Tonight, we take a look at Atlanta,
where shit's getting crazy.
I'm talking Waffle House crazy.
[Reporter] Atlanta's busy Downtown
descended into chaos over the weekend.
[Reporter] Hundreds of protesters marched in the streets
in the wake of the death
of a 26-year-old environmental activist.
The activist was killed on Wednesday
as officers cleared protesters
from the site of a planned police training center.
[Roy] Police training center?
But these guys are trained, right?
This isn't an armed militia of interns.
Back before things got this bad,
I went to Atlanta
and met with local activist Jasmine Burnett.
The Atlanta Police Foundation
is building a massive urban warfare training facility
with bomb testings, tear gas explosions, a shooting range.
Didn't people march to defund the police?
-It look like they refunded- -Yes!
-The police. -They did!
Activists have dubbed this development Cop City,
an 85-acre, $90 million complex including a shooting range,
burn buildings, and a mock city
that includes apartments, a school, even a bar.
[glasses clink]
So this is basically like Six Flags for the police.
Yes. It's a playground.
You can't call it a playground.
Mm-hmm.
Oh wait, you're right. There's literally a playground.
But I had a dream about how they could make
this project more appealing to activists.
We name it after Martin Luther King.
Doesn't matter.
Tyler Perry presents the training facility.
The name doesn't change the impacts.
I can tell you don't watch no Tyler Perry.
Activists like Jasmine
have been campaigning against Cop City using legal avenues,
but others have been like,
"Screw it, I'm going full Mad Max."
[explosion cracking]
[Officer] Oh, [beep]!
[Reporter] Protesters threw at least one Molotov cocktail.
[Reporter] Protesters set fire
to a construction worker's truck.
[Roy] Activists calling themselves Forest Defenders
have been occupying the woods
around the Cop City building site for over a year.
It's an effort to protect the surrounding Black community
from increased flooding and other environmental impacts
of this development.
So against my better judgment,
I headed to one of their encampments.
Yeah, barricades, burnt out truck, pretty normal place.
Okay.
I met with Sabo and Green Grass,
two Forest Defenders who were going to give me a tour
of the, wait, wait, wait, who is the hell is this?
[siren wails]
All right, I think that's the police rolling up.
[siren wails]
-Yeah. Definitely. -Because we're trying
to obstruct their project.
Green Grass just took off.
Green Grass don't [beep] with the police.
I understand. That's a Black thing.
[Sabo] Yeah, let's go this way.
[inhales sharply] I'd rather take my chance
with the Georgia Ewoks than the cops,
so I follow Green Grass and Sabo into the woods.
So I just got here
and the police just ran us into the forest.
Is that normal?
[Sabo] Yes.
[Green Grass] Yeah.
They come Monday through Friday just to terrorize us,
like police do.
[Roy] Some of the Forest Defenders
have a $25,000 bounty on their head,
so they mask up to disguise their identity
and some are even taking a cue from.
♪ Old school T-Pain ♪
♪ This is a plantation ♪
[Green Grass] Historically.
♪ And a ex-prison farm ♪
I gotta be honest,
I wish I had an Auto-Tune I could speak in
'cause you just made prison farm industrial complex
sound so melodic.
They led me to the Living Room, one of their encampments,
with kind of an A24 horror film vibe.
[Sabo] Press in the Living Room!
Yeah, don't just say press, you got to say Roy Wood, Jr.,
who you know Def Comedy Jam.
[Green Grass] HBO.
And he's one of the best-
-Def Comedy Jam. -Stand-up comedians to do it.
-I don't know, I don't know. -We'll do it later.
[Green Grass] This Living Room is used
as our community function.
Wait, Bingo.
Y'all got Bingo Night?
[Defenders] Yeah.
Where's the Molotov cocktail station?
Where's the gun training station?
[Sabo] The majority of us
just wanna live in peace with each other.
[Green Grass] We work here on ourselves
and we do yoga and we meditate, get massages here.
Wait, y'all get massages?
You do yoga, meditate, stretch, and deal with your inner,
like, therapy?
[Defenders] Yeah.
Has that had any type of affect
on stopping Cop City from coming?
-[Sabo] Yeah. -Well, you see, you see-
[Sabo] Their construction only gotten, like, two days
in the past year
and one of the primary construction firms dropped out.
According to leaked documents,
the Cop City building plan is months behind schedule.
This crunchy granola shit seems to be working,
but Forest Defenders say law enforcement
has stepped up raids on their camps,
so they've built barricades
and they avoid police by living in tree houses.
Like some sort of Antifa Swiss Family Robinson.
Okay, so that's about 50 feet in the air.
[Sabo] Yeah.
[Roy] "Tree sitters may drop things."
Mardi Gras beads?
[Sabo laughs]
-Usually shit. -Paper bags full of shit.
He just said that they drop paper bags of shit.
[Sabo] Well, if the cops are in here
and you can't come down from the tree.
It's a lot of different ways to protest.
[audience laughing]
Why is your way live in the tree house 80 feet up
and drop shit in a paper bag?
[Green Grass] We have to stop Cop City
because they're practicing to murder us,
they're practicing to bomb us,
they're practicing how to come into our homes
more effectively while we're asleep.
[Sabo] The alternative is staying here,
shitting in a bag sometimes,
or lay down and watch the world burn.
Anyone up there?
Please don't drop shit on us.
[audience laughing]
This is my only suit.
Since my visit to the Atlanta forest,
police raids and arrests have only been more frequent,
culminating in last week's shooting.
[Protesters] No Cop City!
[Roy] Police don't usually target protesters
like this in America.
What if they go after celebrity journalists next?
Good thing I got rid of my phone in the woods
so the police can't track me.
-[water splashes] -[music whirs down]
Aw, shit.
How am I supposed to get an Uber outta here?
-[audience applauding] -[audience cheering]
[upbeat music]
♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey ♪