seems the full color screen reading archive is missing a chunk of posts from late september (like 23) to mid october (like 18) 2023 #($)#)#( havent checked if other versions are missing them too (($#+#+ many missing posts can be found at links here $+++&_&& https://web.archive.org/web/20231027153117/https://scenes.noblogs.org/ $@++&(( https://web.archive.org/web/20231006034511/https://scenes.noblogs.org/
Submitted Anonymously
admin note: there is at least one other gap from approximately january 24 – april 6 of 2024. please send any other gaps you find and we will add to this post in hopes that the original archivists or others interested in completing the project will see it.
edit from another anonymous submission: “at least one other gap from approximately january 24 – april 6 of 2024” should be covered in links below https://web.archive.org/web/20240409014854/https://scenes.noblogs.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240306092120/https://scenes.noblogs.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240214223356/https://scenes.noblogs.org/
SCENES FROM THE ATLANTA FOREST WAS A DECENTRALIZED WEBSITE SERVING AS A VENUE FOR ANONYMOUS COMMUNIQUES, INVITATIONS, ART, AND DISCOURSE ASSOCIATED WITH THE STRUGGLE TO STOP COP CITY IN SO-CALLED ATLANTA. THE PROJECT BEGAN IN FEBRUARY 2021 AND ENDED IN NOVEMBER 2024. THIS BLOG CAN NOW SERVE AS AN INSURGENT RETELLING OF THE STRUGGLE, ITS PROLIFERATION, AND THAT TIME MORE BROADLY. WITH IT, ONE CAN LOCATE THE INSPIRATION AND POWER, THE GRIEF AND LOSS, THE RUPTURES AND THE RECIPES. THEY ARE RECITED BY THOSE IN STRUGGLE IN THE MIDST OF STRUGGLE.
WHILE THE NOBLOGS CAN STILL BE ACCESSED VIA THE WAYBACK MACHINE, WE WISH TO MAKE THE ARCHIVE MORE ACCESSIBLE. BELOW YOU CAN FIND THE FULL ARCHIVE IN ADDITION TO AN ABRIDGED ARCHIVE THAT CAN SERVE AS AN INDEX, FORMATTED AS A PDF AND IMPOSED FOR PRINTING.
WE HOPE THIS ARCHIVE INSPIRES MORE ACTION, MORE REFLECTION, AND MORE TENSION.
WHILE MANY HAVE LAID THIS STRUGGLE TO REST, IT IS THE BELIEF OF WE, THE ARCHIVISTS AND SOME PEOPLE STILL IN STRUGGLE AGAINST COP CITY, THAT THIS STRUGGLE IS ONGOING. WE TAKE OUR PROMISES AND OUR THREATS SERIOUSLY.
WHAT WAS THE PROMISE WE MADE TO EACH OTHER?
WE PROMISED THAT “IF THEY BUILT IT, WE WOULD BURN IT”
THEREFORE, TO HONOR THIS PROMISE, WE PROVIDE THIS ARCHIVE NOT AS A FIXED HISTORY, A MEMORY, OR A PASSING FAD, BUT AS A WORKING HISTORY, A REMINDER, AND A RECOMMITMENT TO THE STOP COP CITY STRUGGLE.
WE WISH TO HONOR OUR FRIEND CAMI (TORT) AND KEEP IT ALIVE WITH ITS NAME, ITS IMPACT UPON US, OUR FIGHTING, AND OUR FIRE. IT IS NEVER DONE UNTIL THERE ARE NO COPS, NO PRISONS, AND NO EMPIRE!
Cop city opened in may. Why? One of the best things the Scenes blog did was the discussion of strategy and tips so people could learn even if they werent in an org or part of the scene in ATL how to struggle. If were gonna help make that possible we need to discuss losses and defeats as well. If you were part of Stop Cop City and have thoughts on why the coalition failed, please share them with us. Liberal collaboration? Not enough insurrection? Court cases sucked all the energy away? Hierarchies in the movement? Something else? Please give your insites. There are countless struggles around the world that could learn from you if your open, honest the way some people have been about the things that came before this. It would be nice to be wrong but USA social activists seem to be in perpetual denial about how and why they fail and breaking that denial is a first step towards doing things better, different. Please give your contributions! Dont wait for next time, now is the only time.
Yet the shame continues! August 4-6, Flock is holding a conference in Atlanta, GA, at the Intercontinental Buckhead (https://www.flocksafety.com/flock-forward), with a cast of truly ghoulish characters— the police chief who presided over Memphis police officer’s murder of Tyre Nichols, loss prevention heads, drone as first responder advocates, and the company’s own C-Suite. We think the fuck not; let the games commence!
OBJECTIVE:
Fuck these flocks. In the run-up to this conference, we have an opportunity to have some fun with their investments that are terrorizing our neighborhoods and poisoning the earth. Success will look like disabling their hardware, disrupting their supply chain, and damaging their reputation by embarrassing them at their stupid little show to discourage potential investors and contractors.
This edition of the game runs for a limited time only. As Flock scales up through lucrative new contracts (like those being hawked at their summer conference/circle-jerk) and brand new factories, their technologies will evolve. Let’s clip their wings by August 4 to show investors that Flock brings crime to the streets.
INTERMEDIATE: • Join the leaderboard by destroying physical cameras and posting your city’s tallies to counterinfo sites. https://unravel.noblogs.org/new-zine-birds-of-a-feather-destroy-a-flock-together/, • Conduct hardware research on their newest tech by dismantling cameras, investigating, and reporting findings • Theatrics, shenanigans, and tomfoolery at their August conference
EXPERT: • Production facilities, personnel, transportation, oh my! Tread lightly and choose wisely; you’re soundly in enemy territory here.
EXTENSION PACK: • Coordinate with other AGs, city events like large protests or adverse weather conditions, and other contextual factors to maximize your impact & design your own strategies.
The announcers of this game take inspiration from Richmond, Philadelphia, and other campaigns calling for a concerted focus on Flock and other cameras. Credit goes where it is due for inspiration.
We mapped the street-level surveillance of so-called atlanta. Our goal is to make offensive and defensive approaches to surveillance technology more possible and for this work to be replicable.
We prioritized collecting data on ALPRs (Automatic License Plate Readers) and the city’s ‘Shield Program’ cameras. We recorded 872 Flock, 450 Motorola, and 2,316 city-owned cameras across all of fulton county and some parts of dekalb (ideally we would like all of metro atl– gwinnett, cobb, clayton, in addition to the rest of dekalb county– mapped out).
The files are organized by camera type and can be found here:
The .kml files can be imported in Organic Maps, OSM (Open Street Maps), or GIS software. In Organic Maps, they will show up as layers that can be shown/hidden as lists under the bookmarks tab (star icon). The .csv files are spreadsheets of the raw data. Feel free to publish this data on other platforms.
Each camera is identified according to type and labeled with its orientation. We used the term “dingleberry” to specify the PTZ (Point-Tilt-Zoom) cameras affixed to hanging pipe (most often seen at intersections). “Shotgun” refers to directional cameras also often seen at intersections. The “Red Light” camera list contains cameras suspected to be red light cameras, but we actually have no clue what they are (small gray rectangular cameras). While we carefully reviewed all collected data, there may be some redundancies and inaccuracies, so don’t solely rely on this data to plan actions. Do your own scouting first.
We also wrote a guide (below) on how we went about collecting and organizing this data, with the hope that it might be useful to anyone interested in doing this work in their own area.
We desire the complete destruction of the entire panopticon and all of the colonial infrastructure it seeks to safeguard. May this information aid in that project.
against borders and hope, some nihilist secretaries
A protest against federal immigration enforcement escalated Saturday afternoon along Chamblee Tucker Road, where police used tear gas and arrested multiple demonstrators after declaring the gathering an unlawful assembly.
The protest, organized to oppose the Trump administration’s immigration policies and ICE operations, drew dozens of people waving flags and chanting along the road near a shopping center. The crowd soon filled the sidewalks.
The central effort of the DeKalb protest, organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation and local activists, was a march down Chamblee Tucker Road. The protesters reportedly wanted to march onto I-285, but a large law enforcement presence was massed to block them.
DeKalb County police say the demonstrators ignored repeated orders to stay on the sidewalk, prompting officers—many in riot gear from both DeKalb County Police and the Georgia State Patrol—to respond with crowd control measures.
Around 1:45 p.m., [news source] reporters saw officers in riot gear shooting tear gas to break up the rally.
After police threw the gas and moved the crowd, protesters could be heard chanting, “oink, oink piggy, piggy” and “stop cop city.”
DeKalb officials reported at least eight arrests as of 5 p.m.
Among those arrested was Mario Guevara, a prominent metro Atlanta journalist known for his reporting on immigration raids. Attorneys for journalist Mario Guevara say he was here on a work authorization and is trying to get a green card, but remains in the DeKalb County Jail on an ICE hold despite being granted a signature bond following his arrest on Saturday.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered Tuesday night along Buford Highway in Brookhaven to protest recent immigration raids and deportations carried out under the Trump administration, joining a wave of unrest that has swept across the country.
The protest, held outside Northeast Plaza, drew a large and passionate crowd of activists, families, and community members. Many carried signs, chanted in English and Spanish, and shared personal stories of family members detained or deported.
Officials say they arrested one person around 7:30 p.m. and five people were arrested after the protest continued past the time that officers and organizers agreed for the rally to end.
Charges range from disorderly conduct to assaulting a peace officer.
In a press release Wednesday, the Brookhaven Police Department said their officers responded to the organized protest in the 3300 block of Buford Highway, which was led by the Atlanta branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Police said the demonstration began peacefully, and Brookhaven officers “maintained open and constructive communication” with organizers throughout the protest, which remained nonviolent for most of the evening.
Around 7:30 p.m., police said they made their first arrest of the night – a man who allegedly walked into the road despite multiple warnings from officers to stay on the sidewalk.
[News source] cameras were on the scene as clashes between officers and the protesters began around 9:30 p.m.
Protesters set off fireworks as officers moved to break up the remainder of the rally.
Brookhaven police say that the officers made multiple announcements of the agreed-upon cutoff, telling the remaining group that the “assembly would be deemed unlawful” after that time.
Once the cutoff arrived, authorities say several people began throwing rocks and shooting firework mortars, which led to the officers using tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Officials say that three Brookhaven Police vehicles were damaged in the incident; they described that as including “multiple windows being smashed in.”
At the end of March, some entered the construction site of the data center hypercampus east of Atlanta, Georgia and burned 4 construction vehicles. This was done to oppose data centers that quickly exhaust the limited water supply of the region. This is another example of the country’s tendencies to externalize the costs of their relentless wealth hoarding to southeastern United States. They have chosen the south as an area of sacifice, that is, a place to deposit the most unpleasant industries and their waste. For them, our home is barely available within such parameters, as it can still be used as a landfill. Thus, the people who acted insist that those who try to steal our water, air and land must at least endure loss and embarrassment on their way to hell.
This specific data center has aimed at facilitating AI connection for local companies. AI not only use more water than other computer processes, but is quickly becoming a way for the state to increase its intrusion in our personal life. And more and more are used by police and state forces to monitor those who oppose them. The people who burned these machines do not believe that our thoughts and movements should be used for profit or incarceration.
If you are interested in taking similar steps against such opponents, there are many opportunities. Atlanta Region is one of the locations with the highest activity of the data center developers, but they appear across the country. Companies owned by these centers often are not based in regions in which construction happens. No matter where you are, you are likely to be able to identify a project, facility or corporate office associated with data centers. There are many opportunities to take action. Some neighbors in Atlanta were successful with traditional organizing approaches. However, when politicians inevitably sell you out, we hope that this action reminds you of alternatives.
Here are some tips that may guide you to identify potential targets. Driving in search of construction sites can produce good results. Notifications of public hearings for rezoning and new constructions can also be helpful. Comparing the logos and the name of the corporation on signs outside the construction via Tor Browser on Tails will also help narrow it down. Check that your research is done safely on tails before acting; there are many methods and techniques that others have developed to limit the state’s ability to stop you.
The movement to stop Cop City and defend Weelaunee Forest was one of the most important social struggles of the Biden era. Its trajectory tells us a lot about the challenges we confront today under Donald Trump. In the final chapter of our chronology, we trace the movement’s concluding phase, beginning in 2023 and ending with Trump’s arrival in power, and explore what we can learn from it.
You can consult a timeline of events in the appendix.
