Last weekend, the so-called Forest Defenders made a cross-country road trip to a desert city to show that they’re still angry.
And many residents of the blithefully blue city of Tucson, Arizona, were left wondering what on Earth hit them? And why?
Perhaps 100 people who are unhappy that Atlanta is building a Public Safety Training Center converged on Tucson for what they called a national “summit.”
To fans of history, a “summit” is FDR, Churchill and Stalin meeting to plan the defeat of fascism. This “summit” was a motley crew of seemingly rootless activists camping out in an empty lot to plot breaking windows and gluing the door locks of companies somehow connected to Atlanta’s training center.
The four-day event featured nature walks, mini concerts, group discussions, a tattoo artist, karaoke and even “an orgy to stop Cop City.” I guess the sound of breaking glass just turns some people on.
Credit: Tucson Crime Free Coalition
Credit: Tucson Crime Free Coalition
That Friday, several businesses in a Tucson office park had windows broken and walls festooned with “Stop Cop City” graffiti. Nobody working in those vandalized offices knew what “Cop City” was because the training center is 1,700 miles away.
On Sunday night, the “protestors,” and I use that term loosely, smashed windows downtown at a PNC Bank, a now-closed Wells Fargo and a shuttered museum that happened to be nearby.
They also fired mortar fireworks and tossed burning flairs into the PNC, police said, with two cleaning people working inside.
Now, those workers were probably the low-income people of color whom the culture warriors always talk about fighting for. Instead, they were terrified and scurried into an interior room and locked themselves in, afraid of the boisterous mob outside and hoping for the cops to arrive.
Three members of the crowd were arrested by Tucson police.
The next day, activists found themselves two hours north near Phoenix blockading the entrance to a subdivision where an insurance executive lived.
Credit: Black Flag Library and Distro
Credit: Black Flag Library and Distro
On Monday, a group of protestors talked to the Tucson media. One woman said the Wells Fargo was hit because an executive sits (or sat) on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation, which is working with Atlanta to build the $109 million facility. The PNC got it, she said, because it has funded a natural gas pipeline in West Virginia.
“I found it concerning that they held their press conference in front of their vandalism,” Andy Squire, a Tucson city spokesman, told me. “This is a progressive community. This was a little unexpected here. It’s certainly unusual, even shocking.”
Another press report quoted the group saying it chose Tucson because “the Southwest is home to many corporations supplying arms to the Israeli military.”
Pick a cause, we’ll break windows there.
And, they added, police in Tucson would be less repressive than law enforcement back in GA. The local department’s website says, “TPD is a Progressive Police Department.”
“The police had a measured response,” said Steve Kozachik, a member of the all-Democratic city council. He called Tucson a “little blue dot in a red sea.”
Kozachik said the city is used to protests and demonstrations. “But this went over the line. We do not support destroying property and breaking windows. If they show up again, (the police response) won’t be so measured.”
Breaking and burning stuff, as well as furtive threats, have been tools of the training center foes. There has been opposition since former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the planned 85-acre acre facility in 2021. Opponents have lined up to speak at City Hall, have marched in streets, have waged legal battles and have pushed for a referendum, which is now tied up in court.
Credit: Gwinnett County Fire and Emergency Services
Credit: Gwinnett County Fire and Emergency Services
Back in November, when some nighttime warriors torched a bunch of construction vehicles, a spokesman for Block Cop City, said, “The Clean Water Act enforcement lawsuit (the latest round of litigation) and the anonymous action that took place against Ernst Concrete are separate, inspiring contributions to the movement to Stop Cop City.”
The “movement” has many factions, from well-meaning, civic-minded citizens to anarchistic nutjobs.
James Buchanan, who manages some of the damaged buildings in Tucson, told me, “It seems none of the Cop City people have jobs. I think they have a problem with people who get up in the morning who do have jobs. They don’t care for the rule of law. Without that, it all falls apart.”
A blog called Scenes from the Atlanta Forest, which often takes credit when stuff goes up in flames, said the Tucson experience is “something that can be replicated any night, in any city.”
“To the many foot soldiers and bureaucrats of the genocidal police state we have only to say: you can’t hide, we are going to find you and we will destroy you. You cannot escape your complicity no matter how small,” it said, adding, “Not only will we attack you we will attack everything within the walls of your fortress, everyone you associate with, and everything you think keeps you safe.”
Sounds like an advertisement for a public safety training center.
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