“So, when these gentlemen say, ‘You are utopians, you anarchists are dreamers, your utopia would never work,’ we must reply, ‘Yes, it’s true, anarchism is a tension, not a realization, not a concrete attempt to bring about anarchy tomorrow morning.’ But we must also be able to say but you, distinguished democratic gentlemen in government that regulate our lives, that govern us through the opinions that you form daily in your newspapers, in the universities, schools, etc., what have you gentlemen accomplished? A world worth living in? Or a world of death, a world in which life is a flat affair, devoid of any quality, without any meaning to it? A world where one reaches a certain age, is about to get one’s pension, and asks oneself, ‘But what have I done with my life? What has been the sense of living all these years?’”

Atlanta City Councilman Jason Winston never imagined what would happen to him after the City Council voted earlier this week to fund the planned public safety training center.”

As some in the crowd chanted and boo’d, three protesters pushed toward a barrier in front of Winston. One tried to jump the dais, cursing him. A second screamed at him, “[expletive] coward!” The journalist George Chidi reported a protestor earlier yelled at Winston, “I’ll catch you outside, [expletive]!”

During the public comment section as part of a larger section of poetry a person said “If I had 57 bullets I could assassinate every member in this chamber with 3 bullets and have 9 left over”

The [scenes of atlanta forest] website shared his address and the home addresses of every other member who voted yes, along with the chilling instruction to protestors, “Make them tremble.” Every member of the city council now has full-time police protection based on the level of the threats against them.

“I did not expect there to be threats of violence, people yelling in our face, trying to jump over the dais to actually physically attack us.”

“There definitely are some national players who want to go beyond defunding the police, abolitionists and anarchists who are portraying their views onto this.”

He said other groups’ failure to condemn the threats of violence and destruction now are doing their own efforts a disservice. As he and others walked into City Hall for the vote, he walked past drum beats and chants of, “If you build it, we will burn it.”