In the following account, the author recounts scenes from the movement against deportations in Paris in the late 1990s. As Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their lackeys scapegoat the undocumented and kidnap immigrants who oppose genocide even when they hold green cards, it is a good time to study how people have resisted the violence of the state in other times and places. This is adapted from the forthcoming memoir Another War Is Possible, narrating experiences from the global movement against fascism and capitalism at the turn of the century. If you’re interested in reading the rest of the book, you can back it on Kickstarter now. Gare de Lyon: Paris, May 5, 1998 It’s early evening and Sophie and I are sitting in the long-distance-train waiting area of Paris’s Gare de Lyon, one of Europe’s busiest train stations. All around us are travelers scurrying to and fro. Stressed-out tourist families, a camera still flung around Dad’s neck, rushing their kids through the station mix with tired-looking businessmen waiting to get back home. “You did a great job with your outfit,” she says to me as she looks me over from head to toe. I met Sophie at an action (or demonstration, or concert, or something of the sort) about a year ago, and we have been inseparable at political events since. She is my age, a student at Paris’s Lycée Autogéré (Self-Managed High School),1 and if I didn’t know very well the context in which she’s making this comment, I might think she’s flirting with me. “You’re looking pretty good yourself,” I respond in kind. She has managed to transform herself into the spitting image of your perfectly forgettable average French teenage girl. Basically, she looks like a younger Sporty Spice in her Adidas tracksuit and sneakers. I, on the other hand, have gone with a significantly preppier look: khaki pants, polo shirt, nondescript jacket, and moccasins. She looks at me again, pauses, and slightly withdraws her compliment: “It’s not the most functional wardrobe, though. The khakis stand out and the moccasins probably aren’t great for running.” I shrug. “I did what I could. I was mainly concerned with getting this far.” While we are sitting among the tourists and businessmen, doing our best to look like a somewhat mismatched young teenage couple waiting for a train back to their city, we are in fact not travelers, and the correct term for our attire is not outfit but disguise. We are not here to take a train, but to stop one. A train that transports imprisoned human beings against their will every single night. The 21:03 to Marseille, otherwise known to us as the deportation train. Our objective is to stop the Paris-to-Marseille overnight train, which the French National Railway Company, better known for its French initials SNCF, permits the French government to use to transport North African immigrants, usually of Algerian or Moroccan origin, by rail to Marseille. Once in the port city, they are expelled from French territory by boat. The attempt to block this train is an idea born of the Collectif Anti-Expulsions (Anti-Deportation Collective), and it was decided that if we were to have any chance of success, we should disguise ourselves as best as possible and infiltrate the station in small groups, since trying to march in there as a demonstration probably wouldn’t get us very far. The Anti-Deportation Collective The CAE, officially formed only a few weeks earlier in early April 1998, was an autonomous collective born in the heat of the movement of the sans-papiers of the mid-’90s, a French term meaning “without papers” that refers to the movement against the deportation of undocumented immigrants and in favor of their “legalization.” The collective’s broadly accepted guiding principles2 were as simple as they were clearly steeped in anarchist modes of organization, thought, and action: Practical opposition to deportations. We are not “allies” to the sans-papiers, we struggle with them out of motivations and convictions that are our own. These motivations vary among individuals, but are in all cases rooted in anti-capitalism. The collective is autonomous and collaborates with sans-papiers collectives that are autonomous not merely in theory, but in practice. Decisions are made by way of general assembly. The plight of the sans-papiers had exploded into the public consciousness following a series of highly publicized church occupations in 1996 by undocumented immigrants themselves. This culminated on August 23, 1996 in a raid in which nearly two thousand police officers stormed the Saint-Bernard church, resulting in the detention of 210 undocumented immigrants. After that, solidarity demonstrations with the sans-papiers in Paris regularly numbered in the tens of thousands, with the participants—and their demands and methods of action—representing the broad spectrum of the French center left and radical left. This included the Communist Party and the CGT union, but likewise the sizable anarchist blocs of the CNT, Anarchist Federation, Alternative Libertaire, SCALP, and everything in between. Importantly, the sans-papiers themselves were organized into several collectives and structures; they were active and leading participants in their own struggles. As with all communities, they were not a monolith. Within the sans-papiers organizations, one could find a similarly broad spectrum of ideas and strategies in regards to demands, objectives, and methods of action. While the sans-papiers organizations, regardless of their politics, were limited in their methodology by the logical constraints of their situation—the fact that an arrest or identity control could quickly lead to a possible deportation with devastating, even deadly, potential consequences—the reformist organizations were unsurprisingly bound by the constraints of their respect for legality and their acceptance of the basic premises of states and borders and the idea that a human being should in some way or another be bound by the possession of a particular piece of paper, or lack thereof, based on their place of birth. Or, even more absurdly, as is the case in France, their bloodline. We anarchists, on the other hand, had no such constraints. Our solidarity with what were clearly some of the most oppressed and marginalized groups in society—workers, people of color, many of them women, escaping from what were some of the most horrendous conflicts in the world at that time—was immediate and instinctive. But through our position of unconditional solidarity with the sans-papiers and the assertion that in the world we are fighting for, no human will ever be illegal and freedom of movement will be for people and not just for commodities, we articulated a position of necessary rupture with the concepts of states and borders. If our demands could not be granted by the state and our objective could not be realized within the framework of its existence, then it naturally followed that we would not look to the state to grant those things. Consequently, we were embarking on a concrete struggle to prevent deportations and make it possible for people to live where they chose and how they chose. The same stance toward the state applied in this struggle as in our abstract analysis: the state was our enemy, and we were determined to wage war against it within the appropriate context of the time and situation we found ourselves in, in hopes of preventing it from carrying out its objectives. The greater our success, hand in hand with those sans-papiers who were open to our solidarity and methods, the greater our collective power would grow as a movement and the greater the degree of agency, autonomy, and freedom we would be able to realize. We were not making demands, but seeking to force concessions and create realities. Concretely, that meant that deportations are for stopping. To do so, we would attack the state’s machinery of deportation, its infrastructure, and the enterprises that collaborated with it and benefited economically from assisting with the hunting, caging, and expelling of human beings. We did so out of solidarity, out of conviction, but also with the explicit understanding that despite our privileges and different realities, our struggle was the same as theirs. In fighting alongside the sans-papiers, as accomplices rather than allies, we were also fighting for ourselves: “Their situation makes us all more precarious in labor relations, the repression and control developed against them will affect us eventually as well, the hardening of borders is also a barrier to our freedom of movement, because we are also foreigners to this world and we will be pushed further and further into clandestinity (by choice but also by necessity if we are to live our desires) by the constant evolution of the law and the states.”3 The 21:03 to Marseille So there we are, sitting under the elegant industrial-era steel and glass roof so typical of venerable European train stations—a fittingly dramatic setting for the impending confrontation. We are waiting anxiously for the moment when an unknown number of cops will appear, escorting what I expect will be a handcuffed individual through the hall, at which point we are to spring into action and form a human chain to prevent them from loading him onto the train. Failing that, we are to do everything we can to prevent the train from departing. We are not pacifists, and while there is a general consensus that our side will avoid unnecessary escalations, there is an equally clear agreement that the priority is not optics, but accomplishing a concrete and tangible objective. Nonetheless, I’m anxious about our chances of success. “Do you see any familiar-looking faces?” I ask worriedly. I’m scanning the hall as best I can and I don’t like what I see. “No, I can’t even see Alan or Mary. I wonder if they made it in.” Mary is another Lycée Autogéré student and Sophie’s best friend, while Alan is slightly older and the token cliché-looking punk—complete with mohawk and faux leather jacket—in our little youth affinity group. Not one of us is old enough to be a legal adult, yet the four of us already have a fair amount of experience getting into trouble with the state. We met at a Comité d’Action Lycéen (CAL, or “High School Action Committee”) meeting, a place that can only be described as a breeding ground for high-school-age anarchists. We’re young, fanatical, and unencumbered by wage slavery enough to enjoy ample free time, which we use to be regulars at every demonstration, action, occupation, political squat, concert, debate, and confrontation within the greater Paris area. When we’re not doing that, we’re spending our nights together drinking, getting stoned, and listening to Ska-P’s “El vals del obrero” in the catacombs under the streets of Paris. Or at least the others are—myself, I’ve discovered Sergei Nechayev’s Catechism of the Revolutionist and concluded that my mind and body are weapons for revolutionary struggle, so I should keep them free of drugs and alcohol. This makes me lots of fun at parties. Still, no matter how combative we may be, no matter how sharp I keep my proverbial weapons, if there are only twenty of us when the cops show up, this is probably not going to go well. “Fucking unions,” Sophie mutters under her breath. “What are they good for if they can’t even bring out fifty people for something like this?” Her complaint is directed at SUD, short for Solidaire, Unitaire, Démocratique (“In Solidarity, United, Democratic”), a small leftist union born in the aftermath of the 1995 general strike, whose railway branch had promised to mobilize for this action. I shrug. “Who knows, it’s not like we know what they look like. Maybe it’ll work out.” I’m trying to be positive, because this is the route we have chosen; if we’re at the ball, we might as well dance. It doesn’t seem like there are many alternatives available, anyway. A couple of weeks earlier, we were able to occupy the tracks, successfully delaying the train for a few hours. The cops eventually cleared the tracks via a liberal use of batons and CS gas, and when we returned a few days later, we found an army of police guarding the tracks. “Look, look, right there!” Sophie points to one of the entrances to the hall, her voice trembling with a mix of excitement and anger. I’m just spotting what she is pointing at, a young man probably in his twenties being led by an escort of seven or eight cops, when immediately my concerns about our numbers today are erased. From every corner of the hall comes a loud burst of disapproving whistling, followed immediately by what seems like the entire crowded hall erupting in thunderous chants of “Non, non, non… aux expulsions!” amplified and rendered even more urgent by the echoes generated by the closed space in which we find ourselves. The first few people rise from their seats, sprint over to where the line of CRS riot police are guarding access to the platform and the train, and link arms. A few more join them. Then dozens more. Friends and comrades appear from everywhere among the crowd. The chants declaring that no human being is illegal ring loud and constant as we too join the human chain. There are hundreds of us! There are so many of us that we form two lines across the opening to the platform—one facing the cops who were already stationed there to prevent us from attempting to get access to the tracks, and another facing back toward the hall, preventing the cops who are escorting a captive from reaching the train. Sophie and I find ourselves in the first of those two lines. The next few minutes pass in an adrenaline-fueled blur. The sight of the person we are trying to protect from deportation right in front of us illustrates poignantly what is at stake, and the disconcerted looks of his police escort only embolden us. Clearly, they aren’t sure whether to push through or abort. The police are familiar with resistance to deportations. We regularly show up at airports, informing passengers as well as airline workers about what is happening on their flights and what their employers are making them unwilling accomplices to, urging passengers to refuse to fly on flights that are simultaneously prisoner transports. We have had varying degrees of success. We’ve tried to disrupt and prevent deportations too, as we did a few weeks earlier at this same spot. But we’ve never done this. At least, never by the hundreds, never with the palpable feeling that we might actually succeed. I think the cops sense that, too. The next scene is of an extreme and almost intimate violence. Clearly, the order has been given to clear access to the train. CS gas and batons fly all around us. We are not armed. We have no flagpoles, no helmets, not even the cloth of a banner to protect ourselves with. Masks cover our faces while linked arms keep us together, but this leaves us practically defenseless against the baton blows. With neither word nor warning, the riot cop directly to my right pulls out a metal retractable baton from the inside pocket of his jacket, and in one swift motion he extends it and brings it down with a thud against the head of a comrade next to me. I hear the crack and immediately see blood gushing from the wound at the top of his forehead. His arms go limp, and the best I can do is kind of release my arm, which I have linked around his, and push him backward as he slumps, so that he falls toward the line of comrades facing the station and not at the feet of these unhinged cops. Before I can assess the wisdom of this course of action, I am already instinctively launching a kick at the stomach of the cop who has injured my neighbor. This cop has been sneering at us since we stood up, waiting for his moment to injure a “gauchiste de merde,” the French for “piece-of-shit leftist,” which is exactly what nationalists and fascists like to call us in Argentina, as well. Sophie yells for me to get back, but her voice barely registers on my radar. Comrades break the line to carry away the injured friend just as I broke ranks with my kick. Still others, blinded or unable to breathe due to the CS gas, also break ranks and retreat. The young Algerian is forced onto the train. The following week’s edition of Le Monde Libertaire, the weekly newspaper of the francophone Anarchist Federation, later reported4 that the train “departed with a delay of thirty minutes. […] The train would stop several kilometers farther, in Melun, waiting for another train transporting approximately half of its original passengers.” The missing passengers had been unable to board due to the clashes between demonstrators and police. “The train was again stopped at the Lyon-Perrache station around 2:30 am by activists there, but not before having made an unscheduled stop at L’Estaque station to disembark the prisoners and place them in the detention center at Arenc, as the cops were concerned about the possible actions of further demonstrators in Marseille.” There are still two clearly defined fronts inside the waiting area. We are standing on one side, now about twenty meters or so away from the trains. A small group of people start to leave—about twenty people, all wearing high-visibility vests. They are the SUD railway trade unionists, who had shown up to the action after all, but decided that with the departure of the train, their participation was over. The rest of us still number solidly in the hundreds. In the grand scheme of things, that’s nothing. It’s poor attendance even at a third-division football match, barely enough people to fill a subway car. Even a strictly anarchist demonstration in Paris could number into the thousands. But in my eyes at that moment, these people are the whole world. Who cares about numbers, optics, or the opinion of sheep? I feel at home among these two hundred who have put their bodies behind the conviction that no human being is illegal, who have shown with their actions that the state and its agents are to be confronted head-on. Rather two hundred ultra-leftists, adventurists, extremists, or whatever else they may call us than two thousand who will stand idly by because party or union discipline says now is not the moment and this is not the way—or twenty thousand who will march down the street with us proclaiming that no human being is illegal, only to placidly continue with their day while others are dragged, often drugged and bound, to prisoner transports. I’m grateful for the participation of the sympathizer, the unionist, the party member, the reformist. I understand we need them to exert political pressure. But I feel now that my place is with the militants and the fighters, no matter the numbers. In front of us is a wall of riot cops, now too far to reach us with their gas and truncheons. The idea of police as the armed guards that enforce the dictatorship of capital through the state-sanctioned monopoly of violence gave way to a much more urgent feeling—a burning hatred of those who hurt my friends in order to perpetrate injustice. Whoever wears that uniform is the immediate means of our oppression and therefore my enemy. Somebody has come back from another track with a backpack full of stones. As the chants against deportation continue to roar, a few dozen of us attack the cops. There’s sadness and frustration still, because we failed, but there is also joy. There is a feeling of collective refusal and liberation. Too Much and Never Enough As we finally make our retreat from the station, smashing security cameras, advertisement panels, and automated ticket counters along the way, I am already thinking about the young Algerian whose deportation we were trying to stop. Tonight wasn’t about making an abstract political statement against deportations. It wasn’t a militant yet still symbolic action against the machinery of expulsion and the barbarism that categorizes human beings based on where they happen to have been born. The objective was to stop the kidnapping of a specific human being. And while there is still some distant hope that comrades farther down the line, in Lyon or in Marseille, might still succeed, we, at least, have failed, and my mind is already focused on how I, or we collectively, can do more. Despite my concerns that we didn’t do enough, the very next day, I am confronted with the press and the good citizens of Paris howling that we did too much. I pick up a newspaper on the way to school and find articles pontificating about the extremists at the train station, outraged at the disorder, condemning the supposed outbreak of violence. Too much disorder, too much violence—words coming from exasperated good citizens of Paris as they walk past me at the very same train station and see the smashed ticket-vending machines. The constant hand-wringing about “the extreme left, emboldened, becoming increasingly aggressive, violent, and dangerous” has only intensified since the election of the socialist and communist center-left government coalition. What was damaged? As I make my way through the station, I take note of the “damage.” The only damage to the station is to the machines that hinder our freedom of movement and convert the need to get from one place to another into an economic consideration. To the advertising panels that pollute public space and turn any place where the human eye might rest its gaze into propaganda for the constant consumption of goods we don’t need. And finally, to the increasingly ubiquitous security cameras, ensuring that anyone who rejects this system of consumption and control can be more efficiently surveilled and criminalized. What precious order did we disrupt? If the order they are referring to is this superficial peace and tranquility that has nothing to do with justice, then the problem is not that we were violent or disorderly but that we effectively disrupted the orderly procedures of oppression. The order of those who prefer the continuation of oppression as long as they can turn a blind eye to it—or worse, celebrate it in the name of nationalism or racism—to the turbulence of the struggle to end it. Violence? We threw some stones, probably injured nobody. The injured were on our side, those who faced the armed forces of the state with not much more than our bodies and the occasional flying object. What is a few smashed ticketing machines and advertisements compared to the violence we witnessed? The violence that takes place constantly, unceasingly, in every immigrant neighborhood swept by kidnappers working for the state—during every ticket control in the subway that triggers a domino effect that ends in deportation—on flights leaving constantly with prisoners, often drugged and handcuffed, transported as human cargo against their will. In regards to the life of this man, I don’t intend to shock or traumatize with speculations about what his fate might be, what his circumstances were, whether he was torn from a family, a partner, a project, his dreams. It doesn’t matter. I assert his freedom to live as he chooses and where he chooses because my anarchism demands this as a minimum condition of human dignity and a rejection of the system of states and borders that I seek to destroy. This violence, this war on individuals in the name of states and nations, is the only relevant violence here, the violence that is carried out in the defense of oppression. It is a machine of violence built to protect and perpetuate the system of exploitation and human suffering that pits human against human in a needless struggle for survival. A machine that has colonized the minds of people to such an extent that they can only recognize violence at the point of impact—the fist striking a face, the rock striking the policeman’s shield—and only when it interrupts the order that ordinarily inflicts it. This renders invisible the ceaseless unspeakable violence that flows from the system of nations, capital, and class society: death due to lack of access to health care, famine and hunger created by artificial scarcity, workplace accidents and deaths caused by the drive to skimp on safety measures in order to maximize profits, endless religious and nationalist wars. Immigrants drown in the seas around Fortress Europe or die of dehydration in the heat of the Arizona desert in desperate attempts to escape poverty and improve their lives. This systemic violence, the violence of oppression, barely even registers to most as such. I make my way through the city, still lost in my thoughts as I exit the subway into the largely immigrant neighborhood where the CNT offices are. Two cops are parked outside the subway, nonchalantly checking people’s identification at random. “Papers, please.” The normality of everyday violence. Faced with this reality, who cares about legality? Who cares about popular opinion? When there were few of us and we occupied the tracks, our action was completely peaceful. Yet the mercenaries of the state came and beat us without hesitation in order to achieve its objectives. Although they were able to accomplish this in a relatively “orderly” manner, due to our small numbers and tactical avoidance of violence, was that not the victory of an immeasurably greater violence? Would a greater violence on our end, for the purposes of liberation, not be justified? In what thought process does it follow that nonviolence represents the moral high ground, when adherence to nonviolence makes the perpetuation of human suffering and oppression possible? There is a moment that I will never forget from the day we were beaten off the tracks a few weeks prior to the story I have recounted. I can barely see him through the glass, his complexion and the reflection of the station lights against the train’s windows making it difficult to distinguish his features and facial expressions. Two cops are moving him through the train, one holding each arm behind him, his hands cuffed together in front. Suddenly, as they pass an open window we can clearly see as he turns to us. He lifts his hands and displays a victory sign with each, as he mouths “thank you” to us. There is sadness, dignity, and gratitude in his face. I don’t know anything about him, who he is, where he is from, what brought him here, what he is being sent back to. But I know that violence—life-changing and potentially fatal violence—is not taking place in the delaying of the train. Violence is what is being done to him inside it. It’s not that we are too violent, but exactly the opposite. If we don’t employ the full arsenal of our capacity for collective revolutionary action, to be a force against the system of control that oppresses all of us, are we not as complicit as those who see it but choose to turn away? What we are doing is not too much. It’s not nearly enough. Further Reading The Border Is Everywhere—We Can Attack It Anywhere Eight Things You Can Do to Stop ICE No Wall They Can Build Solidarity in an Age of War and Displacement The Students Walk Out in Los Angeles The Syrian Cantina in Montreuil: Organizing in Exile Willem Van Spronsen’s Action against the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma Paris’s Lycée Autogéré (Self-Managed High School) is an experimental public school founded in 1982 that “places students in a condition of autonomy, encouraging them to resolve challenges themselves, in a collective manner if they so choose.” Academically, the school rejects grades, while structurally, its day-to-day operations are decided on collectively by teachers, students, and staff in a directly democratic fashion, principally through working groups and assemblies. Unsurprisingly, the school has steadily provided new and young blood into the anarchist and antiauthoritarian movement, and just as unsurprisingly, it was a target of a fascist attack in 2018. The high school’s website (in French) can be found here. ↩ “Lutter auprès des sans-papiers: Histoire du CAE Paris,” Courant Alternatif, February 1, 2006, http://oclibertaire.free.fr/spip.php?article115; translation by the author. ↩ “Un bilan critique du Collectif Anti-Expulsions d’Ile-de-France,” Cette Semaine, no. 85 (August–September 2002), https://cettesemaine.info/cs85/cs85cae.html; translation by the author. ↩ Jacques, “Étrangers expulsés, étrangers assasssinés!,” Le Monde Libertaire, no. 1123 (May 14–20, 1998), available at https://ml.ficedl.info/spip.php?article3761; translation by the author. ↩

The banner at the Civic Media Center welcoming participants to the 2025 Florida Abolitionist Gathering. From February 28 to March 2, hundreds of abolitionists and anarchists from across the country converged in Gainesville for the first Florida Abolitionist Gathering (FAG). Across a passionate weekend of workshops, films, food, debate, ritual, and protest, the contours of a robust regional resistance movement came into focus. The intergenerational, heavily queer and trans, and strongly multi-issue and anarchist group of abolitionists that converged in Florida articulated an expansive vision of liberation anchored in the urgent need to dismantle the prison-industrial complex in all its manifestations. The gathering showed that even as liberals wring their hands about the death of democracy, scrappy groups of organizers continue to fight back—and sometimes win—deep within the belly of the beast. An Uphill Battle Even within the darkening landscape of hyper-policing, anti-immigrant crackdowns, racist backlash, and transphobia spreading across the US, Florida poses a particularly chilling context. Despite his conflicts with Donald Trump, popular conservative governor Ron DeSantis has led a vicious campaign against activists in the state for years, prefiguring the national MAGA obsession with pushing back against all things “woke.” The notorious 2021 HB1 law passed in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter uprisings dramatically expanded the definition of a “riot” and the charges that can be levied against protesters, made toppling statues a felony, and limited the liability of anyone who injures or kills protesters, among other appalling provisions. The power of developers continues to surge, resulting in rollbacks of environmental protections and further reductions in affordable housing, while punitive policies criminalizing homelessness have led to sweeps of parks. As poverty and harsh laws sweep more and more people into jails and prisons, the conditions inside have worsened. New policies have ended physical mail delivery in most facilities and nearly succeeded in eliminating in-person visits, while DeSantis has called in the National Guard to staff prisons. Suffice it to say: in Florida, abolitionists face a hostile climate. Yet the state also features a robust array of resistance movements, including a strong anarchist presence, which have long pushed back against environmental destruction, gentrification, xenophobia, and mass incarceration. The Earth First! Journal was based in Lake Worth, Florida for some years, and active EF! chapters along with groups such as Fight Toxic Prisons have fought campaigns against ecocidal developers and prison profiteers. Protesters have targeted the headquarters of the GEO Group, a major private prison company; the Lake Worth-based Prison Legal News collects and circulates a wide range of information on prisoner rights. In 2020, outside organizers concerned about the horrifying conditions facing prisoners during the COVID pandemic launched the Community Hotline for Incarcerated People in South Florida, documenting abuses and offering support to hundreds through legal referrals, advocacy, and protest. A mass demonstration in Tallahassee memorialized people who died in Florida prisons in the pandemic, featuring the testimony of a person whose father died from COVID-19 in prison and the laying of body bags in front of the state capitol building. Gainesville in particular has been the site of powerful abolitionist activism in recent years. Campaigns by Florida Prisoner Solidarity successfully forced the termination of prison labor contracts with the city and county in 2018, effectively closing the Gainesville Work Camp facility; in 2023, in response to activist pressure, the Alachua County Jail became the first in the South to offer free unlimited phone calls to prisoners. Last year, local organizers agreed that something needed to happen to mobilize against rising fascism in the state and nationally. They proposed a gathering that would bring together abolitionists and anarchists to network and share strategies. While many solidarity groups and campaigns operate in Florida, the geography of the state is so spread out that organizers from different regions may rarely have the chance to connect and collaborate. This gathering offered a chance to bring these far-flung radicals together while keeping the spotlight on prison solidarity organizing, which can often be ignored in broader progressive activist spaces. Tabling materials at the 2025 Florida Abolitionist Gathering. The Gathering The Civic Media Center (CMC) served as the home base for the 2025 Florida Abolitionist Gathering. One of the longest-lasting radical community spaces still operating in the US, the CMC emerged from the global justice and Indymedia movements of a previous anarchist generation. Since its founding in 1993, the space has offered an alternative library, reading room, and infoshop, hosted events in support of grassroots activism, and featured do-it-yourself music and cultural events. In addition to the CMC, organizers partnered with other local art spaces and the public library to ensure that they could accommodate a wide range of workshops and activities. It’s a good thing they did, because over two hundred participants thronged the gathering over the course of the weekend, filling most event spaces to capacity and spilling out into countless discussions in the CMC’s outside courtyard, in a nearby park, and elsewhere across the city. The gathering’s provocative acronym reflected the centrality of queer/trans organizers, participants, and topics. As we’ve observed on an international level, newer generations drawn to anarchist activity are disproportionately gender/sexual outlaws as well as political radicals; that pattern was very much in evidence in Gainesville. Tablers such as the Pansy Collective and Queers for Climate Justice offered queer/trans merch and perspectives. Sessions took place over the weekend on producing hormones for do-it-yourself HRT and herbal transition options, a prison book luncheon hosted by the Tranzmission Prison Project on strategizing to get queer content into prisons, a participatory poetry workshop on “writing the queer/trans body,” and a presentation on “Radical Queer Histories of Faggotry, Abolition, and Anarchy.” The Alyssa Rodriguez Center for Gender Justice, an organization dedicated to strengthening movements for gender justice across prison walls, fighting gender-based violence, and eliminating barriers to political participation for incarcerated survivors and other grassroots advocates, presented on the experiences of trans people in Florida DOC facilities and spoke about coalition organizing around reproductive justice and bodily autonomy within and beyond prisons. At a time of intensifying gender fascism, as the right increasingly demonizes trans people, restricts access to abortion, and excuses male sexual violence, it was encouraging to see abolitionist organizers foregrounding struggles for gender self-determination in the movement to end prisons. This intersectional logic informed a wide range of activities at the gathering. Presenters emphasized connections between varied struggles in workshops on Palestinian political prisoners, immigrant solidarity and anti-deportation efforts, and the environmental impact of jails and prisons. The final event on the program involved the screening of Can’t Stop Change, a new documentary film connecting stories from “LGBTQ2S+ artists, organizers, and educators across Florida (and the new Florida diaspora) into an intersectional climate justice narrative.” The weekend showed that today’s abolitionists see prisoner support and prison abolition movements as inseparably linked to a wide range of liberation struggles and can confidently articulate the links between them as they build solidarity. The specific context of Florida and the Southeast informed many presentations. The workshops included a teach-in on the oppression of Haiti and Haitian migrants, and its role within US empire; perspectives on Appalachian anti-capitalist and abolitionist organizing from the mine wars to mountaintop removal; the bail fund and hurricane relief mutual aid efforts in Asheville, North Carolina; and campaigns against new prison construction across the region by Fight Toxic Prisons. One especially interesting presentation by Root Legal, a South Florida nonprofit public interest law firm and community organizing project oriented towards addressing root causes of harm, shared their efforts to forge an abolitionist strategy working with “crime victims” to reject pressure from prosecutors to pursue criminal punishment. An innovative cultural project launched by the South Florida Community Hotline for Incarcerated People (CHIP) has produced “Bending the Bars”, a full album of original hip-hop written and recorded entirely by musicians inside the jails and prisons of Broward County, Florida. Despite a complete ban on in-person visits and severe restrictions on costly phone calls, outside supporters collaborated with a wide range of incarcerated rappers to produce a powerful musical effort that defies the state’s efforts to isolate and silence prisoners. This was one of many examples on offer of how ferocious, creative, and effective abolitionist organizing can thrive in unexpected places. While local and regional efforts remained in the spotlight, on Saturday evening, attendees took inspiration from struggles in other territories. Many participants were relieved at the recent release of Leonard Peltier after nearly fifty years incarcerated on charges stemming from his participation in the American Indian Movement’s struggle for Indigenous self-determination. A longtime Florida supporter of political prisoners offered an emotional presentation on the significance of his case to prison movements; some older organizers recalled being radicalized by Peltier’s case decades ago, and despairing of ever seeing him freed in their lifetimes. After viewing a short video of Leonard addressing a crowd of supporters near his home in so-called North Dakota, the assembled abolitionists recorded a wildly enthusiastic cheer and message of support and solidarity, which was sent to Peltier through his supporters. Afterwards, a large group viewed the recent CrimethInc. documentary Fell in Love With Fire, an anarchist account of the revolutionary uprising that swept through Chile from October 2019 to March 2020. Amid a weekend of sharing strategies for fighting back against an array of miserable conditions, it was electrifying to hear the stories of the Chilean revolt as a reminder that revolutionary possibilities exist in the here and now, that courageous mass defiance can dramatically alter the social consensus in a short period of time, and that the future is unwritten. Participants at the gathering showed a passionate interest not only in supporting prisoners and dismantling existing carceral facilities but also in critically rethinking the alternative ways our communities respond to harm. An evocative image appearing on stickers and t-shirts insisted, “Abolish All Carceral Logics,” illustrating the grip that our prison society can exert on our minds and hearts as well as our bodies. One of the weekend’s most widely discussed workshops was titled “Against Me Too: Against Survivor Politics,” which waded into the waters of controversy around efforts to respond to harm within radical communities via community accountability processes. The conversation proved so generative that when the session ended, participants agreed to convene a second time on Sunday to continue the dialogues that had begun. At a time when liberals commonly repurpose the MAGA chant “Lock Them/Him Up!” at spaces ranging from the Democratic National Convention to a rally to defend trans history at Stonewall, it is critical that those of us fighting for total freedom reject the creep of carceral logic into our own approaches to social transformation. Anarchists have long critically reflected on our small-scale efforts to redress harm outside of criminal legal processes. The many discussions that unspooled within and beyond these workshops confirmed that a new generation of anarchists and abolitionists continue to debate how to dismantle patriarchy and keep each other safe outside of the ineffective and punitive approaches put forward by the state. On the last afternoon of the gathering, a well-attended caucus of non-white attendees met and shared experiences of navigating the gathering and broader organizing spaces. In the collective debrief session following, caucus participants shared a range of feedback about their experiences, critiquing the predominant whiteness of the gathering and asserting the importance of more autonomous spaces for non-white organizers to connect. While participants diverged in their perspectives of the weekend, many agreed that both the caucus space and the public debrief circle at the close of the gatherings schedule were key features that other gatherings should reproduce. In both autonomous organizing and critical participation in majority white efforts, Black, brown, and Indigenous attendees made clear that their perspectives are integral to effective movements for abolition and liberation. Other suggestions offered toward future gatherings included increased intergenerational spaces, sessions rooting us into the place we gather in and its local context, and expanding the variety of modalities for learning, sharing, and action. Friday evening’s grief ritual offered one of the weekend’s most moving moments. The assembled participants shared a painfully long list of names of fellow organizers and loved ones who had died in recent years, adding them to a board that would eventually be composted, symbolizing their return to the earth to continue nourishing and fertilizing a new generation of resistance. One participant sung a song to honor Tortuguita, an anarchist murdered by police while defending the Weelaunee Forest in the movement to Stop Cop City in Atlanta. At the ritual and in several workshops across the weekend, participants honored the memory of Karen Smith, a prolific outside organizer who has been mourned by her comrades on both sides of the walls since her tragic death in a car accident in 2020. As a recently incarcerated organizer recalled, “She gave her heart, her mind, and her life to this movement.” Despite the intense grief and demoralization so many radicals feel amid personal losses and political defeats, the ritual showed the capacity of our radical movements to rebuild our resilience by honoring our departed comrades and sharing deeply with each other. The altar created by FAG 2025 participants during the grief ritual commemorating our departed comrades. The Power of Inside/Outside Organizing: Julius’s Story In one of the weekend’s most powerful sessions, two Florida outside abolitionists joined Julius, one of the lead incarcerated organizers of the 2016 national prison strike in Florida, to discuss inside/outside resistance to the Florida Department of Corrections to a packed room of 75 attendees at the public library. After spending over seventeen years in Florida prisons since being sentenced as a teenager, Julius had just been released the previous month. In a particularly moving moment, a south Florida anarchist organizer arrived and approached Julius at the table; as it turned out, the two had been corresponding and organizing together for years, but had never before been able to meet in person. Their emotional embrace with tears in their eyes showed concretely the powerful bonds that can be forged through solidarity across prison walls. Julius shared his perspectives on how becoming involved in inside/outside solidarity organizing since 2016 transformed his life. He traced his political development over his years inside, acknowledging the shame he felt about his past actions of stealing from other poor people from his own community and misogynistic behavior. While accepting responsibility for harm he caused, he explained that his sentence involved “no recognition of what I’ve been through, or the context that shaped me.” Receiving mail from outside organizers helped him reinterpret his experiences through a political lens, and as momentum built toward the national prison strike, he decided to go all in. He used his own scarce commissary funds to photocopy and circulate materials about the strike, and built relationships with prisoners who were widely respected whose influence could help ensure wider participation. His efforts paid off: at his facility, 90% of the prisoners participated in hunger strikes or sit-down work strikes. Florida prisons kicked off the strike nationally, launching in a dozen facilities two days before the scheduled date and startling Florida Deportment of Corrections officials. Like other vocal strikers, Julius was targeted by the prison administration with made-up infractions and arbitrary transfers to other facilities in an attempt to hamper his organizing. Yet their strategy backfired. Although the authorities bounced him around to five different facilities in retaliation, Julius gleefully recounted, “I could reach five times as many people with the message as I could have if they’d just left me there.” But outside pressure proved instrumental to offsetting the consequences prison officials can inflict on inside organizers with near impunity. “That’s why your voices are so important,” Julius explained, “because they can’t tell you to shut the fuck up, pepper spray you, and throw you in a cell.” Julius reiterated a lesson that incarcerated organizers have long emphasized: receiving mail, phone calls, visits, and commissary donations from outside supporters demonstrates to both prison officials and fellow prisoners that an inside organizer has support and cannot be subjected to abuse or isolation without consequences. Achieving a critical mass of both participation inside and support outside provides the only way to win victories and protect organizers, he explained: “They might catch us individually, but they can’t beat all of us.” Prison was a harrowing experience, and adjusting to life on the outside for the first time in nearly two decades hasn’t been easy, Julius acknowledged. Small things could trigger his PTSD, from the jangle of keys (signifying the approach of guards) to the squeak of shoes on a basketball court (the soundscape of a fight or stabbing). But the organizing that changed his life inside has also transformed his notion of what could be possible in his life outside. The positive thing he’s taken from his seventeen years in Florida’s hellish prisons is the network he formed with other abolitionists—“It’s you comrades who are the inspiration.” Alongside Julius’s powerful in-person testimony, panelists shared audio recordings of messages from two additional inside organizers who are still currently incarcerated. Their testimony—interrupted by the mechanical voice intoning “you have one minute remaining” that is so familiar to organizers—reminded attendees of the absence of the countless thousands of comrades who remain held captive behind the walls. In a poignant moment, Julius explained that across nearly two decades behind the walls, his biggest fear was “dying alone in prison without my voice ever being heard.” The panel showed how organizers can amplify those voices, strengthening movements for solidarity and abolition and overcoming the state’s efforts to bury people alive. Materials for participants at the gathering to write to prisoners. From Discussion to Action: Protest and Mutual Aid At the panel discussion, Julius had explained the powerful impact that noise demonstrations outside prisons and jails can have: “That gets their attention, I promise you!” So it was appropriate that the weekend concluded with a demonstration outside the Gainesville Work Camp, a prison focused on extracting prisoner labor that has recently reopened after activists successfully shut it down several years before. About twenty-five participants from the gathering held a spirited rally, making noise and chanting to let officials know that the exploitation of local prisoners did not go unnoticed. A particularly feisty child of perhaps ten years old who had attended much of the gathering provided a highlight, getting on the bullhorn and chanting, “Oink oink, piggy piggy / We’re gonna make your lives shitty!” As the demonstration concluded with a chant of “We love you, we see you / We won’t be free without you,” a group of incarcerated workers could be seen waving. One organizer described it as the best part of the gathering: “After a weekend of talking about solidarity, then being in it.” The demonstration at the Work Farm prison in Gainesville. In addition to the demonstration, the weekend’s cultural events raised a significant sum of money for a variety of solidarity projects. A show one evening benefited Florida Prisoner Solidarity’s support efforts, while proceeds from a rave helped the Gainesville Books to Prisoners program and mutual aid efforts in Gaza and Sudan. In particular, money raised throughout the FAG weekend successfully funded a water well in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, which is now supplying 300-400 families, enabling them to resist Israeli colonial forces seeking to displace them. The relationships of solidarity that were strengthened this weekend transcended apartheid walls and national borders as well as prison walls. The Florida Abolitionist Gathering showed the outlines of a fierce and broad movement against prisons and the world that creates them, anchored in an anarchist vision of total liberation. In the difficult times ahead, we can find strength in remembering that prisoners in the most horrific conditions have sustained their determination through the power of solidarity—and that every one of us can play a role in fighting back as we build towards a world free of prisons and all forms of exploitation and oppression. To learn more or get involved: Florida Abolitionist Gathering – also check out their Instagram (T-shirts from the gathering are still available, in case you missed it!) Want to host the next Abolitionist Gathering in your area? Whether you’re from Georgia (GAG), South Carolina (SCAG), Louisiana (LAG), or somewhere else in the region that makes for an even worse acronym, you can reach out to the organizers through the links above. Organizations: Civic Media Center (CMC) Florida Prisoner Solidarity Fight Toxic Prisons South Florida Community Hotline for Incarcerated People (CHIP) “Bending the Bars” – hip hop album by incarcerated musicians from Florida Root Legal The Alyssa Rodriguez Center for Gender Justice Florida Institutional Legal Services Project](https://www.floridalegal.org/) Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) Oakland Abolition and Solidarity Films: Fell in Love With Fire Can’t Stop Change

The movement to stop Cop City and defend Weelaunee Forest was one of the most important social struggles of the Biden era. Its trajectory tells us a lot about the challenges we confront today under Donald Trump. In the final chapter of our chronology, we trace the movement’s concluding phase, beginning in 2023 and ending with Trump’s arrival in power, and explore what we can learn from it. You can consult a timeline of events in the appendix. In the wake of the George Floyd rebellion of 2020, politicians and profiteers in Atlanta set out to create a compound in which to train police to use militarized force to suppress protest activity. In response, a movement emerged to defend Weelaunee Forest, the forest slated for destruction to make way for the training facility known as Cop City. This movement picked up where the George Floyd rebellion left off, seeking to channel widespread anger against police violence into a campaign mobilizing a wide range of people and tactics against a concrete target. Over the following three and a half years, this movement gave rise to one of the fiercest struggles of the Biden era. Opponents of Cop City repeatedly destroyed equipment and forced contractors to withdraw from the construction project. In response, the authorities killed one forest defender and distributed outlandish terrorism and racketeering charges charges at random. While the movement became so broadly popular that the government of Atlanta was forced to use a variety of strategies to prevent voters from participating in a referendum on Cop City, politicians across the political spectrum unified in favor of pouring a virtually unlimited quantity of public funds into the coffers of the police and their allies. The arrival of the second Trump era has vindicated the decision to focus on resisting police militarization. Every repressive policy that Trump decrees will be imposed by police and other state mercenaries. The opposition that emerged in Atlanta sets the template for the social struggles that will play out under the second Trump administration. On one side, a political class unified in favor of repression unhampered by precedent or law; on the other side, a popular movement involving many different elements of the population using a wide array of tactics and strategies. This makes the lessons of the fight to stop Cop City essential reading for all. The movement to Stop Cop City was exemplary in several ways. First, the movement began from the premise that victory might be within reach. Although they were taking on powerful adversaries, the participants in the movement did not take it for granted that they would lose. Rather than simply setting out to make a gesture, they began from the premise that it was possible to achieve a concrete change in society—or at least, that they had a responsibility to discover whether it was possible through ambitious action. They set concrete goals and experimented with a variety of strategies to achieve them. Second, the participants did not water down their politics or tactics out of a misguided desire to appeal to a broad range of people. The George Floyd uprising, which began with the burning of a police precinct, demonstrated that boldness and a radical analysis can be at least as galvanizing as a timid approach calculated to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Finally, the participants set out to create a movement that was both popular and combative. Rather than accepting a role on the margins, they asserted direct action and the aim of abolishing the police as core to the movement. They made a point of articulating their intentions clearly and accessibly, making them known far and wide, with the goal of welcoming as many people as possible into a movement aiming to enact profound change. If every movement began from these points of departure, it seems likely that many of them would succeed. In the United States today, the wealthiest members of the ruling class control hundreds of billions of dollars apiece, while tens of millions of people struggle to put food on the table. The impossible task of imposing this state of affairs on an increasingly restless population is left to the police. Without police, politicians and executives would not be safe for an instant, as recent events have demonstrated. In this context, it is not surprising that the authorities threw every resource at their disposal into imposing Cop City on Atlanta, freely shedding blood and violating their own laws in the process. In the Biden era, this sufficed to overcome resistance to the project, because a large part of the population remained aloof from the movement, retaining faith in democracy and the rule of law. As we enter the second Trump era, however—which is already characterized by the abandonment of all compromise and the erosion of whatever perceived legitimacy state institutions still possessed—no one will be able to stand aside from social struggles for long. In view of this, the most important question is not whether the movement achieved its express goals, but how its legacy will equip people for the next round of struggles. At the minimum, it has helped to clarify the complicity of the entire political class in the violence of the police while setting important precedents for movement solidarity and diversity of tactics. “From the border to Weelaunee and Palestine, we defend life.” Already, the confrontations between those who seek to militarize the police and those who aspire to create a world without domination have spread from Atlanta all around the country. In 2022, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources announced that the National Guard training center at Camp Grayling sought to take over an additional 162,000 acres of publicly-owned land, more than doubling the area under its control. Inspired by the example of the movement to Stop Cop City, protesters mobilized against this expansion. In the end, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources was compelled to reject the original request, instead offering 52,000 acres to the military via short-term use permits. In the Bay Area, anarchists launched a movement to oppose a “Cop Campus” in San Pablo, California. In Charlotte, North Carolina, locals initiated a campaign targeting the construction of a local Cop City project. Even where resistance does not immediately emerge, building these facilities could prove difficult in a climate of widespread opposition: in East Somerville, South Carolina, developers scrapped their contract to build a new police training center in favor of building condos on the valuable real estate slated for development. As the US government increasingly emulates carceral states like El Salvador, stopping these facilities may be among the principle responsibilities of revolutionary movements. But whether it is a question of opposing police militarization, standing up for housing and the environment, or preserving public health, the same dynamics that emerged in the fight over Cop City will come to characterize more and more social conflicts. Cop City is everywhere. Our resistance must be, as well. This is the concluding chapter of our chronology of the movement. You can read the earlier installments here: “The City in the Forest,” chronicles the first year of the movement. “The Forest in the City,” chronicles the second year of the movement. “Beneath the Concrete, the Forest” collects first-person accounts from the occupation of Weelaunee forest through the first half of 2022. “Balance Sheet,” explores and evaluates the strategies that different currents in the movement have employed. “Living in an Earthquake” chronicles February through June of 2023, including the fifth week of action, the repression that followed, and the City Hall mobilizations. “Don’t Stop: Continuing the Fight against Cop City” chronicles the movement’s fortunes through the second half of 2023, including the Block Cop City mobilization. To Pick up Where We Left Off In the previous chapter, we discussed the Block Cop City mobilization and some of its immediate consequences, including the burning of sixteen Ernst Concrete trucks that same night, which led to the company’s departure from the project. In November 2023, mobilizing in response to the RICO charges against 61 people in late summer was a bold move. Only 500 people showed up, partly due to warnings from nonprofit staffers and activist groups—liberals and anarchists alike—about how “dangerous” the action would be. Despite this, no participants were arrested, a significant achievement for a movement that has often seen riot police tackle elderly picketers. After Block Cop City, autonomous groups organized around two new efforts. One idea, a nationwide convergence outside Georgia, emerged during the sixth week of action, alongside the Block Cop City proposal. The other followed the anniversary of Tortuguita’s death. The Day of the Forest Defender On January 2, 2024, anonymous authors published a statement titled “The Day of the Forest Defender),” which circulated widely online and in print. The statement briefly described the January 18, 2023 killing of Tortuguita by Georgia State Patrol and proposed a permanent commemoration of that day through resistance. The authors drew parallels to global commemorations, including Black August (honoring George and Jonathan Jackson), The Day of the Young Combatant (March 29, remembering Rafael and Eduardo Vergara Toledo’s deaths fighting the Pinochet regime in Chile), November 17th (commemorating the 1973 Polytechnic University revolt in Greece), and December 6th (marking the 2008 police killing of Alexis Grigoropoulos and the subsequent insurrection in Greece). The statement called for January 18 to be recognized as a day for actions, workshops, vigils, and other events honoring Tortuguita and all those who have died defending the Earth. It emphasized that movements in the United States must confront the repression targeting the Stop Cop City movement and respond with ongoing acts of resistance beyond just supporting those facing charges. As the anniversary approached, it became clear the government sought to assassinate Tortuguita’s character, as Tortuguita had become a martyr for the movement. Attorney General John Fowler filed a cynical motion to include excerpts from Tort’s journal in the RICO discovery, claiming it contained evidence relevant to the case against other activists. Filing this motion made the private journal a public record, and right-wing commentators spread what they considered to be shocking quotations across the internet and television. In the end, the court denied that motion, but the journal’s contents had already been digitized and published. The public saw notes from Food Not Bombs meetings, fragmentary thoughts, jokes, scattered remarks, abbreviated lists, dates, and drawings. Among these were instances of hyperbole, anti-police humor, and iconography, the kind of thoughts shared by millions of young people across the country. None of the leaked material scandalized the movement. We may never know how the television-viewing public perceived the coverage at that time, as many simply adopt the most recent perspective they hear. In any case, the news outlets and their audiences did not have the final word on the killing of a 26-year-old anarchist. On January 16, two days before the Day of the Forest Defender, a feller-buncher was set on fire in Weelaunee Forest. This machinery was burned at the forest’s edge near Interstate 20, on a parcel of land owned by Shadowbox Studios. The online communiqué reaffirmed the movement’s commitment to this section of the forest and highlighted the continued vulnerability of the developers to sabotage, despite the $41,500-per-day security budget allocated by the Atlanta city government to protect the construction site. In acting early, the saboteurs presumably hoped to set the tone for the days to follow. After the action, the government announced it had spent $20 million on security for the project, bringing the total cost to $110 million. This figure excluded the damages incurred by private contractors but included increases in insurance premiums. On January 18, Day of the Forest Defender events drew a total of over 1000 participants across approximately fifty locations. Vigils, rallies, movie screenings, and marches took place in cities including Seattle, Portland, Corvallis, Boise, Arcata, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, San Pablo, Stanford, Sacramento, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Tucson, Lincoln, Denver, Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Columbus, Akron, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Carbondale, Minneapolis, Lansing, Pontiac, Richmond, New Orleans, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Savannah, Tallahassee, Miami, Asheville, Chapel Hill, DC, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Binghamton, Bridgeport, New York, London, Berlin, and Atlanta. There was an event in Rojava, as well. That night, anonymous groups carried out acts of vandalism and sabotage. In Atlanta, anarchists broke windows at two Nationwide Insurance subsidiaries. In San Francisco, activists smashed eighteen windows at the Police Credit Union. In Novi, Michigan, caltrops were placed at the driveway of MTU Solutions. Elsewhere, windows were etched with corrosive chemicals. Anarchists overseas also conducted invite-only actions, reflecting global sympathy for the movement and its sacrifices. In Hanover, Germany, anarchists burned an Autobahn GmbH. In Amsterdam, saboteurs slashed the tires of UPS trucks, a Police Foundation funder. In northern England, activists raided a chicken farm and liberated the animals. The communiques for all of these actions referenced Tortuguita. As tragedies pile up, movements for liberation must focus on rigorous, ongoing education. Without it, they will remain trapped in cycles of short-lived outrage, unable to build lasting movements, organizations, or projects. The Day of the Forest Defender could serve as an opportunity for education, clarifying important lessons for years to come. If it succeeds, future activists will be able to learn from our struggles and mistakes, just as the movement against Cop City draws inspiration from past struggles. Day of the Forest Defender demonstration in Berkeley, California on January 18, 2024. The Stakes Keep Going Up The Day of the Forest Defender reinvigorated networks in Atlanta and beyond. On January 25, activists burned four machines owned by Brent Scarborough Company at a construction site on Boulevard Drive, near Custer Avenue. Four days later, on January 29, activists rushed onto a Brasfield & Gorrie jobsite in Midtown (at 12th and Juniper) and locked themselves to construction equipment. Dozens of supporters gathered at ground level, halting construction for several hours. Two people were arrested and charged with misdemeanor trespassing. Could this method become a new approach for forest defenders fighting Cop City? It seemed to spark enthusiasm among a new layer of activists who were committed to resisting Cop City even after the clearing of the forest. Before this approach could be tested further, events took a drastic turn with severe consequences for the movement—and perhaps for all movements in the near future. Machines belonging to Brent Scarborough burned on Boulevard Drive. The company was repeatedly targeted for their contract with Brasfield & Gorrie to build Cop City. February 8: Coordinated Raids Across Southeast Atlanta At 6 am on February 8, hundreds of police officers, federal agents, and state patrolmen raided three houses simultaneously. This was not the first time they had worked together to raid a home. But it was the first time they had targeted multiple houses at once within context of the movement. Two homes in Lakewood Heights were near recent acts of arson and sabotage targeting Brent Scarborough Company. The third, in Starlight Heights, was a few hundred feet from the Cop City construction site. The raids followed a joint investigation by the Atlanta Police, FBI, and ATF. The APEX Unit led the raid at one Lakewood home, the ATF at another, and the FBI at the Starlight Heights residence, with support from the Georgia State Patrol and Bureau of Investigations. At the house raided by the APEX Unit, a helicopter hovered overhead as officers arrived in armored vehicles. Wearing balaclavas, brandishing long guns, and obscuring their name tags, they pounded on the door. One resident, hands raised, opened the door before it was broken, possibly avoiding gunfire. Another resident, topless, was dragged outside despite asking for a shirt. Masked plainclothes officers photographed detainees on their phones. Neighbors filmed and shouted at the officers. Inside, police overturned furniture, punched holes in walls, and ransacked the house. They seized t-shirts, laptops, a camera, and phones. One resident was detained for eight hours at police headquarters; agents photographed his tattoos but did not interrogate him before releasing him without charges. APEX Unit of the Atlanta Police blocking a residential street in Lakewood Heights after conducting a raid on a single-family home. At the house that the FBI raided, dozens of agents arrived and loudly announced themselves. Those inside were permitted to sit while agents searched through the shelves, cabinets, books, and cushions. The intruders seized some phones, but made no arrests. The agents combed through belongings with meticulous care, avoiding errors or oversights. At the ATF raid, agents surrounded the house, shining flashlights and barking orders. They detained the residents of a backyard unit and broke down the front door of the main house, throwing flash-bang grenades inside. The agents abused residents and destroyed belongings, dragging one person down the porch stairs by their hair and staging intimate photographs in order to humiliate the residents. They arrested one person on charges of First-Degree Arson, later accusing them of involvement in the June 2023 attack on a police training facility in which eight police motorcycles were burned using time-delayed devices. Unlike the 2023 raid on the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, the targets of this massive operation were not public figures. They were not known to the media, did not face RICO charges, and could not easily express what connected their situation to the broader movement. Setting aside concerns about why the police decided to target these individuals, the movement’s ability to rally support was uncertain. When the police raided the Solidarity Fund, activists, journalists, and even politicians spoke out in their defense. Who would come to the aid of accused terrorists and arsonists? “Bless Them” Before the end of February 8, the movement responded boldly. The Stop Cop City Vote Coalition (the group organizing the referendum campaign), Emory Stop Cop City, and others called an emergency press conference at the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters. As a result, the Police Foundation—which had been vandalized during the first Week of Action in 2021 and again after Tortuguita’s killing in 2023—sent all staff home early. During the press conference, public figures associated with the movement spoke out, condemning the repression and asserting that it was not just an attack on the fight to stop Cop City, but an assault on everyone’s right to organize and resist social injustices. This would have sufficed to counter the media narrative that the police chief had attempted to craft with his self-assured, misguided statements earlier that day. But the organizers went further. When a journalist asked if the pro-referendum coalition condemned the burning of police motorcycles—the act the police cited as justification for the raids—a prominent local activist associated with the Movement for Black Lives answered: “Hell no. No. Not at all. And if I’m being completely honest with you, Atlanta deserves even more than that. Real talk. They are lucky. This city is lucky. This country is lucky. Atlanta has its hands in literally murdering Palestinians right now. You think we give a damn about some equipment? Not at all. Not at all. But some of us cannot take that risk. But those who can? Bless them. Bless them. I cannot take that risk. But Lord knows I’ll sit with my lighter and be like ‘damn.’ But the best thing I can do is use my voice, use my feet, use my heart, talk to my people, and organize. And I’ll put my body on the line and show up and do as much as I can. Because we need every, every means necessary to deal with the police state we are dealing with. So I don’t care. No! And I would imagine my comrades would feel the same. No! We are not gonna condemn nobody for doing righteously what they need to do when our city has silenced every ‘proper democratic process.’ As one of the students says: ‘If we can’t get this in the courts, if we can’t get this in the council, then we are going to take it to the streets!’ Because our people, our children, my babies, are worth the risk.” In the days following the raids, others worked to demonstrate that both the principle of solidarity and the spirit of resistance remained intact despite the intensifying repression. Press conference, downtown Atlanta, February 8, 2024. Trading Blows In the early morning of February 10, anarchists in St. Paul set fire to two Home Depot trucks and the trailers carrying expensive lumber. A claim of responsibility posted online expressed support for the individual arrested in the raids and quoted the “March 5th Movement” communiqué accompanying the action that the arrestee was accused of participating in: “The time has come to destroy those who destroy the Earth.” That same night, in Lakewood Heights—the location of two of the raids—a police cruiser was set on fire. The car was parked outside a cop’s home. An anonymous statement published online with the action read: “We wish to dispel any notion that people will take this latest wave of repression lying down…We all have something to lose; it is simply a matter of living out our beliefs or submitting to the police state. Inaction is a choice just as much as action, and we all have to live with the choices we make.” This act targeting a police officer at home, shortly after a major operation, sent authorities into a spiral they wouldn’t recover from for nearly six months. By mid-morning on February 10, Lakewood Heights was effectively under occupation. Local, state, and federal agencies laid siege to the area. Police cruisers lined highway off-ramps, intersections, and major streets. An armored vehicle was stationed on Jonesboro Road, a key street in the neighborhood. A helicopter circled overhead for days. Unmarked cruisers sped through the area, parking outside the homes of suspected “militant anarchists” (in the words of Chief Shierbaum), tailing individuals, photographing them, pulling over motorists, and asking pointless questions. The GBI, FBI, and ATF canvassed door-to-door, dug through trash cans, and paraded K-9 units through the community. Around 4 pm, dozens of police vehicles gathered at Kipp Vision Elementary on McWilliams Street, marking the southern border of the Lakewood neighborhood. They drove north several blocks, shut down roads, and established a perimeter around a single-family home. After kicking in the front and back doors and finding no one inside, they ransacked the place—flipping over chairs and tables, pulling posters off walls, and breaking furniture. Finding nothing of interest, they left as quickly as they had come. Outside, Chief Shierbaum addressed the media. With nothing to show for the raid, he focused on the burned police cruiser, absurdly claiming that “someone could have died.” Though he admitted no one was home at the time, he claimed that police had targeted the house based on a “preliminary investigation” suggesting the arsonists might have returned there after setting the cruiser on fire. He ended his press conference ominously: “The person we were looking for knows who he is,” and that the police would like to speak with him. In a courageous countermove, the resident of this home held his own press conference the next day. He asserted that he was targeted not for any crimes, but because of his support for the movement. He refused to yield to leading questions from journalists, who tried to imply he had prior knowledge of attacks on Cop City. Instead of denouncing the attacks, he maintained that it was the police who had created the dangerous conditions, not anarchists. At the end of the conference, he invited journalists into his home to show them the damage from the raid. Had more community members responded this way, publicly asserting their unity and refusal to accept raids and harassment of activists, the following months might have played out differently. Faith leaders denounce the repression of Cop City protesters. From a Distance If there had been no militant response to the raids, the government might well have carried out more raids and arrests, something they had explicitly stated was in the works. Politicians and police often fail to make good on their promises. Possibly, the authorities thought they would find evidence in the course of their raids that they did not find. Perhaps they expended too much political favor kicking in so many doors for so few arrests. Both could be true. The courage of the responses from the movement probably impacted the situation as well. Movements that fail to respond swiftly to attacks often lose morale. It is a significant weakness only to be able to advance with the consent of one’s adversary. At the same time, movements should resist the temptation to get caught in high-risk grudge matches, boxing themselves in ever-shrinking fields of action that involve fewer and fewer participants. This applies to everyone, not just those who burn police cruisers. In the weeks following the raids, the movement stalled. There was no systematic canvassing of the besieged area, nor were large demonstrations organized to denounce the raids. Local engagement was missing precisely when it was crucial. While many recognized the need to mobilize in such a way, many key figures in the movement were in retreat—intimidated by police drones, unmarked vans, or still out on bond from their felony RICO charges. To have been able to seize this missed opportunity, the movement would have required broader participation, more people prepared to take initiative, and greater support from the wider community. Perhaps this was a “chicken and egg” dilemma. One advantage the movement had long held over the Atlanta Police Foundation was the ability to stage interventions outside of the forest, outside the city, outside the state of Georgia. Convergences allow movements to remain focused and precise, drawing together many of the movement’s most dedicated participants and supporters. Decentralized action makes the movement more agile, resilient, and capable of replenishing its ranks, since organizers can introduce new participants to the movement far from the epicenter of repression. What if these two strengths could be combined, converging far from the center of surveillance and intimidation? Nationwide Summit against Cop City By the second week of February, police cruisers began parking outside the homes of more than a dozen Atlanta residents, day and night. According to local media reports and The Guardian, officers parked their cars, shined floodlights, and generally created an air of menace in Lakewood Heights and southeast Atlanta. Between mid-February and early September 2024, officers parked outside these homes up to ten times a day. This amounted to well over a thousand instances of overt surveillance against alleged participants in the movement and their neighbors. Even before the February raids and subsequent harassment, opponents of Cop City began organizing a nationwide convergence in Tucson, Arizona. This marked the first large-scale attempt to mobilize forest defenders and anti-Cop City activists outside of Atlanta in the three years of resistance to the project. After the inconclusive events the previous November, this was a creative innovation worth pursuing. If the movement could catalyze participation on a larger scale by cultivating centers of participation further from the epicenter of repression, it might give itself a new lease on life and continue deploying both confrontational and participatory means. On February 23, just weeks after the raids in Atlanta, hundreds of people converged in Tucson. They gathered at Mansfield Park, exchanging food, pamphlets, schedules, and embraces. For those who had participated in previous weeks of action in the Weelaunee Forest, this scene was familiar—though this time, without helicopters overhead. In the late afternoon, 150 forest defenders marched from the park to a nearby lot that had been abandoned by developers and authorities; they transformed it into a temporary autonomous zone. Participants redecorated the lot with graffiti, tents, and folding tables. Workshops, presentations, and skill-shares drew several hundred more people over the next few days. For those who had traveled from afar, the warm Arizona night was likely a pleasant surprise. That evening, away from the reclaimed plaza, an anonymous group smashed windows at three Nationwide Insurance locations. The weekend had officially begun. Around one hundred people slept beneath the Tucson sky. Generations of Resistance On Saturday, February 24, local residents and seasoned anarchists intermingled all day long in strategy sessions, workshops, and assemblies about the movement and the challenges it faced. That afternoon, Ben Morea, of the legendary New York City anarchist groups Black Mask and Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (UAW/MF), addressed 75 people in a corner of Mansfield Park, sharing the lessons he had learned as a lifelong rebel against all authority, domination, and closed-mindedness. Young participants asked him questions and received heartfelt responses. The movement against Cop City and to defend Weelaunee Forest has benefitted from its continuous cross-pollination with autonomous and unruly youth subcultures. It has also benefitted from the participation of elders, movement veterans, and seniors who offer their own perspective and insights on the world, with the wisdom of many decades of hard-earned lessons and experiences. That night, a few hundred people gathered at a nearby community arts space for a hardcore punk show organized within the context of the convergence. Anarchists distributed pamphlets and posters about the movement, while punk bands played fast and angry music into the late hours of the night. In Santa Cruz, California, a Nationwide subsidiary was vandalized with spray paint, its locks glued shut. New Ambitions, Old Templates On Sunday, February 25, 80 people gathered in downtown Tucson, dressed in black clothing and masks. The crowd had apparently assembled on an invitation-only basis. They marched toward the Presidio Plaza, down Stone Street; some began smashing windows. The sound of hammers and stones colliding with glass rang through the night. Masked protesters smashed the plate glass windows at a Wells Fargo. Paint fumes drifted into the air, rising above the glimmering wreckage. PNC Bank shared the same fate. A few police cruisers confronted the crowd. Hooded protesters responded, lobbing stones and fireworks, sending the officers into retreat. The crowd circled back to Presidio Plaza before dispersing. Pairs of protesters sprinted in different directions. Sirens wailed in the distance. Within minutes, the crowd vanished, just as police flooded the area. Three pedestrians were arrested and charged with felonies. Later, the charges were dropped. PNC Bank on Stone Avenue redecorated by protesters. This demonstration echoed the march on the APF headquarters in Atlanta during the first Week of Action, when the movement still lacked mass sympathy but possessed the element of surprise. It also recalled a specific type of protest undertaken by US anarchists between 2007 and 2011—small affinity group actions that exploited the element of surprise and mimicked the energy of a riot, albeit on a smaller scale. The most infamous example was the May 1, 2010 vandalism of a gentrifying shopping area in Asheville, North Carolina, followed by the arrests of eleven people, facing felony charges and bond amounts of $65,000 each. Such demonstrations are risky. The crowds involved are often too small to effectively repel police incursions, leaving stragglers and passersby vulnerable to snatch squads. Moreover, these actions are often ignored or misrepresented by the media, and because they’re not destructive enough to warrant widespread attention, their broader political or social impact is negligible—at least, in terms of public perception. However, the February 25 demonstration was accompanied by a press release, which ensured extensive media coverage. Though the worst consequences were avoided, it appeared that this demonstration neither galvanized nor demoralized the movement. In that regard, its impact on the movement was more similar to Block Cop City than to the January 21, 2023 black bloc or the March 5, 2023 raid on Cop City. One might wonder if the risk was worth it, given the lack of tangible results. If nothing else, considering the context, it was remarkable that so many people were willing to take part in such actions just weeks after the recent raids in Atlanta. Arguably, the virtues and courage that movement participants are able to embody for one another are more important than what they communicate to their adversaries. Perhaps the networks that enable these actions are more durable than those that rely solely on other tactics. In that case, it is the relationships and organization of those networks that gives them strength, not risk tolerance or bravado alone. Windows broken at the Stone Avenue Wells Fargo during the “Nationwide Summit to Stop Cop City” in Tucson, Arizona. From Scottsdale to New York City The next day, as media outlets published dramatic images of broken glass from the night before, dozens of protesters gathered at the Nationwide Insurance headquarters in Scottsdale, two hours from Tucson. Armed with poster-board signs and whistles, they faced off against hundreds of police officers. The office was closed, the entire area under heavy police surveillance. Law enforcement clearly expected a militant confrontation at the office building, but the office itself was tucked away in an office park far from the city center, easily policed. The few protesters who gathered there, undeterred, courageously faced down the absurd overreaction of the police. Meanwhile, in Forest Hills, Arizona, six activists locked themselves into concrete-filled barrels blocking the entrance to a gated community housing a regional executive of Nationwide Insurance. With only a few journalists and medics for support, they successfully shut down access to the wealthy community for hours. During that time, they explained their actions to the neighbors of the Nationwide executive. At the same time, in New York City, over two hundred people marched to AXA XL and Nationwide offices. AXA XL insures Brasfield & Gorrie, the contractor behind Cop City, while Nationwide insures the Atlanta Police Foundation. The crowd surged into the building, pushing past police and security. They flooded the atrium and stairwells, dropping banners from the second-floor balconies as their chants echoed through the halls. It was the largest demonstration against Cop City to take place outside Atlanta. The next day, several Nationwide offices in New York City were vandalized. The day after that, someone slashed the tires of ten NYPD cruisers in an expression of solidarity with the movement. These actions in Arizona and New York illustrated the relationship between participatory and clandestine tactics, as the Weeks of Action in Atlanta often led to greater sabotage against those destroying the forest. Scottsdale, Arizona, February 26, 2024. Spring into Resistance By March 2024, a new round of actions against Cop City were in full swing. The weekly picket at the construction site, established over the winter, continued to grow as temperatures rose. On March 5, the anniversary of the historic raid on the Cop City site, around 20 Black women gathered at Mayor Andre Dickens’ private residence at 6 a.m. They held banners, chanted slogans, and delivered speeches condemning the repression of the movement and demanding the city unblock the referendum process in order to permit residents to vote on the land-lease ordinance. Two days later, on March 7, another activist locked down to construction equipment at a Brasfield & Gorrie worksite in Midtown. A crowd gathered outside with megaphones and banners, just as they had during the January lockdown at a nearby construction site. After several hours, the forest defender was removed by police and cited for misdemeanor “trespassing.” At the same time, authorities continued extensive surveillance and harassment in Lakewood and southeast Atlanta. On March 11, a crowd of Austin residents confronted Mayor Dickens while he was participating in a panel at the South by Southwest music event. As Dickens began his speech, protesters unfurled banners, hurled insults at him, and chanted “Viva, Viva, Tortuguita” while throwing fliers into the air. The event was ruined. In a desperate attempt to shield himself, Dickens called out, “Look at who is doing this,” cynically using identity politics to deflect from his responsibility for the harm occurring in Atlanta. The disruption continued, and Dickens was heckled all the way out of the building. Three days later, on March 14, eight machines owned by Brent Scarborough were set ablaze in a suburb south of Atlanta. Anonymous saboteurs issued a statement online, highlighting the lack of coverage surrounding the attack. They argued that while actions in the city often prompted police statements and media coverage, news of attacks in the suburbs was generally suppressed. This may have been the most destructive act against Brent Scarborough yet. What Goes Up… As the movement regained its footing after the February raids, new activists flocked to meetings, fundraisers, and direct action trainings. This led to more daring actions. Two activists climbed a 250-foot crane at a Brasfield & Gorrie construction site in Midtown Atlanta. Unlike previous lockdowns, which involved small groups stalling work for a few hours, this action was riskier and posed a serious challenge to security. After several hours, police scaled the crane and used an angle grinder to capture the activists, who had locked their arms inside a steel pipe. The courts reacted harshly, charging the two with “False Imprisonment,” a felony kidnapping charge. The police claimed the crane operator, on the ground, was “unable to leave” due to the activists suspended nearly 20 stories above him. This absurd charge gave pause to many. If camping in a forest, passing out fliers, civil disobedience, breaking windows, and rioting were all punished with the same severity, what actions remained for those unwilling to risk imprisonment? What would it take to stop the construction? A Stop Cop City protester locked down to Brasfield & Gorrie construction equipment in Midtown Atlanta in March 2024. From Weelaunee to Gaza At the same time, across the Atlantic, the Israeli invasion of Gaza continued. Graphic images and reports arrived daily showing the brutal toll on Palestinian civilians. Horrific footage recorded and broadcast by Palestinians depicted scenes of unimaginable violence. Soldiers decapitated children. Fighter jets vaporized hospital wards. Aid workers shoveled human remains into trash bags to turn them over to loved ones. For six months, protesters in the United States blocked highways, disrupted speaking events, shut down ports. While often small, these actions were passionate and contributed to growing momentum. On April 15, coordinated highway blockades took place around the country. Two days later, a group at Columbia University in New York established a protest camp. When the administration brought the NYPD in to attack students and faculty, outrage spread across the country. By the third week of April, protesters had established or attempted to establish “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” at over a hundred campuses. Atlanta was no different. On April 22, an anonymous group wheatpasted slogans around Emory University, linking the institution with Cop City and the Israeli occupation. On April 25, dozens of protesters rushed onto Emory’s Quad at 7:30 am, erecting tents and banners that read “No Cop City,” “No Genocide,” and “Defend the Forest.” Protesters were able to assemble tents, but not much else. At 10:15, protesters attempted to march but were blocked by officers who fired pepper balls. Riot police used rubber bullets and batons. In the chaos, medics were tackled, journalists maced, and professors arrested. “Divest from death—no Cop City, no genocide.” A banner raised at the Emory University Gaza Solidarity Encampment in April 2024. While the police reasserted control of the Quad, students rushed from classrooms, eager to witness—and join—the unfolding conflict. By 11:30 am, nearly 500 people had gathered around Emory’s Quad. A group surrounded the Atlanta Police cruisers holding detainees from the earlier chaos. The crowd chanted, “Every city is Cop City.” Tensions flared as the cruisers tried to leave and protesters rushed into the road to block their exit. Police fired pepper balls into the crowd and tackled another student. People poured out of nearby classrooms, pushing closer to the police lines while chanting, “Shame on you.” In the standoff, snatch squads arrested several more protesters. The crowd then swarmed to de-arrest them, hitting and shoving officers, successfully freeing at least one person. Some began throwing bottles. The cruisers left and the crowd marched toward Convocation Hall. Students, community members, faculty, clergy, and activists then reconvened in the Quad. Supporters brought food to the protesters, who gathered in small groups to discuss their next steps. At least 28 people had been arrested and many others were injured. Though the police were absent, those assembled were uncertain how to proceed. Word spread that students at the Candler Theology School had occupied the atrium and were calling for supporters to join them. Around 300 people headed to the school. By the time they arrived, police had blocked the doors to prevent an occupation. Masked protesters with reinforced banners pressed into the police lines, throwing bottles and signs in an attempt to break through. For the third time, police fired pepper balls at the crowd, sending many running or retreating from the building. Despite the efforts of a few dozen who tried to push through, the larger crowd lacked the will to confront the police directly. Had they been more unified and prepared, they likely could have seized the building. Instead, exhausted and underprepared, the crowd—still several hundred strong—retreated to the Quad. Around 9:15 pm, most protesters dispersed, anticipating the 11 pm campus curfew. Between us and peace, a line of police officers. Clashes outside Emory Candler School of Theology. No Confidence The next day, 500 people reconvened in Emory’s Quad following an autonomous call to action circulated anonymously online. The flier outlined two demands: divest from Israel and the Atlanta Police Foundation, and drop all charges against those arrested in the previous day’s protests. As the crowd gathered, students and activists delivered impassioned speeches on a megaphone, connecting the fight against Cop City to broader issues like US imperialism in Palestine and systemic racism. After an hour of speeches, the crowd marched toward Cox Hall. A few protesters forced open the doors and hundreds poured inside, chanting “Free, free Palestine” and “Stop Cop City.” The atmosphere was upbeat but cautious—there was no immediate threat of arrest, but most participants quickly retreated to the Quad after the brief transgression. Representatives from the “Open Expression” committee—the Orwellian name of the group that the university established to monitor protests under the guise of “protecting rights”—warned the crowd that if protesters set up camp or took over a building, the police would be called. They claimed that, because someone had painted “Escalate 4 Gaza” on a bathroom mirror, the entire event was at risk of forced dispersal. These mediators exerted significant influence over the movement; on April 26, they effectively neutralized momentum, discouraging further action. As the hours passed, hundreds lingered in the Quad, blasting music and socializing, before dispersing by the 11 pm curfew. Go Where They Go Amid nationwide protests, on April 27, the Atlanta Police Department hosted a recruitment event in New York City. In August 2023, forest defenders had disrupted a similar event, blocking the doors and throwing buckets of shrimp into the convention center atrium. Protesters sought to disrupt this event as well. The evening before, someone poured fast-drying cement into the Marriott Hotel’s toilets, repeatedly flushing them to mix it with the water. This presumably caused extensive damage to the plumbing. Activists also covered the courtyard with posters of Tortuguita and graffiti denouncing Cop City. The next day, anonymous activists released 300 crickets into the building and pulled the fire alarm. The event was ruined once again. Meanwhile, in Atlanta, Emory President Greg Fenves sent an email warning students and faculty about dangerous “outsiders” supposedly spreading violence and vandalism at protests. His rhetoric aimed to divide campus affiliates from the broader Atlanta community to better control dissent. When someone spray-painted the word “genocide” on a campus building, Fenves condemned it as “hateful.” While the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published opinion pieces claiming that Palestine solidarity protests were at risk of being “co-opted” by activists seeking to stop Cop City, activists from Arcata, Los Angeles, New York City, Tucson, Richmond, and New Orleans drew explicit connections between the two struggles, emphasizing the link between US military operations and domestic policing. Despite the attempts to undermine the protests, including the outrageous ruling from the internal conduct board that found protesters had “violated” the rights of Open Expressions the previous fall, public sentiment remained firmly opposed to the repression. Nearly all of the 28 arrestees from April 25 were Emory students, faculty, or alumni, undermining allegations about outside agitators. On April 28, hundreds gathered again in the Quad. Faculty and students announced their intention to hold a “No Confidence” vote against President Fenves for summoning the Atlanta Police Department to arrest and abuse protesters. The vote resulted in a 75% supermajority against Fenves and the administration. A Defend the Forest / Stop Cop City banner at the Gaza solidarity encampment at Emory. These are the alleged “outside agitators” described by President Greg Fenves. Breaking and Exiting Protests across the country escalated, with dramatic confrontations between protesters and police. Scenes of police beating and gassing students, alongside moments of protesters linking arms and overpowering police encirclement tactics, inspired many. On May Day, around 300 people gathered once again at Emory, carrying reinforced banners. For the third time that week, protesters flooded into a building, this time filling the atrium of the Undergraduate Admission Bookstore. To hold the building, participants would have had to broadcast their intentions to stay; some people would have needed to barricade doors with tables, chairs, and other obstacles. However, the crowd lacked unity and tactical direction. Representatives from Open Expressions again informed protesters that they would call the police if the action continued. With no clear plan to withstand a police response, the crowd dispersed, leaving the building unoccupied. The Gaza Solidarity protests at Emory University had ended for the time being. A demonstration at Emory Undergraduate Admissions, spring 2024. Protest at GILEE Since April 2021, activists have focused on the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program at Georgia State University. The program facilitates exchanges between metro Atlanta officers and Israeli police, sharing tactics for controlling marginalized communities. Some argue that GILEE’s training of US police in Israeli military tactics may have inspired the concept of Cop City. On May 4, around one hundred people gathered at Hurt Park near Georgia State University and marched to the GILEE office at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Upon arrival, protesters faced off with police at the front doors. Using reinforced banners as shields, they charged the police lines, hoping to enter the building. Police responded with batons and mace, but the protesters held their ground. After several minutes, recognizing that they couldn’t enter, and anticipating police reinforcements, they left together without arrests, showing the power of direct confrontation in the Gaza solidarity movement. The next day, sixty protesters returned to Hurt Park. Surrounded by riot police, they held a meeting to discuss next steps before leaving without marching. Law enforcement, hoping for a confrontation, was left frustrated. On May 6, Emory University moved its commencement ceremony off campus to Gwinnett County in hopes of avoiding disruption from Cop City/Gaza solidarity protests. Yet as the semester ended, campus-based protests subsided nationwide. In Atlanta, eight months later, protests had not returned. Protesters and police clash outside of GILEE headquarters in downtown Atlanta. It’s Already Too Late When movements lose the ability to innovate and set their own timelines, participants often convince themselves the pause is not politically risky. “Once the semester starts…,” they tell themselves. “After May Day…” or perhaps “After the election…” This mindset can signal a movement’s collapse. Patience and strategy are vital, but waiting on things to develop “organically” or on others’ timelines is generally a sign of stagnation. Bold action, audacity, and collective organization are essential to the pursuit of change. As attention shifted from the forest to the city, the opportunities to take action expanded, in theory, even as the ability to take advantage of them contracted. The will to act had spread, but the vulnerabilities of the Cop City project were shrinking. Construction continued day and night, funded by contractors with deep personal and professional stakes in the Police Foundation. It began to appear that only a serious revolt could halt the project—if even that could. Across the country, mayors and local governments announced their own Cop City projects—in New York, Oakland, Nashville, Charlotte, and beyond. In early June, autonomous groups within the Cop City and Gaza solidarity movements called for a joint action to disrupt the first Biden-Trump debate, which was scheduled to take place in Atlanta. The call encouraged people of all tendencies to act. If unrest could unfold outside electoral events, as it had in Costa Mesa, Albuquerque, and elsewhere in 2016, the fight against Cop City might expand its purchase upon the public imagination. Failing to do would mean consigning millions to passivity and spectatorship as the US power structure sought to monopolize their attention, narrowing the spectrum of political possibility to two elderly candidates who both sought to increase police funding and continue sending billions to Israel to fund the genocide in Gaza. But catalyzing confrontations at a national security event was a tall order. Rising Tension The weeks leading up to the Presidential debate were eventful. Police harassment in Lakewood reached new heights. On May 29, The Guardian reported officers shining lights into residents’ homes, running sirens at random. In one instance, someone placed a lit traffic flare in a bush outside an activists’ home, sparking a fire. Around this time, cameras appeared on the streetlights outside the houses that APEX and the ATF had raided. The camera outside the former was concealed in a metal box with black duct tape, peering through a tinted window at the home’s entrance. The box containing the other camera wasn’t covered in black duct tape, but simply labeled “High Voltage.” It resembled the devices placed outside the homes of several Memphis Black Lives Matter activists in 2018. At the end of May, several water mains burst in Atlanta, cutting water access to large parts of the city, especially Black neighborhoods south of I-20 and west of the I-75/85 connector. The morning that the system failed, Mayor Dickens flew to Nashville for a fundraiser with wealthy elites and lobbyists. For nearly a week, tens of thousands of residents had only brown or murky water, and some in the southeastern parts of the city had no water whatsoever. On social media, many linked the water crisis to funding for Cop City. As the geopolitical influence of the United States wanes and climate disasters worsen, such breakdowns will likely become more common. Unless we reclaim our resources from warmongers and police, social chaos will merge with catastrophe. It’s easy to anticipate the consequences, as desperate people are already experiencing the equivalent in many parts of the world. New fronts of repression were opening further afield. In Charleston, South Carolina, federal agents surrounded a sedan on the interstate and forced it to pull over. The driver, a 20-year-old anarchist, was served with a subpoena for a federal grand jury investigation into the December 31, 2023, arrest of a person accused of painting anti-Cop City slogans on multiple Thomas Concrete trucks and setting them on fire. On June 25, the legal team representing the Atlanta Solidarity Fund in the RICO case targeting the movement filed a motion in court. It revealed that local and federal law enforcement had mishandled confidential client-attorney communications, primarily emails. These were supposed to be processed by a third-party “filter team” to protect the rights of the accused, a process the defense had warned the prosecution about three times. As the trial approaches—dates still pending—more such violations are expected, as the charges against the movement are largely political rather than legal. A camera on a light pole outside of a home raided by Georgia police. The metal box is covered in duct tape to obscure its similarity to a similar device installed on the same day at another house a few blocks away. The camera inside the plastic window is difficult to see with the naked eye, but can be seen clearly in this photograph. The Presidential Debate On June 27, several activists locked themselves to the entrance of Hudson Technologies in Smyrna, an Atlanta suburb within the I-285 perimeter highway. Hudson Technologies works with the Israeli Defense Forces; the activists were drawing attention to its role in the violence in Gaza. They also emphasized the right of Atlanta residents to participate in the popular referendum against Cop City. This was the third time that anti-war protesters had targeted Hudson. Earlier, on February 14, activists had glued the locks and spray-painted the building. On June 3, all the windows were broken in retaliation for the US-backed Israeli invasion of Rafah, a Gaza Strip area designated a “safe zone” for refugees. Later that afternoon, protesters gathered in west Midtown, between Spring Street, the 17th Street bridge, Northside Drive, and south toward Home Park and Georgia Tech University. Advocates for affirmative action and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs stood on the 17th Street bridge. Nearly a hundred protesters, most of them Black, were surrounded by police separating them from a pro-Trump rally just fifty feet away. At the Israeli consulate on Spring Street, around a hundred socialists and anti-war activists gathered at 5 pm, chanting slogans and listening to speeches. Another demonstration was assembling in a small park in Home Park. This group stood apart from the others. On Hemphill, 10th Street, and surrounding streets, helmeted police squads stood watch with bicycles in hand, their heads swiveling. Undercover vehicles crept down side streets, likely carrying federal agents. Atlanta Police vehicles and motorcycles blocked roads and shone their lights on sidewalks and intersections. Meanwhile, ninety people in black hoodies, face masks, keffiyehs, and helmets assembled near 10th and State in a green space. The sound system nearly drowned out the noise of helicopters overhead. As the sun began to set, many waited for others to arrive to begin the march. In the end, no one else came. A few speakers delivered fiery speeches, grounding the crowd in the gravity of the moment and the need for militant action. Forty cops stood watch on the adjacent street, many just out of sight. What could be done? With over a hundred people facing charges—61 of them under RICO—it’s easy to see why the crowd was small. Without the prospect of confronting a Cop City contractor, it was hard to grasp the stakes of the event, especially for those still focused on direct action rather than mass disorder. One could blame other groups for scheduling “competing” events at the same time, but would two hundred people have done what the boldest one hundred could not? Would one hundred people taking confrontational action elsewhere provide a real boost to resistance against the electoral farce or against Cop City? Probably not—unless they had breached the fortified construction site. The movement, like society at large, was being squeezed by immense forces it had yet to take the measure of. After some deliberation, many of the brave individuals present determined that the demonstration they had hoped for was not feasible. They made the decision to march out of the park together and disperse. Following a brief standoff with police, the crowd managed to leave the controlled zone and exit the area without any arrests. Perhaps unknowingly, the participants had arrived at the end of a movement trajectory. At that very moment, as the debate reached living rooms around the country, everyone could see that by permitting the bureaucracy behind Joe Biden to maintain its ossified grip on power and siding with the forces of repression at every step, the Democrats had ceded the 2024 election to Trump and the future of America to a new breed of autocracy: Suddenly, in the midst of Biden’s debate with Trump on June 27, it became inescapably obvious that their pragmatism was about to lose them the 2024 election, their only alibi for all the atrocities they had endorsed up to that point. A new cycle was opening, even darker than the Biden era. The fight against Cop City had represented the best hope to continue the social movements of the first Trump era and the best chance to address the challenges they had confronted. The struggle reached an impasse at the same moment that the contours of the second Trump era came into focus: “Every time we lose a battle, we are forced to fight it once more, but on worse terms.” How Was the Movement Undermined? As of March 2025, it appears that the movement to defend Weelaunee Forest and stop Cop City has been effectively neutralized. The pace of actions has stalled, and the kind of qualitative interventions that might spark new forms of resistance or mobilize additional communities have come to a halt. The petition for a referendum against the land lease remains mired in legal battles. Much of the forest has already been destroyed. Key support structures, including the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, are entangled in high-stakes litigation. Long-term participants have faced harassment, intimidation, and collective punishment. Direct action to isolate Brasfield & Gorrie subcontractors from the Atlanta Police Foundation no longer appears feasible. Unless something unexpected were to happen to the heavily fortified facility itself, which is now nearing completion, the only remaining hope for the movement would be a mass uprising capable of shifting the balance of power from the police to the population at large. But there is currently no sign of such an uprising on the horizon. How Did We Get Here? In analyzing the repression of the movement, we must be careful not to attribute more insight, strategy, or strength to our adversaries than they actually possess. At the same time, we owe it to ourselves and to those who will come after us to honestly assess the limits and challenges the movement faced so that future movements can anticipate similar obstacles and overcome them. This process can feel like studying a volcanic eruption: those with the clearest view risk perishing in the flames. Isolation From its inception in April 2021 until the murder of Tortuguita in January 2023, the movement remained remarkably small. While it’s difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the movement’s size, we can say that during this early period, all public marches, rallies, and demonstrations drew fewer than 175 participants. Concerts, raves, and other social events occasionally drew up to five hundred people to the forest, including a generator party along the banks of Intrenchment Creek during the first week of action in late summer 2021. At any given time, only a few dozen people maintained the encampments in the forest. Why is this? The United States had just emerged from the most powerful social movement in living memory, involving millions of people protesting against police violence. Non-participants are notoriously difficult to understand. Analyzing the Stop Cop City movement, it is hard to attribute its shortcomings to a lack of outreach, media coverage, or information sharing. For years, anarchists, abolitionists, and radicals implemented a comprehensive media strategy—conducting interviews, drafting press releases, and writing articles for a range of outlets from anonymous anarchist blogs to international media platforms. Organizers also directly contacted hundreds of thousands of people through face-to-face canvassing. The anarchists at the core of the movement were aware of the risks involved in conducting a militant but isolated campaign. Significant strategizing went into addressing this challenge from the earliest weeks. Within the direct action wing of the movement, countless hours were devoted to developing frameworks that were both confrontational and accessible to those new to radical politics. The theory of escalation that the organizers shared held that only a mass uprising could pose a serious challenge to the police; the direct action campaign was intended to ignite this. Why, in the wake of the 2020 revolt, did so many fail to rally to the struggle against a new police facility? How could so few engage in the fight to save a vital urban greenspace during an era of cataclysmic environmental collapse? This is difficult to grasp. But perhaps those aren’t the right questions. Maybe it’s not just a matter of awareness or political consistency. Urban Sprawl As of 2023, Atlanta’s population stands at just 520,000. Adding in the populations of its largest suburbs—DeKalb, Clayton, Cobb, and Gwinnett—the total rises to about 3.3 million, spread across 1300 square miles. That’s roughly 2500 people per square mile. The broader “Metropolitan Atlanta Area,” with its six million residents across 39 counties, spans a vast, mostly semi-rural expanse in a deeply conservative state. Most of these people live an hour or more from the city’s core. During rush hour (roughly 3 to 8 pm), some areas are nearly three hours away from the city limits. Consequently, we can’t realistically count all these millions as potential participants in a movement centered in Atlanta. To grasp the functional population distribution of Atlanta’s “inner metro” area, it’s useful to compare it to cities like Tampa (2300 people per square mile), Indianapolis (2400), and Charlotte (3000). These cities are more similar in terms of urban density. When considering outreach programs, local participation in protest movements, and attendance at rallies, marches, or encampments, the most important factor is the will and enthusiasm of the public. That will is shaped by several factors including the difficulty of getting around, the city’s notorious traffic, its underdeveloped public transit, and the sprawling neighborhoods that keep people isolated within their specific quadrant of the city or the surrounding suburbs. Consider the 2020 George Floyd protests. At their peak in late May and early June, only two or three protests drew more than five thousand people. Most barely exceeded one thousand. When residents clashed with police and burned down the Wendy’s on University Avenue after Rayshard Brooks was murdered that summer, the crowd likely did not exceed six or seven hundred. This is important when we consider the prospects for a mass protest movement in Atlanta and whether it could be driven by local residents. The same is true for many other cities across the United States, as most are not significantly denser than Atlanta. “Spatial De-Concentration” These conditions are neither neutral nor accidental. Atlanta was once a far denser city. In the early 20th century, streetcars carried workers and visitors through neighborhoods filled with brick townhomes, corner stores, and thriving industry. The first challenges to this dense, “walkable” urban core emerged in the 1920s and ’30s, when General Motors began dismantling streetcar lines and promoting cheap automobiles. However, after the summer of 1967, a year marked by open confrontations between Black youth and police across the US, the federal government took a special interest in this process. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, convened by the FBI, examined the causes and protagonists behind over three hundred rebellions against police across the country, especially in Newark and Detroit. At the end of their report, they recommended a drastic restructuring of cities, emphasizing “spatial deconcentration”—the deliberate dispersal of urban populations, particularly the Black working class. In the 1970s and ’80s, this concept became a government mandate. The federal government poured billions of dollars into infrastructure, promoting the construction of interstate highways that cut through the heart of Black communities in cities like Atlanta, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration’s deregulatory policies gave a massive boost to the automobile and construction industries, enabling them to widen roads and expand freeways, while also outsourcing production overseas to regions with lower wages. These highways were not built in vacant lots—they ran straight through low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods, shattering communities and displacing families. Black communities were gutted. Industry and jobs moved to the suburbs (or overseas), and white flight followed, leaving Black workers behind. As factories relocated and middle-class white families moved to the outskirts, the policy of “last hired, first fired” ensured that Black workers, already facing systemic discrimination, were the first to lose their jobs. This was not simply poor urban planning. It was a deliberate reorganization of cities intended to decimate the urban core and reshape the economic landscape. The scars of that era continue to mark cities across America today. The decision to build a movement that could draw in activists from outside Atlanta—indeed, from outside Georgia—was surely made with these considerations in mind, and for good reason. Still, the participation of out-of-towners was neither consistent nor decisive enough to halt the project. Local participants lacked the tactical leverage they needed; without the resources of national support, they were at a disadvantage. The authorities could concentrate local, state, and federal forces against the movement; only outside support could even the odds. The government understood this. That’s why Allison Clark of the Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee, Michael Julian Bond of the Atlanta City Council, Police Chief Darien Schierbaum, Mayor Andre Dickens, and countless other proponents of Cop City sought to normalize a simple, devastating, repressive formula, encapsulated in one of their oft-repeated mantras: “Traveling out-of-state to protest is a form of domestic terrorism.” I-85, I-75, and I-20 all pass through the heart of downtown Atlanta, segregating the city into four quadrants. The Spiral of Repression As repression intensified, the movement lost its flexibility and capacity for innovation. After the City Council approved the project in fall 2021, one faction of the movement adopted a simple framework: defend the forest, pressure contractors to withdraw, and evade or repel police operations. But as police violence escalated and prosecutors leveled increasingly outrageous charges, the once vibrant and audacious movement faltered. It struggled to match the force of the state, especially after the killing of Tortuguita. This was also evident in the difficulty of planning the next steps. There was no unifying strategy capable of addressing both the intensifying attacks of the state and the passive spectatorship of the wider public. The principle of “decentralization” did not suffice to resolve this problem. Thousands considered themselves to be on the movement’s “front lines.” Between the first and fifth weeks of action, this perception was an asset, regardless of whether it was accurate. During those early months, generating widespread sympathy and engagement was a key priority. Organizing cultural events, mushroom walks, bike rides, and similar activities in the forest or across town played an important role in maintaining visibility and involvement. After the police lost control of the forest following the July 2022 burning of Boyette Brothers equipment and the music festival during the Fourth Week of Action, the balance of forces shifted definitively in favor of the movement. For a brief period, it seemed theoretically possible that the movement could pursue more conventional tactics, such as mobilizing hundreds for a direct assault on the site—which at that time was still little more than a police staging area—or launching a mass encampment at the Prison Farm. However, what was theoretically viable was not always politically realistic. Who would have carried out such a raid at that time? How would they have been organized? Here, we see how tactical questions are always political questions. Some well-intentioned commentators—many of them participants in the movement—have suggested that the movement contracted after Tortuguita was killed on January 18, 2023. On closer examination, this is simply not true. The movement grew significantly after Tortuguita’s death. The number of participants increased; the frequency, scale, and intensity of actions increased. These grew even more after the March 5, 2023 raid on the Cop City construction site. It is true that they did not increase enough to counterbalance the extent to which the state was concentrating force against the movement. It is also true that the tactics that had made the movement feel powerful for a small dedicated core became impossible after Tortuguita was killed. But the movement should not be reducible to the tactics of any specific group or tendency. Therefore, it cannot be argued categorically that the potential of or participation in the movement receded after the killing. The movement arguably reached its peak of participation in the summer of 2023, during the City Hall mobilizations. The period of lowest participation was actually in fall of 2022. With this context in mind, we can see that the domestic terrorism arrests and the killing of Tortuguita were, in part, a consequence of low participation, not a cause of it. Tragically, fall 2022 was the moment when the movement had gained the greatest leverage against Cop City, as it had created a stalemate between forest defenders and police. To break that stalemate, city officials and law enforcement began spreading lies about protesters, labeling them “terrorists” and falsely claiming they had fired guns at contractors. In this way, they gradually built the political will to employ deadly force against the movement, as well as persuading state and federal authorities to get involved. Some participants recognized this danger at the time. To maximize the leverage that the movement had gained against Cop City, many people concluded that they needed to expand the struggle as rapidly as possible. Their goal was to involve a large number of people in viable tactics that had the potential to halt the project. For some, this meant organizing community meals and concerts in the forest. Others focused on building infrastructure, such as cabins and warming stations, to encourage mass participation. These “place-makers,” if you will, organized around the idea of making the forest a place where people would want to spend time. One of the structures built by the movement in Weelaunee People’s Park, also known as Intrenchment Creek Park. The grassroots left had largely abandoned the movement, leaving it to anarchists to organize against Cop City. Punks, ravers, and artists contributed what they could, but their involvement was mostly peripheral. Some activists worked tirelessly to draw these communities deeper into the struggle, seeing them as potential key players who could fill in where the traditional left had fallen short. Organizers of the weeks of action sought to mitigate the participation problem by drawing in large numbers of people for short periods of time. By fall 2022, the actions that were needed were far beyond what the available forces could mobilize. While city officials and law enforcement sought to prepare the ground for lethal violence, the only ways for the movement to break the stalemate in its own favor would have been to mobilize massive numbers of people or deal a series of blows so devastating that they eroded the political will of those behind the project. Yet only a handful of people were still circulating through the forest, mostly in the context of parties, plays, or concerts. Even fewer were focused on leveraging force against Cop City outside of the forest through demonstrations, blockades, or occupations. Those committed to direct action were not able to compensate for the absence of large numbers of people, as their tactics remained largely confined to hit-and-run acts of destruction, presumably necessitated by their own small numbers. Those who lived in the forest faced difficult challenges. At times, some individuals behaved in ways that made it more difficult to solve problems, reconcile differences, and pursue shared goals. This also contributed to the isolation of the encampments. The efforts of those involved in direct action outside the forest, those working on “place-making” efforts within the woods, and those curating cultural experiences that connected the forest with surrounding communities all plateaued. Instead, as the pressure increased, the movement’s capacity for creative, sustained resistance dwindled. Early on, abolitionists argued that some environmentalists were less concerned with the police than with protecting “nature.” This tension was compounded by the fact that some of those temporarily living in the forest framed their interests as opposed to others, claiming parts of the forest as their “homes” and suggesting that weeks of actions, fundraisers, or protests were violating their personal space. In turn, some anarchists criticized others for lacking a sufficiently militant vision, accusing them of pushing for mere policy changes. Meanwhile, many working groups within the movement failed to prioritize the forest’s physical integrity, not realizing that once the trees were gone, it would be considerably more difficult to resist the construction of Cop City. In the end, not enough participants pushed beyond their comfort zones. When their preferred tactics became too difficult, many stopped participating entirely, regardless of their stated objectives. What If? How could this story have turned out differently?1 Let’s return to summer 2022, when the movement showed that it was too powerful for the local authorities to control. What if, at that moment, people around the country had organized a massive outreach campaign calling people to converge on Atlanta for a range of broadly confrontational and participatory actions? All of this did in fact occur a full year later, in fall 2023, when several speaking tours crisscrossed the United States promoting the Block Cop City mobilization2 and hundreds of people gathered in Atlanta for a weekend of action. Perhaps if something similar had taken place in 2022—when the movement was up and coming rather than embattled, when the state had not yet used spurious charges of terrorism and racketeering to intimidate potential participants, when supporters were not yet busy trying to respond to the genocide in Gaza—it might have drawn much larger numbers, which might in turn have made it more difficult for the government to regain the initiative. For that to have taken place at the end of summer 2022, however, a critical mass of people outside of Atlanta would have had to realize how pivotal the movement was and immediately invest energy in organizing to support it. They would have needed to recognize—long before the police murdered anyone or charged anyone with terrorism—that the movement’s apparent success introduced new perils. Had they succeeded in bringing new forces to bear against Cop City, this would likely have contributed to tensions with established local organizers in Atlanta and with those who were already occupying the forest. They would have needed to accept those tensions as necessary growing pains. The outcome of the struggle over Cop City has had profound implications for movements around the United States and, consequently, for people all around the world. If nothing else, we can learn the importance of recognizing the stakes of a fight while there is still time. Infighting Every movement that undergoes severe repression experiences internal conflict, and the movement to stop Cop City was no exception. As has been said before, the function of repression is not simply to strike the immediate targets, but to send shockwaves through a movement in a way that opens up fault lines. The movement endured three years of intense struggle, in part, by adhering to one fundamental principle: members refrained from publicly denouncing each other. Disagreements or critiques were handled internally whenever possible. Groups that could not reconcile their differences simply avoided each other. Saboteurs, tree-sitters, rioters, and others took action against Cop City, secure in the knowledge that they would not be labeled “crazy” on prime-time news—at least, not by other activists. Canvassers, community organizers, fundraisers, and event coordinators could rest assured that, for the most part, social media would not be flooded with rage-fueled rants denouncing their strategies as hopeless or naïve. Anonymous internet users violated this principle repeatedly. Each time, it threw the radical segments of the movement into temporary disarray. Coinciding with moments of intense repression, spiteful statements and semi-coherent allegations flooded the internet, contributing to an atmosphere of fear and tension. This underscores the need for well-delivered, constructive criticism—whether in public venues or private face-to-face exchanges. From the earliest days of the movement, some grassroots organizers sought to smear it. Through whisper campaigns, gossip, and private conversations, they tried to prevent it from gaining momentum. They labeled it “all white,” or claimed that organizers hadn’t “consulted the community” before launching actions, echoing the “outside agitators” narrative pushed by the police chief and Mayor Dickens. On a podcast, one person shamelessly declared the movement “more disappointing than Cop City itself”—a pro-repression stance thinly disguised as progressive politics. Until the struggle became too large to ignore, some local activists derided it. On Signal groups, they sowed doubt, division, and paranoia—particularly targeting out-of-towners and newcomers—while technically adhering to the movement’s commitment to discretion. As large non-profit organizations began to support the movement, some activists discouraged them from allocating resources to the participants who were taking significant risks. Ironically, many of those who attempted to undermine the movement also sought to benefit from its momentum. NGO staffers and careerists continue to cash in, earning accolades and grants on behalf of a movement for which they risked very little. Meanwhile, many of those facing felony charges and living under surveillance continue to struggle below the federal poverty line. Critique is essential. Aspiring revolutionaries should actively seek critical input, as the cost of error can be extremely high. Criticism helps refine strategies and fosters humility in the face of immense obstacles and uncertainty. Anyone serious about dismantling the carceral state, overthrowing capitalism, and transforming the world must first admit that they don’t know everything and that it will be necessary to refine their theories and strategies on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, petty and self-serving forms of criticism remain all too common. Real critique uplifts, educates, and transforms the participants. When people engage in denunciatory attacks and gossip, this can obscure the true cost of political errors, burying self-reflection under an avalanche of invective and rumor. This fosters defensiveness, stubbornness, ego trips, and factionalism, ultimately leading to the propagation of dogmas that remain untested. This isn’t just a problem for collectives, crews, and organizing groups—it can stunt entire movements. It’s a challenge that all humanity has a stake in overcoming. Moving Ahead in a Cop Nation Those who have fought to oppose the construction of Cop City in Weelaunee Forest were correct to identify the project as marking the dawn of a new era of police militarization in the United States. Local authorities plan to build at least eighty additional police training facilities across the United States; every state except for Wyoming is planning at least one. Despite courageous efforts, they did not manage to save the forest from destruction or prevent the completion of the project. Only two options remain for closing down Cop City: pressuring policymakers to defund it after it opens or directly destroying the site. Only a mass revolt or carefully planned acts of sabotage unlike any that have occurred thus far could achieve either of those outcomes. During the movement, thousands repeatedly chanted, “If you build it, we will burn it.” It remains to be seen whether they were serious or bluffing. The police are a central pillar of the state. Appearances aside, the government is not primarily composed of bureaucracies, libraries, clinics, or universities. At its core, it is made up of armies, borders, prisons, and police.3 Societies embroiled in destabilizing conflicts often see social services, welfare, and even parliamentary systems collapse, but the repressive functions of the state never collapse on their own—they can only be dismantled by powerful revolutionary movements. The power of the police will not simply fade away. Those who rule depend upon it; it is essential to preserving the inequalities that are the foundation of their authority. All evidence indicates that the power of the police will continue to expand until the social order that requires it is destroyed. If that occurs, it will not simply be the consequence of a change in public opinion; it will involve real people taking real actions against real infrastructure. Because the concentration of armed force is inevitable in all unequal societies, doing away with the police will require abolishing artificial scarcity and war between classes, castes, and nations. We did not fight to stop Cop City because we believed that all it would take to reform capitalism and the state would be a few concerts and a little vandalism. We fought because we hoped that this particular fight could clarify the stakes of the struggle that is taking place at this critical juncture in history, drawing more people into action and deepening our joint effort to change the world. And that is something we still believe in. Timeline: December 2023 to January 2025 December 27: A Chase Bank in NYC is vandalized with “Stop Cop City” and “Free Gaza” painted on its veneer and its doors locked. A demonstration takes place outside the home of Jonna Hamilton, the senior legal counsel of Nationwide Insurance, which provides coverage for the Atlanta Police Foundation. December 31: Charleston Police and FBI arrest a 21-year-old in Charleston, South Carolina. Police allege the accused is responsible for burning two trucks belonging to Thomas Concrete, and for painting “You build it, we burn it” on the trucks, as well as slogans about Weelaunee Forest. January 1: A car is burned outside of Portland City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez’s house. The action is dedicated to fallen revolutionaries, including Tortuguita, as well as two unhoused people in Portland who died as a consequence of police enforcement tactics advocated by Gonzalez. January 2: A proposal appears online inviting people to conduct solidarity actions and events on January 18, the day of Tortuguita was killed. Manuel’s Tavern is vandalized in advance of an appearance by Mayor Dickens; its doors are glued shut, its walls painted. The scheduled visit is canceled. January 16: A feller buncher belonging to Shadowbox Studios is burned in the forest. January 17: The news comes out that the cost of the Cop City project has increased from $90 million to $109 million. The authorities blame security costs, damage from protests, and increased insurance costs. January 18: On the “Day of the Forest Defender,” around the country, hundreds of people participate in events commemorating the death of Tortuguita. Nearly fifty events take place for the occasion, including vigils, teach-ins, rallies, film screenings, and fundraisers. In addition, 18 windows are broken at the San Francisco Credit Union; in Hanover, Germany, a car belonging to Autobahn GmbH is burned; windows are broken at two different Nationwide subsidiaries in Atlanta; MTU Solutions is vandalized in Novi, Michigan; UPS tires are slashed in Amsterdam, Netherlands. January 19: Someone liberates ten chickens in the Northern UK in memory of Tortuguita. January 25: Four machines belonging to Brent Scarborough are burned on Boulevard Drive near the Federal Penitentiary in southeast Atlanta. No communiqué appears online, but local police stage a press conference nonetheless. January 27: A bank in Chicago is redecorated with posters in memory of Tortuguita. January 29: Protesters lock down at a Brasfield & Gorrie job site in Midtown. January 30: A cybersecurity incident cripples the municipal government in Atlanta. February 1: Someone sabotages 11 ATMS belonging to Truist Bank with glue and glues the doors shut. February 8: Atlanta Police, the ATF, and the FBI raid three homes in southeast Atlanta in a joint operation, each targeting one house. They arrest one person, charging him with first-degree arson, and detain another for several hours. Police attempt to violently humiliate the residents of the house they raid, forcing one resident outside without her clothes on to be photographed by masked thugs; at another house, officers drag a resident down the stairs by his hair. February 10: In Lakewood, Atlanta, just blocks from two of the houses raided on the 8th, a police car catches fire in front of the home of an APD officer. The accompanying statement reads, in part: “We wish to dispel any notion that people will take this latest wave of repression lying down, or that arresting alleged arsonists will deter future arsons.” In St Paul, Minnesota, two trucks and trailers loaded with timber are burned at a Home Depot in solidarity with Jack and those affected by the raids. “It is time to destroy those who destroy the earth,” the statement reads. February 11: Police raid another home in Lakewood, in broad daylight, following the burning of the police cruiser the day before. Nobody is arrested or detained, and nobody is home. FBI, GBI, ATF, the bomb squad, helicopters, armored vehicles, and undercover police vehicles establish a presence in the area for days. In San Francisco, Waymo self-driving cars are vandalized “with hammers and knives” in solidarity with those in Atlanta facing police harassment. February 12: The owner of the home raided on February 11 holds a press conference denouncing the police action at his home. Elsewhere, the Davinci Development website is vandalized by hackers. February 23: The Nationwide Summit to Stop Cop City in Tucson, Arizona brings together a few hundred activists from the Southwest. Three Nationwide subisidiaries lose their windows in Tucson, Arizona. February 24: A Nationwide subsidiary in Santa Cruz has its locks filled with glue and its walls covered in spray paint. February 25: During the Nationwide Summit, 80 people gather in a black bloc in Tucson. They march several blocks and smash all of the windows of Wells Fargo and PNC Bank in Presidio Plaza. Some decorate the walls with Tortuguita’s name. February 26: Dozens protest at the Nationwide Headquarters in Scottsdale, AZ. Hundreds of police are deployed. At the same time, six activists lock themselves down to concrete barrels in entrance to a gated community in Fountain Hills, Arizona, where a regional executive of Nationwide lives. In New York City, over 200 protesters march into the offices of Nationwide and AXA XL—insurers of the Atlanta Police Foundation and Brasfield & Gorrie, respectively. This is the largest protest connected to the movement to take place outside of Georgia. February 27: A video release shows multiple Nationwide locations vandalized in New York City. February 28: Ten New York Police Department vehicles are splashed with paint and have their tires slashed. March 5: About twenty Black women protest outside the home of Mayor Dickens in the early hours, demanding the city government drop the court appeal blocking the referendum to stop Cop City. In the United Kingdom, a dairy farm in Leistershire is extensively vandalized in solidarity with Jack and others facing repression in Atlanta. March 7: One person locks down to construction equipment at a Brasfield & Gorrie site in Midtown as a crowd gathers below. After several hours, he is removed and charged with misdemeanor trespassing. March 11: Protesters disrupt a Mayoral panel featuring Andre Dickens in Austin, Texas. The event is canceled and Dickens is chased off-site. In Oregon, a butcher shop in Portland is vandalized in solidarity with Jack. March 14: Eight machines belonging to Brent Scarborough are burned in Henry County, GA. March 27: Two activists climb up a 250-foot crane at a Brasfield & Gorrie job site in Midtown Atlanta to disrupt work. This time, the activists are charged with felonies. Elsewhere, an I-5 highway sign is redecorated. March 28: Anarchists in the northern United Kingdom liberate 41 ducks from a farm in memory of Tortuguita and in solidarity with Jack. Also, at some point in March, someone tampered with the tables of the Atlanta Police Department, temporarily freeing the horses. April 16: Several pieces of machinery belonging to Brasfield & Gorrie are burned in Fayetteville, Georgia. No communiqué accompanies the action, but police publicly speculate that it is related to Cop City. April 22: People wheat-paste posters and paint slogans all over Emory University campus denouncing the institution for ties to Israel and the Atlanta Police Foundation. Six surveillance cameras are disabled by various methods. April 25: Students and others set up an encampment in solidarity with Gaza at Emory University in the context of a national mobilization against US support for the Israeli genocide in Palestine. Protesters connect Israel to Cop City. Emory Police and Georgia State Patrol attack the crowd, firing pepper balls at protesters, tasing medics, and slamming professors to the ground. As the day passes, crowds descend from classes onto the quad to confront police and block prisoner transport vehicles. Police shoot rubber bullets at students. In the early evening, faculty and students occupy Candler School of Theology atrium. As police arrive, protesters use reinforced banners to clash with police and to protect each other from rubber bullets and pepper balls. April 26: More than 500 people reconverge on the Emory quad after a day of clashes with police on campus. Protesters flood Cox Hall, temporarily occupying the building. During an emergency faculty meeting on campus, staff move to hold a “no-confidence” vote on President Fenves. Fenves sends an email to thousands of students, alleging that “outsiders” were converging on campus in buses. Despite his allegations, corporate news platforms report that over 90% of the previous day’s arrestees were students or faculty. In New York City, during an Atlanta Police recruitment event, someone pulls the fire alarm of the Marriott hotel and 300 crickets are released inside the building. Graffiti decorates the courtyard. April 27: To further disrupt the Atlanta Police recruitment event, cement is poured into the plumbing system of the hotel. April 28: Faculty and staff walk out on Emory campus, denouncing President Greg Fenves for calling the police on student protesters. April 29: Three OMNY machines and three MTA machines on the New York subway are smashed in memory of Tortuguita. At Cal Poly Humboldt, a Gaza solidarity protester builds a tree-sit beside occupied Siemens Hall in memory of Tortuguita. April 30: During the eviction of Hamilton Hall and the West Lawn at Columbia University, the crowd begins chanting “Stop Cop City.” May 1: Hundreds march on Emory Campus with reinforced banners, temporarily seizing control of the Oxford/Undergraduate Admissions building. Police drag George State University students wearing keffiyehs at the graduation ceremony off stage. May 3: Some 75% of Emory faculty vote “no confidence” in President Fenves. Protesters march to the headquarters of the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange program on Georgia State University campus, long the target of the stop Cop City movement and now of the Gaza solidarity protests as well. Protesters clash with police while trying to enter the building, using shields, reinforced banners, and umbrellas to protect each other. The crowd disperses with no arrests. May 4: About 60 protesters gather near the GILEE headquarters again; several dozen riot police stage nearby. The crowd decides not to march and assembles in deliberation instead. May 6: Morehouse students issue a public letter to the Board of Trustees, reiterating their call to sever ties with Cop City and the Atlanta Committee for Progress and to cut ties with Israel. May 7: The Atlanta Journal Constitution attempts to split Stop Cop City and Gaza solidarity protests by urging anti-war activists not to be “co-opted” by activists fighting police militarization in “southeast Atlanta,” just a few miles from Emory campus. Spelman students issue an open letter to the Board of Trustees urging them to cut ties with Israel and Cop City. May 10: Columbia University Hamilton Hall arrestees issue a statement directly connecting the genocide in Gaza to the GILEE program and the construction of Cop City and similar projects around the United States. May 11: Thirteen Emory arrestees issue a public statement demanding that Emory cut ties with Israel and Cop City and drop all charges against protesters on campus. May 20: The Atlanta Police Foundation pays twelve temp workers hired by “Our America” to attend a City Council session in order to read statements in support of Cop City. May 21: An NYPD bus is burned in Brooklyn in memory of Tortuguita and in retaliation for police brutality at a Palestine solidarity protest in Bay Ridge, NYC. May 29: The Guardian publishes an article exposing constant surveillance and harassment of southeast Atlanta residents. The harassment includes hundreds of visits by police at homes day and night; during these visits, officers sometimes park outside of the houses for a few minutes without approaching. Other times, they shine lights into windows and blare their sirens outside the homes of activists with suspected ties to the Defend the Forest/Stop Cop City movement. In one instance, a lit road flare is placed in the bushes directly outside a window. May 31: Multiple water mains explode across Atlanta, leaving a majority of residents without clean running water for a week. Many people connect the collapse of city infrastructure to the channeling of tremendous amounts of funding to police. June 3: Groups involved in the movement join Palestine solidarity activists in calling for disruptions at the first US Presidential debate on June 27. June 5: A 20-year-old anarchist named Cyprus is subpoenaed in Charleston, South Carolina and summoned to a Federal Grand Jury investigating alleged acts of arson against Cop City subcontractors. June 20: In NYC, people disrupt a budget session at City Hall. NYC Mayor Eric Adams wants to cut the public library budget in order to build a Cop City-inspired facility in Queens. Local New Yorkers begin organizing against the project. June 25: A lawyer representing the Atlanta Solidarity Fund files a motion to dismiss the case against them after it is learned that the Attorney General’s office failed to hire a “filter team” to redact client-attorney emails subpoenaed by the State. Those emails were read by law enforcement and included in evidence. June 27: Using reinforced pipes, activists lock down in the driveway of Hudson Technologies in Smyrna, Georgia. Hudson produces arms for the Israeli army. Activists denounce the war on Gaza and demand a right to vote via referendum on Cop City. That night, two demonstrations take place in the vicinity of the Presidential debate. Several hundred police officers swarm the area, both in uniforms and undercover. Around one hundred protesters gather for a black bloc but decide not to initiate a combative demonstration. They march a few blocks before dispersing without arrests. July 4: Cyprus publicly declares their intention to resist the Federal Grand Jury targeting the Stop Cop City movement. They call for others to resist the hearings without compromise. Six Flock cameras are destroyed in Savannah, Georgia. July 10: In Okemos, Michigan, protesters visit the home of Paul Kearney, Chief Claims Officer for Accident Fund Insurance. July 31: A grand jury subpoena targeting Cyprus is withdrawn, likely as a consequence of their commitment to resist the hearing. August 13: A machine belonging to the Brent Scarborough Company is burned on Memorial Drive. Unknown saboteurs use “improvised incendiary devices” to destroy the machines of the Cop City contractor. August 22: A industrial railroad bridge burns near Milwaukie, Oregon. The saboteurs connect the shipping company to the Israeli war in Palestine and to Cop City. January 18, 2025: Day of the Forest Defender events coinciding with “Festivals of Resistance” against the incoming Trump-Vance-Musk administration take place in over twenty locations. Five hundred people gather in Richmond. In Olympia, a thousand people march. The mother of Tortuguita joins local musicians at an event in Atlanta. Somewhere in Northern California, anonymous saboteurs disable a dozen trucks belonging to Green Diamond Resource Company in memory of Tortuguita. Re-litigating the past can be tempting for those who have experienced traumatic failures and setbacks, as it allows us to take responsibility for the past by criticizing ourselves and others. It is important to approach such questions with humility and to resist the temptation to shift the goalposts in response to setbacks. From the outset, participants in the movement boldly maintained that they intended to win. Some of them criticized discourses that trivialized the concept of victory or made apologies for failure. “The real stopping Cop City is the friends we made along the way”—it might be easy to say something like this today, but it would not represent the spirit of the movement. ↩ Speaking tours promoting the movement to defend the forest did take place in 2022, but on a smaller scale than the speaking tours in the lead-up to the Block Cop City mobilization. ↩ In contexts where the power of the police is subcontracted out to third parties or paramilitaries, we could say that the state itself has already transformed into a corporate or factional enterprise. ↩

On March 8, Department of Homeland Security agents kidnapped Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian organizer and graduate student at Columbia University who had permanent residency in the United States. Donald Trump’s State Department arbitrarily revoked his residency. They are holding Khalil in Louisiana, over a thousand miles from his home. This is part of Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on Palestine solidarity activism at Columbia University and other schools around the country. Above all, however, it is a test, and how we respond will determine what happens to the rest of us later—as Martin Niemöller described in his well-known poem. Here, we will explore the stakes of this moment and share experience from anarchists whose comrade was similarly kidnapped for participating in the Occupy ICE movement in San Antonio, Texas in 2018. The Antisemitic Plan to Smear Palestine Solidarity as Antisemitic The Trump regime has promised to deport millions of undocumented people, and their efforts are already underway. The kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil is something different. Khalil is a permanent resident of the United States who is being targeted for political reasons. Trump is seeking to set an additional precedent in order to open a new front in his campaign to purge the United States of dissidents. This is the culmination of two years of planning. In April 2023, the billionaire-backed Heritage Foundation published Project 2025, a playbook to overhaul the federal government of the United States in order to consolidate autocratic power in the hands of Donald Trump. Although Trump temporarily distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, it proved to be a solid predictor of his game plan once in office. In October 2024, the Heritage Foundation followed up Project 2025 with Project Esther, a playbook for repressing those who oppose the genocide of Palestinians. In the text of their report, the Heritage Foundation depicts all concern for Palestinians as participation in “a global Hamas Support Network” and explicitly accuses Jewish Voice for Peace and many other Jewish people of being “antisemitic” for refusing to support Zionism. At the same time, the report relies heavily on anti-Semitic tropes such as fearmongering about George Soros. This exemplifies the way that the far right has sought to appropriate concerns about antisemitism to promote racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitic conspiracy theories. A slide from a Heritage Foundation presentation about Project Esther. Note that “Soros” and Jewish Voice for Peace are at the tops of the columns titled “Masterminds” and “Organizers.” The chief source of Trump’s appeal is that he has been able to channel the considerable anger of the downwardly mobile away from those who hold power and towards scapegoats, creating a pressure valve for a wide range of resentments. But in order to scapegoat people without consequences, it is necessary to undermine their social ties, to prevent others from identifying with them, to carve up society into isolated and mutually hostile factions. Reducing all empathy for Palestinians to support for Hamas is a discursive maneuver intended to frame all who speak out against genocide as legitimate targets for Trump’s government. In addition to demonizing Palestinians, Project Esther lays the groundwork to attack Jewish people as “antisemites” if they don’t get on board with Christian Nationalist priorities. This strategy weaponizes an existing rift that cuts through the Democratic Party—the question of whether Palestinians deserve to be treated as human beings—in order to create the conditions for a fascist takeover of the United States as well as further colonial violence abroad. The ones who stand to gain the most from this strategy are not Zionist Jews, but authoritarian gentiles. In view of the significance of Project 2025, we should not underestimate how central Project Esther is to the Trump administration’s strategy. This will help us to understand the kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil. The core of Trump policy is performative violence. That is why they have kidnapped an activist who has never been charged with a crime, whose wife—an American citizen—is eight months pregnant, who has a legal right to reside in the United States according to all established precedents. That is why they intentionally targeted a negotiator, the same way that the Israeli government routinely murders negotiators in Palestine. The point is to be shocking, to terrorize, to show that they can do things in public that the Biden administration had to do secretively. Everyone who has excused or minimized the genocide of Palestinians—for example, by spending at least as much time talking about the 1139 Israelis killed on October 7, 2023 as they do addressing the tens of thousands of Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian people slaughtered since then—must understand that today, supporting Israel means supporting Trump’s brand of fascism. The escalating violence of the Israeli colonial project helped create the conditions for Trump’s return; now that he is back in office, excusing Israeli colonialism can only facilitate Trump’s own consolidation of power. As we argued on the night of the 2024 election, The Biden administration has already done much of the work to desensitize the general public to the program that an emboldened second Trump administration will attempt to carry out—above all, by supporting the Israeli military in carrying out a brutal genocide in Gaza. In so doing, Biden and Harris have accustomed millions of people to the idea that human life has no inherent value—that it is acceptable to slaughter, imprison, and torment people based on their status in a targeted demographic. You either embrace the struggle for the liberation of Palestine or you become an accomplice in the rise of fascism. This was always true, but today there is no possible excuse not to recognize it. Even if your sole concern is fighting antisemitism and you do not care what happens to people of any other ethnicity, you pave the way for antisemites to gain power by standing aside as Palestinians are kidnapped. Like Palestinians, Jewish people are on the hit list of potential scapegoats, and what befalls one scapegoat will eventually befall another. If there are no serious consequences for the kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil, then soon enough, the Trump administration will push the envelope, moving on to kidnap other activists who obstruct the far-right agenda. Likewise, the Israeli genocide of Palestinians is a template for bloodshed that will be used again and again as long as there are no significant consequences. If politicians like Trump retain their sway by inflicting violence, they will have to continuously expand the range of people they target and the intensity of that violence, just as the Nazis did between 1933 and 1945. What Will It Take? For now, a judge has ordered a temporary delay in the expulsion of Mahmoud Khalil from the United States. But this should reassure no one. If we count on judges to restrain Trump, we will have no recourse when Trump’s administration simply ignores the laws, and no plan when he manages to replace them with loyal flunkies—or has his flunkies replace the laws themselves. On March 10, demonstrators gathered in New York City for a protest that took the streets, resulting at one point in tussles with police. On March 11 and 12, further protests will ensue in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, and elsewhere. But the point of these protests must not be to petition the authorities. Donald Trump is not a well-meaning public servant looking to represent his constituents. He is a power-hungry sadist who benefits from our displays of grief and impotent rage. Politics in the United States today is a question of relations of raw force. When we take the streets, we are not addressing Trump or his ghoulish underlings; we are addressing each other. We are setting out to demonstrate that resistance is possible, that there are tactics that can exert concrete leverage against our oppressors, that there are enough people invested in solidarity that it can become a social force capable of compelling Trump and his lackeys to stand down. At the March 10 demonstration in New York, participants handed out fliers to this effect: Fascist politicians need the police. But we know masses of people can get the better of the police, their cars, equipment, cameras. All we have to do is to start acting like our friends, neighbors, and our own lives are at stake. All other options have been exhausted. We have to pull down the new fascism before it consolidates control. If we settle for waving signs and chanting, our fate is sealed. If we remember the summer of 2020, we stand a fighting chance. Mahmoud Khalil. Learning from Experience Mahmoud Khalil is not the first person in recent history to be targeted by ICE for political activism. To get more perspective, we reached out to anarchists in San Antonio whose comrade was kidnapped during the Occupy ICE movement in 2018. This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened. In 2018, ICE targeted a filmmaker and student for their participation in the Occupy ICE camp in San Antonio. They were targeted as a consequence of their activism; the authorities used their political beliefs and tweets as evidence against them. Both our movement and the campaign to free our friend were held back by our decision to defer to the lawyers. The lawyers wanted to run a PR campaign based on respectability politics and innocence narratives, erasing our radical politics from the conversation. As time went on, the lawyers related with hostility and suspicion towards some participants in the movement. Deferring to the lawyers and separating the legal support from the movement itself was detrimental to both. We gave up many tools that we could have used to fight; this contributed to fragmenting our movement. There was no rally, no day of action, no unrest, no political scandal. Not even a phone zap! In 2018, we were aware of the example of the Northwest Detention Center resistance, at which ICE detained the activist Maru Villaplanado. Maru Villaplanado was ultimately released and granted legal status due to a campaign of pressure and mobilization. Unfortunately, this knowledge did not lead us to take the kind of action that could have made a difference for our friend. Many of us were young and inexperienced. We did not know better than to trust the lawyers. We didn’t know how to draw on the experience of other movements before us or around the country. Since then, we have learned that lawyers should have a very limited influence on our movements. They should focus on their work in the courts. We must prioritize organizing a strong political response, as that is the only real source of power and pressure that we can draw upon outside the legal system. There is no silver bullet or magic combination of tactics that would be guaranteed to stop Mahmoud’s deportation. However, if we limit ourselves to depending upon a legal system that has no regard for the humanity of its captives while the state targets an activist on explicitly political grounds, we will fail while simultaneously sabotaging ourselves. We wonder how differently things might have gone if we had called for national days of action. We wonder if there was some chance that we could have stopped them from deporting our friend. We don’t know the answer because we didn’t try. To have any chance of saving Mahmoud Khalil or any of the millions of immigrants in the crosshairs of the white supremacist state, we will need movements that are resilient, that grow in numbers and combativeness. Palestinian, immigrant, Black, Indigenous, and working-class organization and action must create a political crisis that interrupts the deportation machine. If we lead with an organized political response, we will have a better chance of stopping the deportation of Mahmoud and our other comrades and of interrupting the entire system it relies on. I hope that everyone who is confronting this tragedy today can learn something from our experience and put those lessons into practice. This is not the first time this has happened. If our enemies have their way, it won’t be the last. It is up to us to organize in defense of our friends, families, and neighbors. -Some Cicadas from Abolish ICE, San Antonio, Texas We Are Made for Each Other Let us conclude by expressing gratitude for the courage of Mahmoud Khalil and others who have risked their own freedom in order to express solidarity with other people. In doing so, they show us what is best in humanity—and that gives us a reason to fight for ourselves and each other. Khalil has already distinguished himself in the fight to create a world without ethnic cleansing or genocide. It remains for us to do the same in return. For everyone who has met Mahmoud, they can attest to his incredible character, humbleness, selflessness, and his love for helping others. He is always willing to stand up for the oppressed. He is funny, kind, and sometimes a little messy. He constantly puts his needs last when it comes to helping others. I always tell him that sometimes he needs to put himself first. He always responds with, “People are made for each other, and you should always be willing to lend a helping hand.” -Mahmoud Khalil’s wife (identified thus, rather than by name, in the original source) There is a fundraiser for Mahmoud Khalil here. The Palestine solidarity movement on Columbia campus in spring 2024.