#cover k-c-kodama-cell-little-turtle-carries-the-world-1.png
#title Little Turtle Carries the World
#author Kodama Cell
#authors Kodama Cell
#LISTtitle Little Turtle Carries the World
#date Winter 2023
#source Retrieved on 6/19/2023 from [[https://counterflow.noblogs.org/files/2023/02/little-turtle-carries-the-world-read.pdf][counterflow.noblogs.org/files/2023/02/little-turtle-carries-the-world-read.pdf]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2023-06-22T14:41:51
#topics cop city, tortugita, Luciano Pitronello, Mauricio Morales, Counterflow distro
This text was received via email submission, February 2023. The text
was laid out into a zine by Counterflow upon request of the author(s).
We have no other relation to the author(s). They can be contacted
directly at: [[mailto:kodama_cell@riseup.net][kodama_cell@riseup.net]]
We are proud to express our solidarity with the author(s) of this
piece, as well as each and every one of the brave, indomitable hearts
currently defending the Weelaunee Forest.
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In loving memory of Tortuguita — Cop City will never be built.
Together Towards the Party of Disorder (A)
*** I. *The Outside*
None of us wanted to wake up on January 18th to the news that
a forest defender in Atlanta’s Weelaunee Forest named Tortuguita,
known to the Law and its death system as Manuel Teran, had been
murdered by police during a morning raid. It was the last thing that
we wanted to hear. Tears came to my eyes while reading the news of
their killing before their name and picture had been released, and
later after seeing an image of them glowing, smiling, luminously full
of life I thought of how much more devastated I would feel if I had
known Tortuguita, if I had heard their voice, felt the warmth of their
presence, knew them as a friend, as a fellow anarchist and a comrade,
how utterly broken my heart would be if they were my child, if I had
raised them lovingly and spoke to them almost every day on the phone,
as their mother Belkis had.
The deeply symbolic nature of Tort’s murder by some trigger-happy
cops also immediately struck me, containing a cosmological metaphor
illustrating the meaning of our times – a young forest defender named
Little Turtle, by all accounts a gentle and dignified soul who took their
name to honor the celebrated indigenous Miami warrior who lead
a confederacy of Native fighters to victory against the US Army in
1791, born while the Sun passed through the astrological sign Taurus,
which is believed by some to be the sign most deeply associated with
our home planet, Earth, is shot down in cold blood for blocking the
construction of a hated police training facility and defending the land
of this continent which is said by many Native peoples to be carried on
the back of a turtle through the universe. Turtle Island. Time and the
meaning it contains sometimes flows like a river, sometimes encircles
us like the tides of an infinite sea, and sometimes it connects us like
the web of an invisible spider, the strands of which, when plucked like
the strings of a harp, create transcendent and unforeseen resonances.
There are no coincidences.
For those of us aligned with the defense of the Weelaunee Forest
the grief quickly turned to anger, burning rage, vast and terrible like
the black hole said to be at the center of our spinning galaxy. The call
went out — they would have wanted fierce and direct action against
those responsible. In addition to an unknown number of beautiful
public and private memorial rituals in the weeks since then, there has
also been a massive wave of rituals of another kind: attacks and acts of
sabotage against police infrastructure as well as contractors working
with and financial institutions funding Cop City — the forces working
to bring their hellish and widely hated training facility into our world.
Images and stories of the riot which followed Tort’s murder in Atlanta
and the damaged facade of the Atlanta Police Foundation girded our
spirits, the widely broadcast picture of a burning police SUV serving as
a fitting memorial to the fallen comrade.
This is not the first nor will it be last time this dramatic cycle of
authoritarian violence and repression and our ensuing resistance will
play out. For my close network of comrades it began for a lot of us
between 2006 and 2012, an age of anarchist agitation in North America
overshadowed on one side by the massive anti-globalization movement
of the late 90s and early 2000s and the ongoing battle against the
rise of the alt-right and American fascism of the Trump years, which
exploded into planetary consciousness during the massive George
Floyd Uprising of 2020. Two notable cycles of struggle against the
police which occurred between ‘06 and 2012 contain many informative
and hopefully some inspiring stories for the rebels attacking the Cop
City project and the wider network of Domination today: the rebellion
which broke out in the Bay Area after the murder of Oscar Grant in
2009 and the one which occurred in Washington’s Puget Sound after
the cold blooded killing of John T. Williams, a Native woodcarver, in
2011. After both of those police killings there were riots, clandestine
attacks on the pigs, public outpourings of grief, and surges in organizing
efforts “against the police and the prison world they maintain” — to
use the title of a 2011 collection of communiques by anarchists in the
struggle in Seattle.[1] Some friends who put together a compilation of
texts and memories from the Oscar Grant rebellion – prophetically
called Unfinished Acts – concluded their text with a piece of writing
titled “You Can’t Shoot Us All,”[2] which sounds like it could have been
written by a participant in the unfolding struggle in Atlanta — and in
fact was called to presence by a banner with the same message seen
at the revenge demo in ATL which took place a few days after Tort’s
murder. It contains this amazing opening passage:
*When we realized that, in the eyes of the powerful, our lives
are just piles of bones waiting to be shattered, arteries and veins on
the verge of tearing open, hearts and lungs that stop beating and
expanding at the moment they pull the trigger, the only thing left to
do was to come together and make them tremble before us...*
*I wanted to break windows, to set fires, to strike fear into every
cop on the streets that night. I wanted to show the powerful that
they, too, would learn the meaning of violence, just as we have been
forced to learn it time and time again. They needed to understand
that we don’t forget, we needed to feel that we were still alive.*
The authors of the epochal queer nihilist journal Baedan, the first
issue of which was published in 2012, situated “You Can’t Shoot Us All”
in this way:
*While in the following days and months, activists and politicians
of all stripes attempted to capitalize off of a re-writing of these riots,
the words of [these] participants demonstrate a project of memory
and hatred which evades capture in politics.*[3]
Like uncounted previous generations of anarchists and other
liberation fighters we learned a lot about what to celebrate and what
to watch out for in the fight against authoritarian power through those
cycles of revolt, and it seems that many of those lessons are thankfully
already a part of the campaign to defend the Weelaunee Forest. We
learned to hide our real and digital identities, strike under cover of
darkness, evaporate and evade arrest when the heat arrived, play tricks
and games with the forces of repression to mislead them, organize
the resistance widely and experimentally and in our daily lives, never
trust NGOs, the media, communist front groups like the RCP and
PSL, or anyone who works with or “inside” the system, cultivate an
atmosphere of co-mingled rage and joy, never forget the names of the
fallen, support those captured by the police, watch out for each other,
and remember that we are simply human, fallible, fragile, flexible,
precious, that we are organic life forms choosing to fight an inorganic
and monstrous global corpse machine which goes by many names but a
lot of us still call the Leviathan. The cops everywhere are our absolute
enemy simply because they defend the social order which propagates
that monster. So much of what we all experienced and learned in those
years and took forward into the struggles that have followed in the
decade after Ferguson arise again, perennially, in Atlanta and elsewhere,
and to borrow a fragment from our beloved poet Diane Di Prima:
*We return with the seas, the tides*
*we return as often as leaves, as numerous*
*as grass, gentle, insistent, we remember*
*the way*
None of the riots or attacks or sustained struggle brought Oscar
Grant or John T. Williams or any of the countless others slaughtered
by the agents of Order back to us alive, nor will the continued assault
on the Cop City project bring Little Turtle back, but the rage, the
property damage, the clandestine and continuing sabotage, and the
widening of the aboveground fight to save the Forest from destruction
weave a protective and warming cloak around our revolutionary Spirit
to heal it, defending our collective Heart from resignation.
*** II. *The Inside*
There is another Turtle who also deserves to be remembered
and celebrated, whose deeds are an important part of our litany of
anarchic memory and whose words attest to the power of solidarity
and our dogged refusal to back down from our wild beliefs. Luciano
“Tortuga” Pitronello is a Chilean anarchist who was badly wounded
in 2011 when a bomb he was attempting to place at a bank in Santiago
went off prematurely, nearly blinding him and blowing one of his
hands off. After being captured, declared a terrorist, and imprisoned,
he engaged in communication via letters with individuals and groups
on the outside about prison, international anarchist struggle, being
wounded and isolated, and the will to survive and continue fighting. He
refused to apologize or distance himself from his actions, and among
so many incredible passages in the collection of his prison letters To the
Indomitable Hearts we find this:
*I think that a rebel becomes a warrior when one is able to get
back up stronger than when one fell, who is able to see a reality even
though one has everything to lose, a warrior does not necessarily have
to know how to make a bomb or handle one, nor to have techniques
of camouflage, these are things one learns by addition, warriors are
dangerous for their ideas and principles because they see all the way to
the final consequences, always firm, steadfast, because they do not betray
themselves nor their comrades, because they are always aware, because
they don’t let themselves be carried by fuck-ups or rumor, because if they
have problems they confront them, if they feel pain they cry, and if they
are happy they laugh; because they know to live out a full life, though it
will not therefore be peaceful–those are the true warriors[...]*
*Regarding my wounds, they have all healed, unfortunately the
marks will always remain but I carry them with the same pride as
my tattoos, because they are the best evidence that I am convinced in
my ideals–how could I not be? I carried that bomb with dreams and
hopes and those remain intact.*[4]
Tortuga was (and as we will see, still is) a participant in the vibrant
and multi-generational anarchist movement in Chile and elsewhere in
South America and was lucky to survive, luckier by far than another
beloved Chilean comrade, Mauricio Morales, who was killed in
2009 when a bomb he carried in his backpack exploded before his
target – a police training center — was reached. In my early years as an
anarchist Mauri’s story became instructive canon, part of our mythos
of resistance, memorialized by the communiques released by his
comrades at the anarchist library “Sacco and Vanzetti” which he had
lived at in which they declare:
*Comrades, we are very clear and aware of what is going to
happen now, we know that difficult days and months are coming. But
we also know that the pain and sadness of our brother’s departure
can not paralyze us. We remember insistently that he died in combat,
that the offensive has various forms, that no one is worth more than
another. We appeal then, that the beautiful flame of his anarchist
heart propagate the irreducible desire to annihilate this reality.*
His body today remains a prisoner in the hands of the police
and their mercenaries, but the energy of his life remains with us,
with the comrades who together with him and in different ways
confronted those that want to transform us into slaves.
A warrior has died but our fire does not go out
Mauri’s actions against the capitalist death system in Chile were
widely remembered, and the text “Punky Mauri Presente”5 from which
the above quote originates shares that his death galvanized elements
of the movement and became a force that encouraged rebellious
individuals to find each other – in Chile and elsewhere — and to take
action. It certainly did so in the anarchist space I came up in; I will
always remember my favorite poster at a collective house that served
as a hub and library in the ‘06 to 2012 period – a picture of Mauri
smiling encircled by this phrase:
*IN HIS BACKPACK*
*HE CARRIED HIS HEART*
Later, during the saga of Tortuga, my crew and I were deeply
moved by the international tapestry of letters and communiques and
fiery actions which supported him while inside prison. In a powerful
interview6 with him from 2017 after gaining freedom and rejoining the
anarchist current on the outside, he shares the power that tapestry of
actions and words had for him:
*I conclude that at the root of my survival was the solidarity
that the comrades showed me. Because in every one of these three
processes – being locked up in prison, being charged as a terrorist
or enemy of the state, and becoming disabled – in every one of these
processes I was gripped by this weapon that we have as anarchists,
which is solidarity.*
In recalling the stories of these distant anarchist comrades I don’t
intend to suggest the movement to defend Turtle Island and the
Weelaunee Forest specifically move towards more aggressive tactics
such as bombing, although each person in the struggle has the hallowed
power to choose their own path of resistance. I wanted to share my
memory of their saga’s effect on the lives and ideas in the generation
of anarchists I have grown with over the years because their words feel
timeless, prophetic, still as vibrant and inspiring now as they were over
a decade ago.
There are at least 15 or more forest defenders in Atlanta thus far
accused and charged with “domestic terrorism,” and as the repressive
wave continues to target the movement there will likely be more.
Some of those arrested are still locked up and in the hands of the
State, and it has been profound to see the wave of both public actions
and events and clandestine efforts to stop Cop City in the wake of
Tort’s killing and the comrades’ arrests. The strategy of the system is
to terrorize those who act and attempt beat us into submission with
unfounded and clearly absurd charges in the hopes that people will
fall back and accept defeat. Carrying on the struggle on the outside
to support our people on the inside, and indeed all people locked up
in the prisons of this false and rotting civilization, is one of the most
important tasks that falls to us. The stories of Mauri and Tortuga as
well as the current global wave of solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, an
anarchist of action currently on hunger strike in Italy, have always
been important reminders that one can support our incarcerated
friends not only with letters, money, pictures, and visits if able but
also with propaganda of the deed.
The experience of the insurrectionary anarchist movement from
the mid-2000s to our current time also contains two other lived
lessons which it already seems most of the comrades in Atlanta have
absorbed but bear repeating: the importance of discourse, sharing
ideas, and the ability to give and receive feedback and criticism in good
faith from people in the struggle locally and abroad if the channels of
communication are open; and the vital importance of maintaining an
experimental, informal and joyful approach to even the most militant
projects of resistance. In the past two years of supporting the struggle
against Cop City from afar I’ve been really amazed by the wider strategy
of the movement to maintain complexity, spontaneity, informality and
humor. The tendency to overtly specialize and militarize can be a pitfall
of the clandestine struggle and is especially important for us to avoid.
Those who strike at the machinery of power beneath cover of darkness
are intelligent, blessed, and brave, braver by far than any cop, but they
are not above the rest of the movement. As our old adage goes — revolt
needs everything. There are important experiences to remember lived
by some informal anarchist groups from the last fifteen years, such as
the transformation of the imprisoned cell of Greece’s Conspiracy of
Cells of Fire (CCF) from one of the most intransigent and visionary
revolutionary groups on the planet into, by some accounts, little more
than a prison gang who spoke of themselves as the only true anarchists
of action, as well as the disturbing spiral of the Mexican eco-extremist
group ITS (or Individualists Tending Toward the Wild in English) into
a death cult supported only by internet fanboys. While some may
wisely choose the path of assassination and bombing when necessary,
we are not agents of Death. Many of our ancestors on the anarchist
path have chosen thus, and we welcome Death as a part of the great
cycles of life — but anarchy is lived joy, freedom, chaotic harmony. A
friend shared a picture last summer from a party somewhere in the
Southeast that expressed it better than I can: “This Life is a Miracle.
All Love is Possible.”
Just as there is a profound connection between Tortuguita and the
Turtle Island they died fighting for, there is a deep resonance, an occult
meaning to the link between Luciano “Tortuga” Pitronello and our
fallen Tortuguita. Two Turtles who carry our world, the real world, the
world of the animals and plants, of the oceans and winds, of the peaceful
and intimate joy shared by humans without the shackles of hierarchy,
a world where we share meals and resources, throw free parties, mend
the immense damage done by millennia of class society and patriarchy
and colonialism and all the other strategies of Domination, where we
remember the songs and dreams of those who still revere this Earth,
this living stone hurtling through the singing void. Our Home
A lot of my friends have brought children into our world in the
past few years, and passing time with them, watching them grow
surrounded by love, being cherished and taught by their family and
adult friends, reminds me that despite the cynical and passive nihilism
of our age there are many possible futures and we are their makers.
One feels the same energy during the first weeks of spring, when the
green fuse is lit and the rainbow banners of the flowers unfurl, a time
which culminates in one of our ancient resistance movement’s most
hallowed days: May Day, the day when we vision a more free future,
when we renew the call, when we feast and remember our history, the
day when we always win.
Being around these new souls has driven me in the exact opposite
direction of the patriarchal narrative of conservative “reproductive
futurism” which the authors of Baedan critiqued in 2012 — in which
the joy and freedom and queer chaotic potential of the present is
deterred by an ever-unfolding reproduction of the current unfree
society in the name of future generations. Instead it has renewed the
urgency of bringing this society to an end and stopping the cycle of this
civilization’s reproduction; at the end of my life I want to able to say to
myself and to those younger than me that we did everything we could
and had an absolutely wild time doing it. Police and reactionaries will
always be my absolute enemy because I want them to make it, to live
full lives in their power, to never be afraid of being cut down by some
agent of Domination when they choose their own path. No one should
ever have to feel what Tortuguita’s family must still be feeling. Being
around young children experiencing this beautiful planet for the first
time has added fuel to the black flame burning at my core, directing
the primal urge to defend them against those who would build projects
like Cop City, who would continue devastating the forests, those who
would turn our paradise among the stars into a tomb.
Tortuguita died protecting our world, the real world. The cops and
everyone else who defends this tragedy known as the Present are living
in a hologram, an inorganic feedback loop, a nightmare construct, and
all who take action against them, no matter how we identify, will be at
war with the system they protect until it breaks and all the pieces of it
are shattered, entombed, annihilated.
*** III. *The Infinite*
The struggle to protect the Atlanta Forest and to stop Cop City,
that truly massive and dystopian police training center which the
American death cult wants build in place of hundreds of acres of vital
and living forest, is one of the latest manifestations of a meta-conflict
that spans the human aeon. It takes many forms, wears many masks,
arises and passes back in the shadows of history and memory like a
ghost, burning like an ember in the depths of the world, waiting to
detonate. Our movement to defend this world and the free beings that
remain upon it from the forces of Domination has been occurring for
millennia and is taking on increasingly titanic, Manichaean, apocalyptic
dimensions, illustrated by one recent example from the widespread
uprisings against state authority and the economy across the planet –
among the barely believable pictures of German riot cops evicting the
resistance village of Lutzerath to expand a massive open-pit coal mine
one finds an image of some cops protecting the coal harvester that
will destroy the very ground beneath the village and which looks like a
piece of gigantic mining equipment on an alien planet.
The “progress” of those who don’t see themselves as natural
inhabitants and children of this Earth culminates in just such a surreal
and terrible image. The death system of Leviathan is complex now,
much more widespread and complex than it has ever been, and it must
be struck at in every possible way and by every possible means, from
art to music to riots to desertion to magic to direct action to dreams.
Especially dreams. If we lose the dream we lose everything.
After the permit to begin building Cop City was issued in the
wake of Tort’s murder, in the deafening silence from Atlanta’s power
structure, among the lies spewed by the cops about Tort’s death and
the mainstream media blackout on the struggle, the DTAF press
collective reminded us all of something that deep in our hearts we have
always known: *nothing is over* . A call was quickly made for a week of
global solidarity and a week of action in Atlanta in early March. The
struggle continues.
We have uncountable martyrs. We didn’t need another one. Yet
here they are, their smile and gentle presence enduring in the etheric
fabric of our lived and digital memories, their loss haunting us, their
actions encouraging us to continue living, to continue fighting, to
continue defending our Home.
Tort: we remember, we won’t let them forget, and we never forgive.
See you on the other side when the time comes around.
*Kodama Cell
Wolves of Solidarity (West)*
; Further Reading
[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/251460817/Against-the-Police-and-the-
Prison-World
[2] https://unfinishedacts.noblogs.org/you-cant-shoot-us-all/
[3] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/baedan-baedan
[4] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/luciano-tortuga-pitronello-letters
[5] https://anarchistsworldwide.noblogs.org/post/2019/07/09/punky-mauri-
presente-10-years-after-the-death-in-action-of-mauricio-morales/
[6] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-ex-worker-podcast-luciano-
pitronello-at-the-root-of-my-survival