Tonight, people in Athens, Greece gathered at a squatted social center for a film screening and discussion of the movement to defend the Atlanta forest. They shared information about the movement and discussed the recent murder of forest defender Tortuguita (AKA Tort, or Manuel Teran) by police. The following statement was read aloud at the event and shared with the Atlanta Community Press Collective:
Manuel, we love you. We honor you as an anarchist comrade who fought and died for a cause we share.
All humans perish, but the war against the world of police and industry, the hatred for it in our hearts that links us across languages and continents, cannot be extinguished. It is passed like an ember that sparks new fire in each person who encounters it. Your fire was so bright that it remains visible here tonight, half a world away.
Here also, the police violently confiscate spaces for their own sick purposes. Here, as everywhere, the state and capitalism conspire to kill trees, despoil mountainsides, poison the water and air.
Tortuguita, we who still live take on the burden of your courage and the knowledge of your immense sacrifice.
We love you, we recognize you, we call you family. We embrace your anarchist spirit, your identities, and the example of bravery you set. Your memory and the memory of your commitment to the defense of the forest are alive and thriving—forever dangerous, green, and wild.
Cop City Will Never Be Built!
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