Opinion | The Fierce Protests in Atlanta Are Eerily Familiar to Me

What might make an individual die for timber?

About 5 years in the past, I revealed a novel referred to as “The Overstory,” the story of a number of characters who come collectively to guard an old-growth forest. The ebook follows these characters as they put their lives on the road in more and more aggressive confrontations in opposition to highly effective pursuits within the hope of saving timber. Within the story, respectable and principled individuals cross over the sting into retaliatory violence whereas making an attempt to defend the residing world.

Now the same story is taking part in out only a four-hour drive from the place I dwell. Atlanta has been shaken by an obvious shootout that occurred two weeks in the past when regulation enforcement officers tried to clear protesters from South River Forest, a wooded space simply outdoors of the town that has been designated as the positioning for a controversial new police and firefighter coaching heart. A Georgia state trooper has been hospitalized with a bullet within the stomach. A 26-year-old protester, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, is lifeless, gunned down by regulation enforcement in what they’re calling an act of self-defense.

South River Forest is one among Atlanta’s largest, richest and most pleasurable city woodlands. It borders a predominantly Black, underprivileged neighborhood. The battle for its future erupted over a yr in the past when the Metropolis Council, in a call met by a lot public resistance, authorised plans for a $90 million, 85-acre coaching heart in the course of the woods. It could be one of many largest facilities of its variety anyplace within the nation, containing not solely a taking pictures vary and driving course for practising high-speed chases, but in addition a complete simulated village the place police would prepare to conduct raids.

Metropolis Corridor calls it the Atlanta Public Security Coaching Heart. On the road it’s often known as Cop Metropolis.

The selection of website couldn’t be extra politically charged. The Indigenous Muscogee individuals, from whom the land was taken 200 years in the past, revere that forest, which they know because the Weelaunee. The coaching heart is slated to be constructed over the Outdated Atlanta Jail Farm, in operation for a lot of the twentieth century, the place a long time of human rights abuses happened. And the forest has lengthy been a part of an formidable plan to piece collectively an ecologically wealthy greenbelt of protected parkland stretching throughout southeastern Atlanta and neighboring southwestern DeKalb County, a undertaking that would supply quite a few environmental advantages to an more and more heat-stressed metropolis.

After the Metropolis Council authorised the undertaking, native environmental and social justice teams joined forces to oppose the choice. Destroying a part of South River Forest, they rightly argued, would hurt Atlanta’s residents, particularly these within the principally Black neighborhoods close by. The plush tree cowl of South River Forest helps clear and filter Atlanta’s air and water. It supplies protection in opposition to storm water surges. The timber cool the concrete and buildings that make Atlanta hotter than its environment, and so they increase the worth of surrounding actual property. The variety of wildlife and the traditional quiet of the groves enhance the well being of metropolis dwellers in profound methods.

These native activists, joined by protesters from across the nation, then took motion. Over the previous yr, they’ve mounted a largely profitable protection of South River Forest, resisting the proposed coaching heart by tree-sitting, blockades, demonstrations and direct confrontation that at instances has brought about property harm. Two weeks in the past, more and more pissed off regulation enforcement businesses swept into the woods and tried to close down the forest defenders. Predictably, the violence spiraled into tragedy.

The form of fictional catastrophe I wrote about in “The Overstory” is taking part in out in actual fact.

Following the taking pictures of the state trooper and the dying of the protester, the ambiance in Atlanta is tense. Property within the downtown space stands broken and dozens of individuals have been arrested, some held with out bond. Idealistic younger individuals constructing barricades and residing in tree homes face prices of home terrorism, with the potential for spending a long time in jail. Final Thursday, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia declared a state of emergency, empowering him to herald a thousand Nationwide Guard troops who might additional escalate the disaster.

The battle over South River Forest is our nationwide disaster in microcosm: environmental anxiousness, racial pressure and ethnic animosity, the rising hole between wealthy and poor, concern for public security, suspicion of the police, the reckoning with our symbols of historic injustice. The problems are complicated and don’t lend themselves to simple solutions.

However there’s a resolution to the town’s rapid disaster: put the problem of the coaching heart to a public vote. Within the quick time period, a referendum would permit each side to chill the battle. In the long run, it provides the most effective hope for restoring belief within the metropolis. Those that breathe Atlanta’s air and stroll its public areas should determine whether or not the southeast of their metropolis ought to stay a residing greenbelt or grow to be a state-of-the-art coaching heart.

A citywide vote would possibly seem to be an apparent reply to the citywide turmoil. Nevertheless it may very well be a tough tablet to swallow for each side. Would a passionate, loosely organized protest motion actually stand down if a majority of voters have been to determine that they don’t care in regards to the destiny of the forest? May Metropolis Corridor, keenly conscious of the huge quantity of out of doors cash dedicated to the coaching heart, be large enough to stroll again its prior determination and settle for the needs of Atlanta at massive?

A referendum is a dangerous strategy for all events. And the sensible challenges could be appreciable: Not solely would the Metropolis Council must droop its approval of the plan, however the referendum additionally must bridge two counties — DeKalb, the place the forest and the neighborhood bordering it are, and Fulton, residence to most of Atlanta. However in a metropolis divided by deadly confrontation, solely the need of the bulk has the ethical power to resolve the showdown.

A personality in my novel “The Overstory” comes to comprehend that nothing on this residing world has an impartial existence. As she places it, “The whole lot within the forest is the forest.” Atlanta will all the time be a wild combine of individuals whose pursuits couldn’t be extra totally different. And but everybody in Atlanta is Atlanta. All these whose metropolis is at stake must be allowed to decide on what occurs to South River Forest. As with America at massive, the one approach ahead is into that tangled woods we name democracy. It’s nonetheless alive. Use it.