The Atlanta Way took the spotlight at the June 23 meeting of the Rotary Club of Atlanta.
In many ways, it was a coming home. The Atlanta Rotary has been a galvanizing force of bringing the community together for decades.
It was on Sept. 20, 2021, when two Rotarians – Egbert Perry and Larry Gellerstedt – talked about the current state of the Atlanta Way during a Rotary program. They asked discussed whether Atlanta was losing its way.
That conversation inspired several of us to launch Atlanta Way 2.0, a non-profit aimed at strengthening our region’s civic fabric. It’s no accident that many of our board members and honorary co-chairs have ties to Rotary, including Perry and Gellerstedt.
Atlanta Way 2.0 helped organize the follow up conversation at Rotary’s June 23 meeting. The topic centered around how we can help “reanimate” the best of the legacy Atlanta Way and infuse it with new energy and dedication from a broad cross-section of people throughout our community.
It was the next to last meeting of Balentine’s Adrian Cronje yearlong service as president of Atlanta Rotary. Throughout his year, Cronje has asked speakers to provide “Calls to Action” on how to make Atlanta as strong a community as possible. Cronje proposed holding a program that reviewed all the Calls to Action from Rotary speakers while tying that idea with how Atlanta Way 2.0 is seeking to engage everyone to work on strengthening our region.
The centerpiece of the Atlanta Way Rotary program was a panel discussion moderated by Jill Savitt, president and CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights who also is an Atlanta Way 2.0 board member.
The panelists included Atlanta Way 2.0 honorary co-chairs – former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and Egbert Perry – as well as Atlanta Way board member Chris Escobar, executive director of the Atlanta Film Society (Atlanta Film Festival) and owner of the Tara and Plaza movie theaters.
The stage was set by a 4-minute video produced by the NCCHR exemplifying the best of the legacy Atlanta Way – how key Atlanta leaders made sure Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr. was rightfully honored in his hometown on Jan. 27, 1965.
Savitt said the Atlanta Way, as demonstrated in the video, was best known for helping mediate racial differences during the Civil Rights era.
“The idea was for pragmatic collaboration and negotiation between Black and white leaders for the best interests of the city,” Savitt said. “And Rotary, this club, is a shining example of the Atlanta Way at work. But the idea also faced a fair amount of criticism for its focus on cooperation that was really among people of power and influence, and it left a great many people, especially people of lower economic communities, out of the conversation.”
Savitt said a group of leaders “have made a commitment to breathing new life into that Atlanta Way, to reanimate it, to create an Atlanta way 2.0.”
Those leaders include the Atlanta Way 2.0 board members and honorary co-chairs among others. Savitt said they “have been talking about how to activate people across Atlanta to make a commitment to improving the life of our city.
Mayor Franklin said the origins of the Atlanta Way really date back to the city’s inception as a destination for railroads where people got on and off to pursue their aspirations and dreams.
“Somehow, for over 100 years, Atlanta has welcomed people from different backgrounds and with different aspirations and goals, and that’s turned into the Atlanta Way,” Franklin said. “It’s turned into the Atlanta Way that’s a welcoming place.”
For Perry, the Atlanta Way is about “big ideas.” When he moved to Atlanta 45 years ago, the city’s population represented about a quarter of the Atlanta region where “everybody cared about what happened in Atlanta because Atlanta was the heart of the metro area.”
Today, the city’s population represents less than one-tenth of region largely because of growth outside the city. That means ability to be transformational has become more diffused.
“There are challenges with being able to maintain the Atlanta Way – all sides coming together to do big things,” Perry said.
Escobar said a lot of cities are defined by their natural topography. But Atlanta is “incredible” because it is a place where “people have been able to achieve here that they probably would not have achieved anywhere else in business and civic life.” In short, because Atlanta is a crossroads – be it railroads, highways, the airport or the internet – “people are coming here because they have something to do bigger than maybe where they came from.”
(Interestingly, none of the panel members were Atlanta natives, and two emigrated to the United States – Perry from Antigua and Escobar from Colombia.
Savitt asked what the region can to do help the people who have been left behind.
“It seems to me that we sometimes rush to the conclusion, and maybe we need to step back and do a little more listening,” said Franklin, adding that creating a “sense of community requires collaboration and partnership.”
Perry said the region needs to revive the sentiment that existed decades ago – in Atlanta, you not only have to pay your office rent; you have to pay your civic rent.
Escobar said that when he moved to Atlanta he and his family were struggling.
“I’m in that small percentage that have come from below the poverty line. but now I own two businesses,” he said. “That’s not because I’m awesome. It’s because, frankly, a lot of people who owed me nothing gave me opportunities time after time.”
How can Escobar’s story be replicated? A theme that keeps bubbling up is the lack of upward economic mobility in the Atlanta region.
Metro Atlanta used to be 49th out of the 50 major regions when it came to upward economic mobility. Charlotte was 50th. Then the Charlotte region coalesced the community to tackle the problem. Last fall, Charlotte went from 50th to 38th; and Atlanta went from 49th to 50th.
One of Atlanta Way 2.0’s “Calls to Action” is to help galvanize the region around changing that dismal ranking. On Sept. 25, the nonprofit will hold “Atlanta Way Day.” The topic of upward economic mobility will take the center stage. Sherri Chisholm of Charlotte’s Leading on Opportunity – the group shepherding the initiative – will share how Charlotte improved its standing. Then a group of key Atlanta leaders will give a local response.
As you can tell, Atlanta Way 2.0 has made great strides since September 2021.
Early on, Ann Cramer, our board chair, creatively described people who joined the movement as “activators.”
We already have more than 750 activators who have pledged to make connections, to welcome new Atlantans, to build bridges, to give compassion to folks who are facing challenges and to encourage success.
We welcome everyone to “Join the Movement” and become part of Atlanta Way 2.0.
Note to readers: It has been an honor to launch Atlanta Way 2.0 along with my colleague Britton Edwards and all the amazing board members, honorary co-chairs and community partners. We are just beginning!
To view the June 23 Atlanta Rotary meeting, please click here.
