Listen to our latest deep dive which commemorates lives lost to state-sanctioned violence in Atlanta, with a look into the sanitization and fetishization of martyred activists’ radical politics throughout history
Our latest podcast featuring Mainline founder Aja Arnold, guest contributor and cultural journalist Lindsay Thomaston, and Mara, community organizer and friend of Tortuguita and Cornelius Taylor is available now for subscribers on either Substack or Patreon. (Mara requested to be referred to by their first name only.)
On Fri., Jan. 17, Cornelius Taylor, lovingly known as “Psycho” by his friends, was killed after being crushed by a bulldozer during a City of Atlanta-sanctioned sweep of a homeless encampment across the street from the historic Ebenezer Church. Taylor’s blood remained uncleaned on the pavement by the time community members gathered for a vigil that evening. Taylor had been asleep in their tent when the clearing began. Witnesses on the scene say the city workers provided no communication or warning before the operation began.
Taylor’s death occurred one day before the two-year anniversary of another person who was killed in a tent during a massive SWAT-style police operation in Weelaunee Forest, also known as South River Forest: Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, who was known as “Tortuguita,” which means “little turtle” in Spanish. Tortuguita was shot and killed by Georgia State Patrol officers during a clearing operation in the forest, where officers shot them up to 14 times, leaving them with 57 bullet wounds. Tortuguita was also residing peacefully in a tent when they were killed by government agents.
A recent report in the Guardian sheds light on Tortuguita’s final moments and the police operation itself, saying that new reports appear to confirm that Tortuguita did shoot a firearm towards officers from inside their tent—which directly conflicts with the peaceful martyr and “good protester” narrative some have touted when invoking Tortuguita’s name.
But it also seems that Tortuguita wasn’t the “domestic terrorist” or “extremist” mainstream media and police agents make out to be, either. Experts remain extremely skeptical of why the Georgia Bureau of Investigation chose to withhold records that would corroborate their claim that Tortuguita fired a gun, since that’s what they have said happened since the shooting. More importantly, the records reported by the Guardian appear to raise even more questions about the validity of the operation itself, which show “a series of events before and during the operation” that made the killing of Tortuguita possible.
[ Read: “New documents shed light on police killing of Georgia ‘Cop City’ activist” by Tim Pratt, The Guardian ]
This week, we chose to cover a few important elements of that weekend when Taylor was killed on the eve of the two-year anniversary of the police killing of Tortuguita. We discuss the tragic irony of the location and timing, not only in respect to Tortuguita, but that of Martin Luther King, Jr., since the purpose of the sweep was to clear the area before our city’s annual Martin Luther King Day celebrations. We discussed the significance of the location where Taylor was killed—right outside King’s home church, Ebenezer Baptist Church, where countless politicians and public figures have invoked King’s name despite directly contradicting everything King stood for. We play Mayor Andre Dickens’ statement regarding the tragedy of Taylor’s death, with our live reactions to yet another city Democrat politician speaking of love and action in King’s name while showing no real regard for human life in policy and action. We discuss the connections between the City of Atlanta’s violence and that of Israel on Palestine.
And finally, we discuss our culture’s tendency to sanitize and fetishize activists and individuals killed by the state, to serve a narrative that we theorize can only benefit the very powers that carry out these tragedies to begin with. Aside from being killed by the state, Tortuguita and Martin Luther King, Jr., appear to have another thing in common: they’ve both been subjected to having their politics and ideologies diluted, with the facts of their lives and death distorted.
Listen in to hear us connect the dots and discuss what the word “radical” means when it’s not being conflated with extremism or weaponized by the State.
