Photo courtesy of Wondery
On January 18, 2023, gunshots rang out in the South River Forest. When the smoke cleared, a Georgia State Patrol trooper had been shot in the side, and Manuel “Tortuguita” Téran was dead, shot 14 times by law enforcement. Tort, as they were called by friends, had been living in a tent in the South River Forest for months with a committed group of self-styled Forest Defenders. They were protesting the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, known by critics as Cop City.
The Stop Cop City movement began in 2021 and engaged thousands of Atlantans, many of whom joined protest marches and signed a referendum to vote on the construction project. But across the city and in the media, opinions about the tree-dwelling Forest Defenders varied wildly—especially after Tort’s death, the details of which were hotly contested from the very beginning.
Was Tort a murdered martyr, or an armed “outside agitator?” Were the Forest Defenders domestic terrorists hell-bent on destroying private property, or righteous protestors using eco-justice practices to stop the growth of the police state?
Photo courtesy of Wondery
A new podcast takes a deeper look at the Forest Defender movement, and what really happened on that tragic day in the woods. In We Came to the Forest, a podcast by Wondery, Campside Media and Tenderfoot TV, Atlanta-based journalist Matt Shaer interviews Stop Cop City protestors, Tort’s relatives, the Atlanta Police Chief, and many others to piece together a vivid timeline of the movement. Two voices provide an intimate picture of the core protesters: Vienna, a Forest Defender who was Tort’s partner until their death, and Matthew Johnson, a local pastor who helped to build solidarity between the Forest Defenders and the wider community of Atlantans opposed to Cop City.
Shaer and his producer Tommy Andres acquired never-before-reported audio and documents for the podcast, including the full GBI file on Tort’s death. Whatever your opinions on the Stop Cop City movement, We Came to the Forest will have you thinking much harder about this conflict.
Here, we chat with Shaer about the making of the podcast, what he learned as a journalist and an Atlantan—and how to understand the legacy of the Stop Cop City movement, even as the training center is due to open soon.
Atlanta Magazine: How did this podcast project come to be?
Matt Shaer: Tommy and I were shocked by how little national coverage there was of this story. We felt that it was incredibly impactful on a national scale; everything that happens in Atlanta, with all these dynamics of power, seemed to be playing out nationally, too. But when I talked to friends in Massachusetts or New York, they’d be like, “Cop City? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” And I was just really surprised by that—because remember there was a time when every stop sign in Atlanta had the “Cop City” stencil under it? So that was the impetus of the story.
Tommy and I had never worked together before. But he made the King Slime podcast about the Young Thug trial, and a fair number of the attorneys involved in that case are involved in the Cop City one too, so he knew a little bit about this. We just started small. We didn’t know who we were going to get to talk on the record.
AM: You both write and podcast. Why did you decide to tell this story through audio?
MS: First, there’s an amazing amount of archival audio available from the protests: from police cams, from body cams, from surveillance footage. Then there’s the power of these voices. Vienna was one of the first people that we really interviewed in length. Once I started talking to her, it was like, You have an interesting story to tell. Then we met Matthew [Johnson]—you know, when he talks, you listen.
I think people like to hear voices, they like to hear people thinking through something in real time. And Matthew and Vienna were both good about that. They’re both reflective people and were able to be honest about the parts of the movement that were difficult or thorny; neither of them presented an airbrushed picture of Tort or the movement. I think they both understood that that would have been counterproductive.
AM: You obtained some never-before-reported documents, including the full GBI report on Tortuguita’s death. How did that happen?
MS: It was a real process. The GBI handles every investigation of a law enforcement–involved shooting in the state, and typically after the case has been adjudicated, you’re allowed access to the videos and depositions. But here they said, “No, we’re not going to give them to you because it’s part of the RICO trial.” Their rationale was that Tort was allegedly a co-conspirator in the case.
So we went back and forth with the GBI spokesperson for a really long time, and then hired a really good lawyer, Joy Ramsingh, who does First Amendment law. We went through the courts for about six or seven months, and it got to the point where the GBI was going to have to either give us the files or go to trial to defend their decision not to. And then we got the files.
[The GBI file] is as close as you can get to knowing exactly what happened, with the caveat that the officers who shot Tort were not actually wearing body cameras. But it’s as close as we’re probably ever going to be able to get to it.
AM: This project really gives a voice to people who were often portrayed in broad strokes as “domestic terrorists” or “outside agitators.” What did you learn about the Forest Defenders?
MS: I admire how much of themselves they were able to put into the movement, how much they cared. It’s very easy—here I’m speaking for myself—to get beaten down, to think that protest doesn’t matter or that you can’t change anything. And I was really taken by how much the people on this show believed and how much they were able to express themselves through activism. I think that’s amazing.
On the flip side, in terms of the movement as a whole, it also makes you realize that when the “Powers That Be” want something, they will usually find a way to make it work. And that’s a little disheartening. I think, sadly, that there was never a scenario in which protest would have led to a change in the outcome. At least, I can’t see it. I think leadership in Atlanta is pretty used to having its way when it comes to this kind of stuff. That’s been true over the years.
AM: The Public Safety Training Center is slated to open soon. What do you think that means for the legacy of the Stop Cop City movement?
MS: We’ve asked this of so many different people we’ve met, and we get different answers. People say, from a movement perspective, that it’s a long struggle. You expect to lose battles along the way, but history goes back and forth. I think that’s right. The Rayshard Brooks protest, the Black Lives Matter movement, it did all feel like a real step forward, and then it felt like a real step back afterwards. And to certain activists, Cop City getting built feels like part of that step back.
But you try to look at it in the long term, and hope that it changed minds. And for people like Vienna, she feels that she was part of a beautiful community and that matters to her, makes her feel seen and recognized, and that all of this had value on a bigger scale.
AM: What do you hope listeners of We Came to the Forest will take with them?
MS: I hope that, even if people have an opinion on Cop City, pro or against, that they leave their mind open a little bit on both sides. To think about the noble aspects of what the protesters did, and the troubling aspects to it—and above all, why it didn’t work in the end. There are lessons in there.
We’re used to thinking of these protest movements as a unified, top-down effort where everyone’s in lockstep. But they’re actually fractious, collective things made up of people from all different backgrounds, who are all trying to find their way through it.
It’s different from what you’d read in a Wikipedia entry, which has a way of flattening everything into pro- or anti- or state-versus-activists. And of course it’s just not like that at all; it’s a more complicated thing.
