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- [00:00]
Matthew Scher
Wondery subscribers can binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest ad free. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts Campsite Media.
- [00:24]
Tommy Andres
We finished.
- [00:25]
Matthew Scher
The sixth episode of We Came to the Forest in early January, a month and change after the press tour of the new police training facility. Thank you for gathering with us today.
- [00:35]
Mary Hooks
Here at the Atlanta Public Safety Training.
- [00:37]
Matthew Scher
Center and two years almost to the day after Tort's death. In the weeks since, I've watched listeners engage in really different ways with the show. Amongst progressives, there's palpable sadness at the death of an activist and the end of the dream to stop Cop City. There's fear, too, of how the suffocating crackdown on the protesters in Atlanta might be mirrored on the national level by a new administration that has been very vocal about how it will approach dissent. But those on the other end of the political spectrum have often reacted with frustration to the podcast, anger that we would elevate the voices of alleged domestic terrorists. I'm fascinated by these competing views because they get at what I consider to be some pretty important questions. What should activism look like today? What is acceptable and what isn't? Again, the context here goes far beyond Atlanta. In his first week in office, President Trump made it a point to pardon thousands of January 6th protesters, one of whom was serving 12 years for jamming a stun gun into the neck of a police officer. In total, 174 members of law enforcement were injured on January 6th during a very clear cut effort to prevent Congress from certifying election results. Those responsible are now largely free. The Forest Defenders are still awaiting trial. What should we make of that? In this final bonus episode of the show, I'm going to speak with Mary Hooks, an Atlanta activist and organizer, about what the struggle over Cop City meant and what it will mean for both the future of Atlanta and the country as a whole.
- [02:36]
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- [03:40]
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- [04:47]
Matthew Scher
From Wondery, Campside Media and Tenderfoot TV, I'm Matthew Scher and this is We Came to the Forest. This is the bonus episode the Greatest Victory.
- [05:08]
Mary Hooks
My name is Mary Hooks. I've lived in Atlanta for the last 18 years. Mom of two, wife of one. When I moved to Atlanta, I got politicized and joined Southerners on New Ground, a Southern regional LGBTQ organization fighting on the front lines of racial and economic justice.
- [05:27]
Matthew Scher
Not long ago, Tommy Andres and I drove over to a community center called the MRF on the west side of Atlanta. Mary Hooks helps run it. She's got a long track record of organizing and activism in the city, starting with Southerners on the Ground and extending all the way to the Stop Cop City movement, which she championed. To our left, a big anti training facility poster was mounted on the wall. I started the interview with a question that felt to me like the most obvious one.
- [05:58]
Tommy Andres
Looking at over the past few years and now where we are, all this resistance that got mounted and the fact that it's still going to get finished. As an organizer yourself, what do you take away from that?
- [06:08]
Mary Hooks
Yeah, many of us who commit our lives to this work, you know, we commit to the protracted struggle. You know, one of my mentors always tells me that you're revolutionary. If we fighting against the cops, are we fighting for the ants? It don't matter. We gonna struggle and fight anyway. And so I have had A little bit of like, you know, because folks have taken a deep hits, you know, all the RICO charges, the murder, the way in which people are in and out of jail. They have tried to run a number on the movement here, and I think it has in a lot of ways. I wouldn't say demobilized people, but I think people are weary and cautious about how we move, which was the point. Yeah, their repression has worked. Anytime you take up a campaign or a struggle, you know, which always open up the door to the next struggle, to the next campaign. And I think it's been really tough with the decentralized movement that it has been to be able to call everyone back together and say, hey, friends, we didn't win. You know, what's next? And so I see people still doing political education. People are still teaching about militarization. We should be in that conversation, troubling the water, raising the contradictions, reminding the people of what these cats have done over the last few years. I think that the cop city struggle here in Atlanta, this is the first time, I think I've said it for the record, like we've lost that particular battle. But I think that what has grown from it is how many people have been politicized by this struggle. The children who have marched in the streets around this, give them 10, 15 years. This struggle around cop city has literally birthed generations of resisters. So I don't think this city will rest just because they pull a fast one on us this time.
- [07:57]
Tommy Andres
The other lesson here, the lesson that might have been learned on the other side of the coin, the state and city side, which is essentially that if the city and state decide that something's going to happen, doesn't matter how many people stand up or how many people flood the forest or referendum efforts or whatever, not only are they going to do it anyway, but they're also just not going to be transparent about it in any way.
- [08:21]
Mary Hooks
Yeah. And I mean, as many people are, like, flipping out, like, oh, my gosh, Trump fascism. All the things I'm like, Atlanta's been experiencing that, and this struggle has been laid bare like Democrat, Republican, it don't actually matter when folks choose to operate in authoritarianism, that's exactly what you're going to get. I think that you're right about that. It does show us what time it is.
- [08:45]
Tommy Andres
I want to ask you about something that I guess we refer to in the show as diversity of tactics, the different way people can organize and protest. You know, the show's been out and.
- [08:55]
Matthew Scher
You read through all the reviews.
- [08:56]
Tommy Andres
And there are a lot of people who come from the mainstream, you know, appalled that we would ever cover a movement that has allegedly blown up a bulldozer or set fire to a pickup truck or broken windows, something like that. Because to them that's not how protests should be conducted. I would love you to talk about like what the different facets that historically have made protest movements successful. Because it's not just policy, right? Like that's not what changes people's minds.
- [09:24]
Mary Hooks
Oftentimes I'm like, do people forget how these colonizers actually took over this country? How they actually got free from Europe? They engaged in a violent armed struggle that was a protest. People were destroying property. The Boston Tea Party, right? When I look at other struggles that have been waged, whether it was workers fighting for 40 hours a week, like there were what people would deem as violent, I would not deem it as violent, but people escalated in their tactics, right? When people think about, oh, we won, when the policy gets made and then, and they see the mayor or somebody signing it, they're like, oh look, we marched and then he signed that thing. Oftentimes people don't see or they forget, you know, the escalation that happens, the sit ins that happen, the shutting down of highways. We're ingrained to think that unless you are marching in a suit like they did in the civil rights movement, then you're doing something wrong. But even the black radical tradition of organizing and building power and struggling against empire has encompassed armed struggle, whether it be sabotage, whether it be the voting booth. When you don't understand yourself as a exploited person or a colonized person, or you see the state as something that is legitimate but just needs improvement. You are limited around what you are willing to do in order for the state to be brought down to its knees. Because you're like, it just needs a little tweaking, it just needed a little reform. But when you know and when history has clearly shown us and our current day clearly shows us that we are working with an enemy who does not care, who has no morals, who has no concern for its everyday people, everyday people, then has to escalate. In this society we live in, people value property and items and things more than humans. People forget when Dr. King says we can't be a thing oriented society and that's exactly what we've become. When you have more people complaining about some windows being busted and there's lives that have been lost, I don't know what it's going to take to move the mainstream liberal to a position that allows them to understand why people raise the stakes. But hopefully, as the quote says, if they come for me in the morning, they gonna come for you at night. And perhaps that's what people need.
- [11:59]
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- [12:30]
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- [12:37]
Mary Hooks
Thumbs up.
- [12:38]
Tommy Andres
Subscribe, but only what we wanted to show.
- [12:40]
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I'm still recording a three part series event. She said the children were demonically possessed.
- [12:46]
Mary Hooks
Get out.
- [12:47]
Hulu Ad
That blew the powder keg.
- [12:48]
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- [12:52]
Mary Hooks
Open the door.
- [12:54]
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- [13:08]
Matthew Scher
Mary Hooks never met Tort, although after their death she met many of their friends and allies who shared with her their memories. Sitting in the mrf, we asked her to talk about the response to the shooting. Had she been surprised it didn't move the needle more?
- [13:24]
Mary Hooks
I wasn't surprised per se. Like I knew that it would radicalize many people, but it didn't move enough black people. And I think the way in which we saw black people being moved when Rayshard Brooks, for example, was murdered.
- [13:43]
Matthew Scher
Particularly disappointing to Mary was the reaction of black leadership in Atlanta. Politicians, but clergy too, community leaders.
- [13:51]
Mary Hooks
That was the place to me where I would have thought that there would have been some level of like, hold on, we need to pause, we need to something. And I recall seeing like a zoom meeting, a recorded meeting when I was watching them. This was like after everything had happened and I'd come across the zoom of these folks having a meeting. I was like, these cats don't get it and they're completely divorced from it. And a lot of them in their heart of hearts, I think they believe that Tortaquita deserved it. You shouldn't have been there anyway. You had no business there. You shouldn't have been trying to stop this progress. And so I think that part of them couldn't see past their own limited vision of getting this thing built and saw Tortaquita and the forest offenders as nuisance and thought that it was well deserved. And that is despicable, to say the least.
- [14:44]
Tommy Andres
One of the things we talk to Matthew Johnson about a lot is this sort of interplay between the forest defenders, who are largely not totally white, but came from a very specific background. The fact that cop city was being built in a historically black neighborhood and the sort of intersections or not, or the complexities of building this movement. Wondering if, as someone with all this experience organizing here, if you talk about that a little, you know, the. The sort of complexities of all of that.
- [15:12]
Mary Hooks
When the fight around Cop City began to get more escalated, I think that there were some people who were like hoolie nails, the white people. You know, to me, I come up in multiracial organizing, so I've always been clear that everybody has a role to play. But I think there is something about. In a city that is. Has historically been mostly black, we know that's not the case anymore. When people are feeling the impacts of divestment from our communities, it was a really difficult thing to try to convince black people that this isn't something we wanted. And logically, most people say if you're not good at your job, you should get more training to do your job better. My analysis and many others would probably agree when, you know, you cannot train white supremacy out of these institutions. I remember somebody put me in contact with Matthew. This was after the meeting with the force offenders. He and I had a long conversation and he was like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited to meet some more black people that, you know, want to take this fight on. It's been lonely out here, you know, and so I think that that has been a huge rub because even those black people who have been visibly in these streets about it. I think because the media and our electeds were so hell bent on shaping this as just some scrappy white people in the woods who mad about the trees. But they don' like black people creating that sort of tension where that actually wasn't the case. And so, yeah, especially in the early stages when you needed a strong black leadership in that fight, visible and needing to have the media and, you know, folks reporting it. Right. And I don't think that's what we got here.
- [16:57]
Tommy Andres
Yeah, that's interesting because in some ways it was the opposite.
- [16:59]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [17:00]
Tommy Andres
There was black leadership, but it was on the other side from Dickens and Keisha Lynn's bottoms before.
- [17:05]
Mary Hooks
Oh, yeah. And when I'm talking about, I ain't talking about those Those cats, You know, we talking about those cats. The misleadership is what I would actually call them. To see them completely disregarding not just 2020 and George Floyd, but Rayshard Brooks. I mean, I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to visuals, gone to marches, scenes of a crime that the police done killed somebody. It is insane. And for them to continue to pretend as if policing is the fix, it's beyond me. It's a betrayal at its highest form.
- [17:46]
Matthew Scher
Here. Tommy Andres, the producer on the show, cut in.
- [17:50]
Unknown Speaker
There's this phrase here that is very popular, usually referring to culture and arts, right? Atlanta influences everything. But when you look at a statement like that and you look at Cop City being built, kind of a blueprint for a police training facility, right? A new blueprint. Then you look at the laws being passed to crack down on protests, RICO being used to enforce those laws. What do you think about the ripple effects that this could potentially have nationwide?
- [18:17]
Mary Hooks
I think that it is part of the Southern trend, and it's very reminiscent of how they moved post emancipation when it was like, who can put the worst Jim Crow laws on the books? They continue to do that in the South. Who can create the most repressive legislation? Who can. Unfortunately, the Southern strategy has now, you know, manifested to a national one, right? All the way up to the highest office, Atlanta. The resistance here has inspired many people, but I think the repression has also inspired many local governments around the way they are approaching Cop cities. I have listened to different politicians in different places as they write their press releases, and they're like, we are not going to have any protests here. Like, they're already saying, you better not. And using the talking points, there will not be any outside agitators coming here. So they are definitely learning from Atlanta. Unfortunately, not the right things, you know, not the right things. And so the bittersweetness of it is people like, okay, then we'll just figure out how to prepare, because you can't kill a revolution.
- [19:25]
Tommy Andres
One of the things that Matthew talks about a lot in the podcast is this sort of back and forth, the way that history moves forward. And then people think, I'm getting a little uncomfortable, so everything rolls back. So, like, you know, he likens it to Black Lives Matter and Rayshard Brooks, where it felt like everything was moving forward, and then it, like, really rolled back, right? And that's when we got Cop City, when. When everyone was like, the crime's shooting.
- [19:50]
Matthew Scher
Up through the roof.
- [19:51]
Tommy Andres
Now we have to do something. So that's a pessimistic thought but put on your optimistic hat. What could come next that would make you optimistic, would make you hopeful.
- [20:04]
Mary Hooks
My hope is that out of all the work, all of the organizing, all of the petitions that were signed, that there literally is a block of people that are organized, that are united, that asserts our power for whatever it is that we want to see happen in this city. When there is another election, you have thousands of people who are clear that when we go, we all vote the same way and if we don't want it, it ain't happening. And that the power of the people is materialized in a real way in this city and that we engage in direct democracy as much as we can. When we talk about public safety, that is one of the heart of the matter of the things we have to get it right. I'm a 43 year old black woman. I've been beaten up by the police. I've watched them commit murder. I've studied their history. I know how they move. I know what the purpose of the institution is. I can make a distinction between an individual who puts on a uniform and an institution. I am clear about what the role of police is under this empire. And I am never convinced that having more of them is going to be the antidote to make our community safer. But I have seen beautiful demonstrations of what that looks like in real time. People, literally everyday people being in community, showing up for each other, literally intervening when we see hostility and harm. There isn't a silver bullet. But I believe that it requires us to commit to one another and to not give the fabric of our communities away and to rely on an outside force to handle issues. Humans are going to do stuff to each other, right? But if we continue to think that and more policing, when they come guns blazing, I'm like, that is not your work and role. There's many people who are looking for purpose in life, who want to be coaches and who want to be able to do righteous things in our community. And oftentimes we see those resources go to the police just to prop them up as our heroes and saviors. We need no more of those. We are going to save ourselves. And that is part of our work. It's while we build this block of people who can actually leverage power on a for real, for real level that we also remind people, in the words of Gwendolyn Brooks, that we are each other's harvest, we are each other's business, we are each other's magnitude and bond. And if we remind ourselves of that, then I think that'll be the greatest victory.
- [22:41]
Tommy Andres
Thank you, Mary.
- [22:42]
Mary Hooks
You're welcome.
- [22:56]
Matthew Scher
If you like We Came to the Forest. You can binge all episodes ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondery.com survey if you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us@wondery.com tips we came to the Forest as a production of Wondery, Campside Media and Tenderfoot Tea. The series is hosted by me, Matthew Scher and is written and reported by me and Tommy Andres for Campside Media. Our producers are Abacara Don and Henry Lafoy. Additional production assistance from Timothy Pratt, John Rusch, Aaliyah Papes, Johnny Kaufman and Jamie Albright. Sound design and mix by Garrett Tiedemann. Our theme is by Mondo Boys, Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set and Garrett Tiedemann. Our episodes are recorded by Jimmy Guthrie at Arcade 160 and Seth Cohen at Seth Co Sound in Atlanta. Fact checking by Aaliyah Papes. Tommy Andres is the Executive producer. Special thanks to David Peisner for Wondery. Our senior producer is Lata Panda. Coordinating producer is Sierra Franco. Development Producer is Olivia Weber. Special thanks to Callum Flues, Mariah Gossett and Heather Beloga. Executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Josh Dean, Adam Hoff and me Matthew Scher for Campside Media. Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay for Tenderfoot tv. Executive producers are Nidri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall, Louie and Jen Sargent for Wondery.