Manuel Terán was one of a few dozen environmentalist activists who joined a protest nearly three years ago against the clearing of about 300 acres of woodlands near Atlanta to construct a proposed police and firefighter training center that critics fear would lead to greater “police militirization.”
Since 2021, some of the activists that include civil rights advocates and Indigenous tribes have called themselves “forest defenders” and rallied under the mantra of “Stop Cop City” to block construction workers by sitting in trees and, in some cases, setting fires and damaging construction vehicles.
Local police have responded in force with batons and riot shields to subdue demonstrators who on one march in November 2023 were armed with tree saplings that they wanted to plant in cleared sections of the South River Forest.
But those protests turned deadly on Jan. 18, 2023, when Terán was shot and killed during a police raid at one of the makeshift camps set up by activists.
Local police claim Terán fired the first shot. But some activists dispute the official version and argue that Terán was surrendering when he was shot 57 times by six different police officers.
Those criminal actions, exceptions to the majority of nonviolent demonstrations organized by environmental activists, included damaging buildings, setting fires to police cars, and vandalism.
Although the radical environmental movement did not emerge in the U.S. until the 1970s, it has been considered by the FBI to be a domestic terrorist threat since the 1990s.
Manuel Terán was one of a few dozen environmentalist activists who joined a protest nearly three years ago against the clearing of about 300 acres of woodlands near Atlanta to construct a proposed police and firefighter training center that critics fear would lead to greater “police militirization.”
Since 2021, some of the activists that include civil rights advocates and Indigenous tribes have called themselves “forest defenders” and rallied under the mantra of “Stop Cop City” to block construction workers by sitting in trees and, in some cases, setting fires and damaging construction vehicles.
Local police have responded in force with batons and riot shields to subdue demonstrators who on one march in November 2023 were armed with tree saplings that they wanted to plant in cleared sections of the South River Forest.
But those protests turned deadly on Jan. 18, 2023, when Terán was shot and killed during a police raid at one of the makeshift camps set up by activists.
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