Transcript of Nino Brown | 2

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On a nameless stretch of beach somewhere near Sebastian, Florida, a young black pastor named Matthew Johnson reclines in the sand and watches the tide roll towards his feet.

The year is 2020, and for the past few weeks, Ever since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Matthew has been involved with the Black Lives Matter protests in Atlanta, organizing, coordinating with local and national activist groups, marching in the streets. It's been exhausting. It's been a grind. At the same time, it seems to actually be working.

That was one of the first times where I was like, Okay, maybe people are really starting to get it. This country is screwed unless we have some real systemic change. Things are actually possible now. I think that we had all hit a point where a lot of folks that I would have just considered at best Blue Dog Democrats were saying, I don't know what's up or what's going on, but whatever you kids need, here take it. We had an amount of goodwill in the wider populace.

This trip to the beach, which he's taking with his longtime partner, is a much-needed breather, a reward for the frenzy of the past few months.

I had done some shrooms on the beach and had some kooky visions of seeing us stepping into a new age with the movement now in the of radicals that we just hadn't seen before.

That night in Florida, Matthew goes back to the Airbnb, kicks up his feet, and pulls out his phone.

My partner had gone to sleep, and I was just touching base with a couple of friends, and really just feeling optimistic about everything. Felt a bit rested, felt a bit at ease for the first time. Then it was not like that at all. A friend posts something with a whole bunch of blue flashing lights, and I just looked at it. It seemed like he was yelling at a cop. I was like, Oh, yeah, more of the same, then just like, flick past it. Another friend, like 30 minutes later, they say, Holy shit, do you see what Doran just posted? I said, No, what? The cops just killed a guy. Hey.

Hey, man, you're parked in the middle of Drive-through line here.

The guy in question is Rayshardt Brooks, the 27-year-old Atlantic. How much have you drink tonight?

Not much. Not much? How much is not much?

Early that evening, Brooks had fallen asleep in a Wendy's drive-through on the south side of the city. Can you step out with me, please? Yes, sir. When police had run his info, they discovered he was on probation. They then administered a sobriety test, which Brooks had failed.

All right.

I want you to focus on the tip of my finger and follow your eyes without moving your head. Do you understand? They moved to arrest him. Put your hands behind your back. In the ensuing struggle, Brooks grabbed one of the cop's tasers and ran. Hands off the fucking taser?

How about a taser?

How about a taser? How about a taser? Earning as he did to fire the device. At which point, one of the officers opened fire.

Tell me, Brooks. Shit, Matthew, thanks. I went that Wendy's frequently. It just hit me how incredibly loud and incredibly close everything was.

Just as clearly, it also hits him that his vacation is over.

I really didn't feel like I had an option because the police terror had just come so close to home. So close to home.

None of which he says to his partner, at least not right away. All night, he tosses turns, thinking, planning. Then the next day, he announces it's time to get on the road, like right away. In the car, he turns on the music, stares out the window.

I started to ask myself a couple of questions. What I was wondering is if this partner had the constitution to deal with me getting much more involved than I was at that time and me not being willing at that point to make any more compromises about where I would be and what I would be doing. And so as we were driving back, I pretty much realized that that relationship needed to end then. I was very much in love with that partner, but I needed to be free to do whatever I saw was necessary at that point because the violence was inescapable. I think that she was deeply hurt, and she had every right to be. But I had business.

From WNDRI, Campside Media, and Tenderfoot TV, I'm Matthew Sheer. And this is We Came to the Forest. This is episode 2, Nino Brown. Sometimes a moment matches a person, brings out something in them that has been building, roiling the surface. So it is with Matthew Johnson and the death of Richard Brooks. An ordained Minister who studied sociology at Morehouse College and grew up reading the Communist Manifesto, Matthew's got a pretty unique set of skills. He can speak the language of the young street protester and the language of the church, and he can speak both fluently. Soon, he's in touch with friends from all sorts of different activist groups around Atlanta, asking basically, How can I help?

Like, What support will people need for this protest? What happens next? I guess that was how I channeled the anger. Or I don't know, maybe just stowed it away for it to explode at some later date. What do we want?

On June 13th, the night after Brooks death, protesters set fire to the Wendy's, and a coalition of different activist groups builds a headquarters in the parking lot, a rallying point for the growing movement.

The Ray Shard Brooks Peace Center.

Were you part of the occupation? Yes, heavily. What was that like?

It was a very intense time, but also a time that was filled with joy because people made it so. There were some really cool things that happened there. For three weeks, activists from all over Atlanta provide tents and food for the local homeless population and canvas the surrounding neighborhood, petitions in hand calling for the city to make the center a permanent fixture, community gardens and a memorial to Brooks.

As the forest defenders will later do in the South River forest, the activists dub the place an autonomous zone. No outside laws apply. They set up surveillance and armed checkpoints around the parking lot to stave off infiltration from law enforcement, which works until it doesn't. One evening in early July, a car unwittingly drives through a grouping of barriers near the Wendy's, and two men allegedly point weapons at the passing vehicle. One of them opens fire, killing an eight-year-old girl sitting in the back seat of the car. By the next day, news of the shooting is everywhere.

Schutings over the weekend killed eight-year-old Sequarier Turner.

Her parents called the shooting senseless.

They say, Black Lives Matter, you killed your home.

Which to Matthew is devastating. All the good work that had been done at the Peace Center has been instantly overshadowed. Later, police will accuse the alleged shooter of being gang-affiliated, and the girls' parents will sue the city for, quote, a block, a neighborhood, to what has now been described as a gang. Even before the shooting, some protest leaders say that they'd asked the two men to leave the area. While the unfortunate death occurred near a memorial site. None of our activists, community members, or neighbors were involved in this shooting. Still, none of this matters in the short term for the future of the Rayshard Brooks Peace Center. That was the end disbanded after that, the occupation? Police actively disbanded.

They came in after that weekend and shut things down.

In the months after the occupation ends, Matthew returns to his Ministry, doing his best to focus on what had been achieved in those chaotic hopeful weeks in June. Then one afternoon, he hears a rumor. The city is planning to announce the construction of a massive new police training center on the outskirts of Atlanta. It's been percolating without much traction for more than a decade, driven by the members the Atlanta Police Foundation, a nonprofit that funnels private dollars into expanding the local police force. But now, city leaders seem to have figured history is finally on their side. Crime around the city is in the Viking, not in all categories, but in the ones that matter to a lot of residents, like aggravated assaults and murder.

2020 will go down as a year of violent crime ravaged Atlanta. We are shooting each other up on our streets.

Meanwhile, members of the Atlanta Police Department, still furious over calls to defund the police and feeling unsupported by local leaders, begin calling in sick to work. Entire precincts find themselves shorthanded. We're talking about the reports of police walkouts, the blue flu in Atlanta. The blue flu, it's called. Many residents of Buckhead, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Atlanta, threatened to secede. Matthew, a student of history, a student of sociology, a black man living in the South, does not need a crystal ball to see what's coming next.

The uprising scared the shit out of rich people. And when they felt or smelled like a wave of crime in the air, rather than do something to improve the conditions of people that were suffering, it seems that the only solution that we have for anything regarding public safety, among those that have the influence and finances for politics, the only thing that they'll invest in is more policing. And so that's what they did.

Atlanta is not alone in the rise in gun crimes that we've seen over the last year. That's not an excuse. It is a fact. But just as we have overcome challenges in the past, Atlanta will get to the other side of this COVID crime wave, and we will get this violence under control.

In early 2021, at our state to the city's speech, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, voices her support for a new police training center, a move that will assure the city at large that she's serious about law and order.

We are committed to working with our philanthropic and corporate partners to build a new public safety training facility for our police officers and our fire department. Right now, our public safety personnel are training in spaces that are too small, too old, and not up to technological standards. A top-notch city should have a top-notch training facility.

That September, Matthew watches from home as the Atlanta City Council holds a vote on whether or not to leased the Atlanta Police Foundation, a parcel of land in the South River forest. Because of COVID restrictions, the meeting is online only on Zoom. More than 1,000 people have responded to the call for public comment, 1,000 messages, and the council is required to play them all.

We are against compsity. Please, please, please, please, please, It's inappropriate, repulsive, and despicable.

It went about 70, 30 against copsity.

I'm concerned with the dramatic use of crime. I'm absolutely jealous. And I believe this training center is out. We are reaching the gas settled towards total self-anihalation as a country and a people. Get your head straight. This is ridiculous.

I believe that this was a record, maybe 17 hours of public comment.

Still, despite the public outcry, the vote passes 10 to 4. The lease is approved. The facility will move forward. At a press conference the next day, Mayor Bottoms strikes a defiant note, keeping praise on the council and doubling down on the tough on crime rhetoric.

People have said we need to abolish the police and defund the police. Well, I don't know how you do that unless somebody is going to abolish crime. This notion that we somehow can exist in society without public safety is simply ludicrous. I truly believe that the creation of this public safety training facility where we can train with the expectations that people will treat our communities with respect.

Matthew watches this speech in the presence of a bunch of fellow activists. His takeaway is this: politics, legislative efforts, they seem to be meeting a dead end. If a gazillion people can call into press for a no vote on the facility, if half the city can be plastered and stop cop signs. If all these different factions are united in their hatred of the idea of a new training facility and the thing still passes, what exactly are we doing here?

We decided to operate no knowing that the legislative thing wasn't going to work again. Shortly thereafter, starts the forest occupation.

In October 2008, the residents of the Valleyview Apartment Complex in Redman, Washington, held a Halloween party. Dozens of people in costumes mingled, drank, and advanced, but before the night was over, one of them was murdered. The police had a suspect. His story kept changing. His DNA was at the crime scene. But when he finally came in for questioning, the detectives felt like they were a breath away from confession, but it didn't happen. So the police focused their attention on another man, a man with a criminal record whose DNA was also found at the crime scene and who happened to be the only black man at the party. Suspect is a new true crime mini-series about cutting edge forensic science and mislaid justice, about race and policing, and ultimately about the weighty decisions that cops and prosecutors make every day. Decisions that once made change lives forever and are almost impossible to reverse. Follow Suspect on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, where you can binge all nine episodes Ad free right now by subscribing to Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.

Later that spring, Matthew Johnson begins traveling regularly to the activist camp in the South River Forest, the same camp that affected Vienna so deeply on her first visit. A marvel of engineering that Matthew cannot help but admire.

There was some amazing stuff. There was a suspension bridge that ended up connecting the two sides of the forest. There had been significant infrastructure. Brilliant tree house is built. I mean, the place was alive. Folks had really made a home in that forest, and we were holding the assholes back.

Matthew, for what it's worth, is not a camper, not an outdoorsy person.

I'm just all power to these people that are staying here. Dropped everything to stay here, and anything that I can do for them, I'm down.

He hauls water, clears mold from structures, and he teaches yoga, sometimes on the front lines on the side of the park, near the construction site and the old prison farm.

No mets. Just pale sunlight. People surrounded you and completely covered in camo. Being in those tree sits can be really isolating, and also probably not good for your back and stuff. I figured it could be rejuvenating. I mean, essentially, Essentially, I was just, and as I've been throughout my time here, doing pastoral care in another form.

The forest defenders like to say that when it comes to newcomers, they move at the speed of trust. Matthew, for his part, earns it quickly. From activists who have been in the camp for months and from relative newcomers like Vienna. Insofar as there is an inner circle in the Forest Defender community, he's in it. He's taught the customs and traditions of the camp, from the sharing of food and resources to the creation of forest names.

I remember that my favorite code name ever, somebody had named yourself Chevy Truck Month.

How did you introduce yourself? Did you have a forest name?

Yes. My name was Nino Brown. And I'm not sure if you all are familiar with that name. Exactly. Nino Brown is from a late, neo-Blacksploitation in the late '80s early '90s in a movie called New Jack City. Wesley Snipes is an infamous crack dealer, and he essentially doesn't trust anybody. Ain't no uzey's made in Harlem. I mean, not one of us in here owns a poppy feed. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way. I started to use this name when I was doing a lot of work with the house list community in 2021 in Atlanta, which is majority Black. It was funny because they're of the age where they all recognize that reference and know that it's a goofy name. But I'm working with a lot of young and predominantly white people that are within the radical circle doing mutual aid. They don't get the gag.

We didn't get it either.

Right. That's the thing. That was the forest name that I went with. Then just, rarely I would meet other Black people that would recognize the name. It's like a love mistaste. It was like a joke. Oh, yeah. Who are you? Nino Brown. Really?

For Matthew, not getting the joke is emblematic of an important issue. The neighborhood in which cop city will be constructed is historically, majority black. The activists, on the other hand, are largely white, and many, like Vienna, come from relatively privileged backgrounds.

We had a hard time getting a lot of people outside of white radicals with extra time or resources because there are so many more immediate things kicking the average Black person's ass in Atlanta. That is a privilege to choose to individually be poor that a lot of people, especially Black families, just simply they cannot afford to do.

So this activism is taking place in a historically Black neighborhood as well. Right. Is that what brought it into relief in this situation and made it feel more pronounced, the overrepresentation? For sure.

I mean, that's going to be a tension no matter how well meaning people are.

Those same tensions and frustrations, by the way, are a recurrent theme in a diary kept by Tord, Vienna's partner. Most of the time, Tort writes, white anarchists do not know that they are being racist. They unknowingly uphold white supremacy and then get upset when you call them out on it. They put people of color in potentially life-threatening situations and then get upset when people of color decide to not work with them. They talk a lot about solidarity and security culture, and then they fail at both. This sentiment is something that Matthew and Tort bond over.

I like them. They had good energy. Then as time rolled on, I realized they could reflexively just give you shit for no reason. I remember running into Tort one day, and they were like, What do you do? Where do you live? I was like, Oh, yeah, I live in Grove Park. They were like, Wait, you live in a house? I live for free in a forest. You pay for that, right? I was like, Yes, I pay for that. They were like, How do you get food? I was like, I get food at a grocery store. They were like, You pay for food? You're bringing me food here. That was the vibe. Always a little trickster, which I very much appreciated.

Tauert is a complicated human being. Funny, obstinate, very intense, quick to needle those around them, but full of passion.

I think it's It's delusional to think that we can get any meaningful change from a system that is designed to be oppressive and that is built on oppression and built on slavery and genocide of Indigenous people.

This clip was recorded around the time Matthew's friendship with Tord began to deepen. They're talking to a local journalist, the magazine writer David Pizner.

The abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty and shut down, until there's no more cops. I think we should just get rid of the whole system, just scrap the whole thing, and build a new world, a better world, a better society, a better way of life, really.

To the residents of the Forest Defender camp, these ideas are not outlived. Flandish. After all, look at what they'd accomplished already. This small group of anarchists and activists. They'd built a community governed by its own rules and customs and bylaws. A better place, they believed, than the one outside the boundaries of the forest.

This place was in full swing. It had attracted a lot of international attention. A lot of people from different networks of organizers, really around the world, had started to think about this project, a lot of people coming from everywhere to check out what was going on and supporting their way. We were building something. We were building a community, and it felt alive, and anything seemed possible.

And yet, now I look back at this moment in time and see only harbangers of what was to come. I don't know what else to call them. Lentening shadows, bad omens, clear signals from the city and state that the forest defenders would not be allowed to stay forever, that eventually they'd be forced out. One way or another. The Cap emergency 911.

What is the address of the emergency?

One of those moments involves an incident with an auto mechanic named Richard Porter. Porter's driving near the South River forest when he sees what appears to him, initially, to be a pile of scrap metal. Being a bit of a scrap collector himself, he decides maybe he can take some of it home in his trailer. But before he does that, he'll have to call the police to report an abandoned vehicle.

There's a burn out truck over here at this park, all completely burned up with a trailer hooked to I've been looking for a trailer like this for about six months.

He stops, puts his own vehicle in park, and as he does, Vienna and a few other forest defenders emerge from the woods. The stuff that Porter thinks is burnt out junk, Vienna attempts to explain, is part of the infrastructure of the camp. It's a barrier.

It was like, Hey, people are going to get mad at you if you try to take this.

One girl stopped when she was coming in going, What are you doing here? She was waiting for the plate. She was like, What? Now, here comes two more of me get my truck.

From Porter's perspective, things go south from there.

There's about 10 or 12 of them right here. Can they help you?

Ten seconds to leave before the barricade shows up. We just wanted him to leave. We didn't want cops to come in. It was once the barricade was put up and there was police at the corner.

There was one behind my trailer. He was taking the tag off. I got to back over him.

That's when he started driving around like crazy in the parking lot and then actually crashed into the gazebo multiple times.

Every time they get close to me, I'd haul ass and try to get away from them.

Eventually, he totally destroyed his trailer, trying to ram his trailer into the barricade.

I rammed it like five or six times.

And gave up and hopped across the barricade. Then the Four spirits did their gremlin-ly thing.

I was keeping an eye on my truck. There it goes down the hill. They got in and backed it down and never know it again.

Vienna and other forest defenders are worried about how the police might respond, how they might use this incident as grounds to infiltrate the forest. Torto remains reliably optimistic. Over and over again, they strike a familiar note. We've got this. We can handle this.

It's like a game of cat and mouse where they're not very good cats, even. They're not very good at playing cat in the woods, and they know that because they don't have their equipment in the woods. They have to rely on their legs to carry them around. Right. They're not used to it. It's what we do every day. They really stand no chance.

As fall turns to early winter, the camp winnows in size. People have their own beds to sleep in, like Matthew, visiting less frequently, and a hardened core of a couple dozen remains, among which are tort and Vienna.

Only the most wing nuts of wing nuts stayed out in the winter, or people who didn't have anywhere else to go, myself.

What did you during all that time.

Huddle around the fire. Run from the fire to your tent and bundle under 20 blankets to stay warm, mainly just hunkering down.

Torte and Vienna spend hours and hours together, escaping into a private world that only the two of them inhabit.

There was a few nights where they would stay with me and everything. We would crawl up together.

They occasionally venture out, too, as a couple, sometimes to do laundry, to take showers. More rarely, since Tortt seems to prefer the comforts of the forest camp, they go out and eat real food at real restaurants like Sleddy Vegan, a boisterous and very popular and very immersive Atlanta establishment.

Tort was so overstimulated because they were living in the forest, and then they come in to slutty vegan, and I was just be like, Hey, slut. Oh, you're new? Oh, we got a virgin. They were just like, I need to get out of here. So I waited inside for the food, and they waited outside.

What Torte feels it wouldn't have made sense to Vienna just a few months earlier, but it makes sense to her now. She's able to see the non-forest world as Torte does, as a place populated by strangers with which she now shares very little in common.

Being in the woods and being in such a tight-knet community and then getting all gross and dirty forest grime all over you, and then you go out into the world and everyone's off to their job. Everyone's spending money on things and just a totally different vibe. It's really hard to describe unless you've actually been in that situation.

One mild morning in mid-December, Viena shrugs off her sleeping bag and turning in her tent reaches for her phone. For weeks, she's been serving as a early warning system for the camp, monitoring scanner traffic for news of a possible raid.

Got word that there was police on the other side of the creek. Being probably one of the earliest risers on the park side, I did my usual task of running around, waking everyone up, making sure people are aware and alert and helped ensure they're not coming towards the park or anything like that. That's when we started hearing word about We're losing contact with the tree sitters.

This in of itself isn't necessarily apocalyptic. Maybe the tree sitters have fled and are making their way back towards the main camp. But Vienna gets dressed anyway, rouses Ellie, her dog, and steps out to look around. A police helicopter sweeps overhead, close enough to the canopy to rustle the branches. Vienna is getting worried. A friend of hers, she knows, is in the parking lot. She has to warn them that something bad has happening. She gets to the lot, no friend.

I start walking back to the tree line, and then that's when I get approached by two middle-aged plainclothed officers, and they identified themselves as police as they surrounded me and put me in cuffs.

Vienna has made a point of staying on the public park side of the forest, far from the front line, from the tree sits and private property, where forest defenders are committing a crime with their very presence, and where one could be arrested for trespassing.

I assumed that they were just going to detain me and ask me questions. But then they told me I was under arrest. I was like, What for? And that's when they were like, I don't know, probably criminal trespass. I'm It's a public park, though.

The cops load Vianna into their vehicle and take her around the outside of the park down the winding empty roads. They're silent, but they're clearly trying to send her a message.

They drove to a parking lot of a Closed Dollar General nearby on Boulder Crest. There was probably like 20, 30 police cruisers there. Then took me over to Greshian Park where they had probably like 50 cruisers and two armored vehicles. They're just trying to show off what all they had. I'm like, I'm well aware of how militarized the police force is. Heard some horrible things being said by the major. He very obviously had a grudge against the protesters. I overheard him talking with another officer saying, I'm not going to be happy until they're all in jail.

When they do finally address her, Vienna says the officers are curt and dismissive. It gets worse when she meets the man in charge of the operation.

When I told the officers that were driving me around that I used she/her pronouns, Those officers tried to incorrect the major when talking about my pronoun usage. The major just gave them a blank stare and was just like, All right, so take him to the south precinct. That's when I was taken to the south precinct. I was put in foot shackles and handcuffs and brought into an interview room.

Vienna says nothing. She just sits there in the empty room all alone. She's stone-face, but panic has started to set in. Her mouth is dry. She's shaking a little. When an officer comes in, Vienna begs for a drink.

I'm given water, sat there for hours, had to pee. They won't let me out to go pee. Had to pee in the cup.

Were you scared then?

I think I was still in shock and still a bit of a denial. I didn't really understand what was going on. When I was in the interview room, I was still hoping to get out the same day. An hour after that, that's when the Homeland Security came in and attempted to interview me. They gave me a piece of paper that stated my Miranda rights, and I signed the paper saying, No, I'm not going to talk to you. Then it was me an hour or two after that that they finally took me to the jail. I was brought in at the same time as two of my co-defendants, and they gave us this sheet that has the list of bondsmen at the bottom, and they wrote my charge, which they wrote as Terroristic acts, no bond. That was the first time I knew what they were charging me with.

That's next time on episode 3, We Came to the Forest. If you like We Came to the Forest, you can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at WNDRI wondery. Com/survey. If you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us at wondery. Com/tips. We Came to the Forest as a production of Wondery, Campside Media, and Tenderfoot TV. This series is hosted by me, Matthew Sher, and is written and reported by me and Tommy Andres. For Campside Media, our producers are Abicara Dawn and Henry Lvoy. Additional production assistance from Timothy Pratt, John Roosh, Alia Papes, Johnny Kaufman, and Jamie Albright. Sound design and Mix by Garret Tiedemann. Our theme is by Mondo Boys. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set and Garret Tiedemann. Our studio engineers are Jimmy Guthrie at Arcade 160 and Seth Cohen at Seth Co Sound. Fact-checking by Alia Papes. Tommy Andres is the executive producer. Special thanks to David Eisner. For WNDYRI, our senior producer is Lata Pandia.

Coordinating producer is Cierra Franco. Development producer is Olivia Webber. Consulting by Cassius Adair of Sylvian Consulting. Executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriades, Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, and me, Matthew Sher, for Campside Media. Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay for Tenderfoot TV. Executive producers are Najri Eton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jenn Sargent for Wondery. Daphné Galicia was a household name for her fearless reporting on government corruption in the Panama papers. Nothing got in the way of her search for the truth until she was suddenly murdered by a car bomb explosion right outside of her home. Disturbed by police in action, her son, Matthew, turns to the international journalism community to find answers. And what they find is a shocking trail of government corruption, covered up crimes, and deception that rises all the way to the top. From Wundery, who Daphne is a six-part podcast series hosted by investigative reporter Stephen gray about the mysterious assassination of a blogger and investigative journalist who exposed some of the most scandalous secrets of the rich and powerful. You can binge all episodes of Who Killed Daphne exclusively and ad-free on WNDRI Plus. Start your free trial in the WNDRI app, Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.