Author Archives: Lyle Harris

Witnessing the downward spiral of the Atlanta Journal- Constitution reminded me how it felt watching my father die. I wanted him to keep fighting for his life, but it seemed he’d just stopped trying.

I can only hope that’s not happening at the AJC.

Vincent Grover Harris passed away two years ago. He’d been in faltering health and, at one point, my family was faced with a decision that’s painfully familiar to children with aging parents; whether to move him out of the comfortable home where he lived with my Mom into a medical facility some distance away where he’d get better care.

We visited several places, but deep down, we knew moving him wouldn’t make much difference. We’d never cheat death but, perhaps, we hoped it would buy us more time.

It was a wrenching choice and it seems the situation may be just as grave for the city’s biggest and oldest daily newspaper.

A week ago, my colleague Maria Saporta, broke the story that the AJC was considering a move from its gritty downtown headquarters on Marietta Street to the sanitized Perimeter Center office complex in suburban DeKalb County.

On Monday, Michael Joseph, the newspaper’s publisher du jour, essentially confirmed Saporta’s earlier account; the building that has been a fixture in the heart of the city since 1972, and the paper which had been based there for more than 140 years, would be decamping for the Perimeter by mid-2010.

History proves that an occasional revolution is good for the soul. In fact, they can be critical to our society’s survival.

Not very long ago, “going green” was dismissed as a passing fad promoted by aging hippies, tree-huggers and assorted cranks. No longer. Nowadays, the Green Revolution has become mainstream. Suddenly it seems everyone is jumping on the cleaner, greener bandwagon – and that’s a good thing.

But in metro Atlanta and elsewhere, the green movement hasn’t been especially popular in communities of color.

Although there’s sparse research on the subject, a 2004 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that support for environmental regulations was lower among African-Americans and Latinos than it was for other ethnic groups.

There may be some solid reasons for the racial disconnect according, to Van Jones, founder of a Oakland-based organization called Green for All.

In a 2007 article for the magazine “Color Lines,” Jones said, “Too often (Blacks and minorities) have said: ‘We are overwhelmed with violence, bad housing, failing schools, excessive incarceration, poor healthcare and joblessness. We can’t afford to worry about spotted owls, redwood trees and polar bears.”‘

Jones went on to explain why he believes that racial dynamic is changing.

“Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath taught us that the coming ecological disasters will hit the

As a father, I know exactly how much it stings to be told by a seemingly insensitive (but candid) teacher that the precious fruit of your loins isn’t keeping up with the rest of the class.

After the instinctive impulse to defend your kid washes over you, the inevitable second-guessing and self-blaming kicks in:

‘If only I had played Mozart instead of Jay-Z when she was still in the womb,’ you ask yourself.

‘That’s it. No more Nintendo in this house!’ you declare unconvincingly.

And then there’s my all-time favorite: ‘How is she ever going to get into Harvard now?’

Granted, it has been awhile since I’ve had to grapple with my kids’ academic shortcomings and my own gnawing parental deficiencies.

But I confess to getting that familiar punch-in-the-gut sense of failure all over again after scanning “Smarter Cities” a recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The NRDC, a non-profit, environmental advocacy group that does credible work, has ranked the American cities that have successfully implemented “smart growth” strategies.

As I plugged Atlanta’s name into the study’s online search tool, I was disappointed to find we weren’t counted among the smartest of the large cities.

Even worse, Atlanta didn’t make the list at all.

Ouch.