Category: Archived Columnists

“Patience, grasshopper,” was the tone last week at an Urban Land Institute (ULI) panel discussion titled “Downtown: Community or Amenity?”

Downtown Atlanta is most often seen as a tourist center within the city’s largest central business district — but a further look reveals there is more than meets the eye.

According to Central Atlanta Progress (CAP), compared to the rest of the city, downtown has the largest concentration of jobs, the largest share of college students, and with five hospitals, is the medical hub of Atlanta.

In its four square miles, are a number of distinct communities including Fairlie-Poplar, Luckie-Marietta and South Downtown. Census data reflects a 48 percent increase in the average family income of downtown residents over the past decade– which should be a clear sign of the need to cater to the needs of the community.

For over two centuries, the United States has been bound together by founding documents that defined who we are as Americans, and they served as our compass through every type of change, President Barack Obama asserted in a speech last week at the National Defense University.

The hour-long speech touched on a number of topics including a brief historic account of the numerous terrorists’ attacks on Americans in the 1980s and 1990s – a clear reminder that we have faced threats and assaults long before September 2001.

In the spring of 1983, Regan Administration dealt with the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed 17 Americans, and just a few months later suicide bombers attacked Marine barracks killing 241 serviceman.

There is something liberating about casually strolling down the middle of Peachtree Street as out-of-towners standing on the sidewalk gesture with an air of perplexity.

Rain aside, hundreds of Atlantans joined together this past Sunday to celebrate another Atlanta Streets Alive, the first on our city’s signature street – Peachtree.

From downtown to Midtown, families and friends walked, cycled and skateboarded up and down the street sans cars. Along the nearly three-mile route were food trucks, outdoor games and plenty of familiar faces greeting each other and sharing in the communal spirit of Atlanta Streets Alive.

“At first I didn’t think about college. I just wanted to get out of high school…but after I graduated I realized that wasn’t enough,” stated Kristy Williams.

Williams, a 2006 graduate of Booker T. Washington High School and the first of her family to earn a high school diploma remarked during a Project GRAD Atlanta panel discussion at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema following a recent screening of First Generation — a feature-length documentary following four California high school students hoping to break the shackles of poverty by pursuing a college degree.

Shot over three years, the documentary captures the struggles of these four students — Dontay, the inner city athlete; Soma, a fatherless Samoan; Jess, a straight A student afraid to leave her small town behind and; Cecilia, the fiercely independent track star and daughter of migrant workers.

Transportation for America, a Washington, D.C.-based organization pushing for 21st century transportation infrastructure improvements across the country, recently announced nineteen states have put forth plans — some have already failed to pass —  to raise revenue for transportation projects.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley successfully lobbied the state’s General Assembly to pass a 20- cent increase to the gas tax phased in through year 2016. In the future, the gas tax will be indexed for inflation. Dubbed the Maryland Transportation Infrastructure Investment Act, the legislation will also impose a 3 percent sales tax on gasoline purchases. The two revenue models are expected to raise $4.4 billion over six years.

After the bomb blasts, the graphic photos of dismembered runners being carried to medics leaving behind a red-stained Boylston Street, and the subsequent manhunt for the two brothers who brazenly committed a grim act of terror, only one thought remains in the minds of the American public.

Bring Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to justice.

It has only taken a few days for our political leaders to find a way to divide a virtually unanimous public. We want justice while it seems they want talking points. The primary question at hand is should the United States treat Dzhokhar as an unlawful enemy combatant under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 or receive the legal rights granted a naturalized American citizen.