May 12, 2022, when rioters violently attacked and vandalized the offices of the contractor Brasfield & Gorrie. On May 17, rioters hurled firebombs at police in Atlanta. Antifa has been waging #StopCopCity attacks across America.
Comrade "Tortuguita" is Martyred, Promises of Retribution
In mid-January, the Defend the Atlanta Forest group called for "deadly vengeance against Atlanta area police as payback" for the shooting of one of their "comrades," Manuel Estaban Paez Teran. Teran's nickname was "Tortuguita." In retribution for his death, Antifa protestors called for a "night of rage" on Friday, Jan. 20, "to make them pay." The group linked lists of private information and addresses of "@ga_dps officers, contractors, and bankrollers" they wanted "murdered," according to Ngô. All lists are still public on websites connected to the group.
A "now-suspended Twitter account" from suspect Filler Distro called for "reciprocal violence to be done to the police and their allies. On Friday, Jan. 20, wherever you are, you are invited to participate in a night of rage in order to honor the memory of our fallen comrade." Several of the suspects "come from well-to-do backgrounds," according to Ngô's reporting.
The "SRY campaign" released a statement on Teran's death with a link to "help fund legal fees for those facing charges defending the forest." A trooper was also shot and seriously injured in the January 18 attack, according to a February 9 press release from the GBI.
Blog Tells of Antifa's Exploits and Targets
Scenes from the Atlanta Forest tracks and comments on the activities of the Leftist protestors. The site provides a link to an interactive map of "targets complicit in the Cop City project" to help rioters determine the proper targets for their protests and violence.
Targets for Stop Cop City/ https://framacarte.org/en/map/take-action-to-stopcopcity_142716#5/44.214/-98.767
Per the website, there are "three main types of targets" protestors should focus on contractors, donors, and board members of the Atlanta Police Foundation, who are the "funders of Cop City," and "targets related to Ryan Millsap" who wants to build a movie studio there. The blog site also lists StopReevesYoung.com as an additional site for "many of these targets."
Featured below are graphics found on Scenes from the Atlanta Forest, showing a photo of Teran and excerpts from entries promoting retribution for his death.
Teran/ https://scenes.noblogs.org/
Tort's Death/ https://scenes.noblogs.org/
Machines Burned for Tortuguita/ https://scenes.noblogs.org/
Notably, the site also refers to multiple admissions of sabotage carried out by the group to avenge "Tort's" martyred death. The attacks include the sabotage of "a Rivian charging station in Brooklyn, New York," where members "hit Amazon delivery vehicles and one Rivian vehicle as part of the cost of doing business with Amazon." They call for "Death to America" in the same post. Another website called "Abolition Media" posts similar identical or similar content.
Both sites feature information that includes admitting to the sabotage of the tracks owned by "the Norfolk Southern company in Lenape territory north of 'so called' Philadelphia." The post states the sabotage of the train tracks was "'incredible' easy and simple to repeat," also in memory of "Tort."
Train Track Sabotage/ https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/03/01/norfolk-southern-rail-sabotage-in-philadelphia/
According to Unicorn Riot:
"One repeated target has been Atlas Technical Consultants, LLC., the parent company of Long Engineering, a subcontractor of the Cop City project, which had the windows of its office smashed in Albany, NY, and Minneapolis, MN, and its building tagged with graffiti in Highland, IN.
The website also received reports of attacks on Bank of America, which donates money to police foundations across the country, including the Atlanta Police Foundation. Attacks were reported in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Portland, and Minneapolis."
Antifa Ideology is Grounded in Nihilism and Rejection of the Family Unit
Antifa's activism is not limited to environmentalism. In fact, Antifa's ideology is grounded in the destruction of society, nihilism, and even Queer anarchism. The destruction of the family unit is a necessary step for Antifa activists because of its ties to imperialism and capitalism. Scenes from the Atlanta Forest reference a site called the anarchist library with a manuscript from an author entered as Baedan. The manuscript is called the Journal of Queer Nihilism. Baedan contends that "anti-queer paranoia" is a natural result of capitalist society and the family.
Baedan explores Hocquenghem, whose thinking "explicitly rejects Civilization—as well as the families, economies, metaphysics, sexualities, and genders which compose it—while also imagining a queer desire which is Civilization's undoing." Homosexuality cannot produce offspring and, therefore, is an existential threat to those who believe in the sanctity of the family unit.
Baedan Baedan/https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/baedan-baedan
Baedan quotes Hocquenghem's work "Capitalism, the Family, and the Anus," who believes the family is a "capitalist form made to function as the basic building block of the social order. Discipline, work ethic, duty, law, morality, gender distinction, sexuality, and of course, futurity are all inscribed into children's bodies through the machinations of the familial matrix." Baedan writes:
"Hocquenghem argues for the deprivatization of the anus and the formation of what he terms 'anal groupings'—forms of sexual collectivity which destroy the Family and serve no purpose in the social order's future. In grouping anal desire, queer formations are able to sabotage all the psychic fantasies which lie at the heart of the civilized order.
Queerness terrorizes this familial fantasy. Civilization and the class society which is its content is entirely reliant on the successive reproduction of the familial unit in order to inseminate future generations with its values. The social order is born anew in the body of each child, as it is transmitted from parent to their offspring in an endless forward movement. It is also here that we can locate the uncited source of Edelman's arguments concerning the figure of homosexuality which must terrorize this familial fantasy.
Journalists are Snitches: Cop City Will Never Be Built
Antifa calls journalists "or whatever those professional snitches call themselves... two-legged rats." In a March 6 blog entry called "A Few Words Against Rats," a member calls for protestors to "smash cameras" of the "rats who scurried among the brave. We smash security cameras without a second thought. The ones that happen to have two legs should be treated no differently." Antifa is hellbent on ensuring that "Cop City will never be built."
