Protesters: ‘Cop City’ activist’s killing just doesn’t make sense

ATLANTA — Tortuguita’s cautious voice rang out from a platform amid the tall pines the first time Vienna met them: “Who goes there?” she remembers them calling.

The tree-dweller, who chose the moniker Tortuguita — Spanish for “Little Turtle” — over their given name, was perched above the forest floor in the woods just outside Atlanta last summer.

Vienna quickly identified herself, and Tortuguita’s watchfulness melted into the bubbly, curious, funny persona so many in the forest knew. They welcomed the newcomer and helped her settle in alongside the other selfproclaimed “forest defenders” on an 85-acre site officials plan to develop into a huge police and firefighter training center. Protesters derisively call it “Cop City.”

“It was a magical experience for me, being able to live out our ideals,” Vienna told The Associated Press, recalling how the protesters shared clothing, food and money, all while engaging in community activism. She and Tortuguita quickly fell in love during those warm, late summer days.

That was before. Before a Jan. 18 police operation that ended in gunfire, leaving 26-year-old Tortuguita dead and a state trooper hospitalized, shot in the abdomen. Officials have said officers fired in self-defense after Tortuguita, whose given name was Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, shot the trooper. Activists argue it was statesanctioned murder.

Outrage over the events has galvanized leftists around the world, with vigils from Seattle to Chicago to London to Lützerath, Germany.

Environmentalists for years had urged officials to turn the land into park space, arguing that the tall, straight pines and oaks were vital to preserving Atlanta’s tree canopy and minimizing flooding.

Vienna, 25, recalls her first four months there as joy-filled. There were campfires and sleepovers, in her tent or Tortuguita’s, nestled in the large wooded tract that activists call the Weelaunee Forest, the Muscogee (Creek) name for the land.

City Council approved the $90 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in 2021, saying a state-of-the-art campus would replace substandard offerings and boost police morale beset by hiring and retention struggles in the wake of violent protests against racial injustice that roiled the city after George Floyd’s death in 2020.

The planned development, largely financed by private corporate donations, enraged activists. Trees would be razed to build a shooting range, a “mock village” to rehearse raids and a driving course to practice chases. All would be within earshot of a poor, majorityBlack neighborhood in a city with one of the nation’s highest degrees of wealth inequality.

Like many of those who took to living in the forest to oppose the development, Tortuguita was an eco-anarchist committed to fighting climate change and halting expansion of a police state, Vienna said.

Beyond the distrust many in the “Stop Cop City” movement have toward police, six people who knew Tortuguita told the AP that authorities’ allegations about the protester’s final encounter do not match up with the person they knew: someone who, almost to a fault, always put others first.

“They were genuinely so generous and loving and always wanted to take care of people,” Vienna said of her partner, who last year took a 20-hour course to become a medic for the activists. “Their biggest thing was building communities of care.”

Tortuguita’s brother, Daniel Esteban Paez, said his sibling was even growing long hair to donate to children with cancer.

Tortuguita was a “citizen of Earth,” Paez said, growing up in their home country of Venezuela as well as Aruba, London, Russia, Egypt, Panama and the U.S. as their stepfather’s oil industry career led the family around the world. Tortuguita graduated magna cum laude from Florida State University and had been active in Food Not Bombs, helping feed homeless people in Tallahassee, Florida.

They had lived for several months among the “Stop Cop City” campers, a group whose reputation had been growing among leftist activists.

The campers built platforms in the trees and slept out, seeking public support and to block construction. They barricaded forest entrances and have been accused of threatening contractors and vandalizing heavy equipment.

Officials recently ratcheted up pressure. In December, authorities said firefighters and police officers were removing barricades to the site when they were attacked with rocks and incendiary devices. Vienna was among six arrested and accused of domestic terrorism for allegedly throwing rocks at fire department and emergency services workers, as well as a moving police vehicle. She’s fighting the charges in court.

The allegations are designed to scare others away from the cause, argued Marlon Kautz of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a group providing legal aid to those arrested.

“These charges are purely being brought for the sake of putting activists in jail … and demonizing the movement in the public eye,” Kautz said. “When we see the authorities using the criminal justice system to chill speech and prevent activists from associating with the movement, that is a grave threat to democracy.”