Alfred “Shivy” Brooks Age: 37 Occupation: Teaches economics, personal finance, and government at Charles Drew High School in Clayton County. Residence: East Atlanta Community work: Founded Teachers for Good Trouble. Member of NAACP Atlanta and The People’s Uprising, a nonprofit organization of elected officials, community residents, and college students. Don’t call Alfred Brooks a community organizer. “I’m a community change agent,” […]
Category: Atlanta Civic Circle
Posted inDemocracy
Organizer profile: Eldredge Washington
Eldredge Washington Age: 31 Occupation: Entrepreneur, podcaster, and producer Residence: Atlanta’s West End Community work: Founder and executive director of Motivated Adults Developing Excellence (MADE). Protesting police killings. Saving long-forgotten black graves from the crush of bulldozers. Helping a toddler secure a much-needed kidney. Eldredge Washington has spent the last dozen years speaking up for people who can’t. Some days that […]
Posted inDemocracy
Organizer profile: Hannah Joy Gebresilassie
Hannah Gebresilassie (aka Hannah Joy) Age: 30 Occupation: Journalist Background: Daughter of Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees who came to the United States in the 1980s. Residence: metro Atlanta Community work: Founded the Promote Positivity Movement in 2018. She also is involved in Optimize the Vizion; Justice for Georgia; and Habeshas Vote. It is the middle of the afternoon on an overcast Thursday in March. Hannah […]
Posted inHousing Affordability
Planned downtown high-rise to bring affordable apartments for teachers
A 31-story tower expected to sprout downtown is poised to deliver more than 400 apartments marketed to Atlanta’s educators and senior citizens. Developed by developer RBH Group and designed by S9 Architecture, the high-rise is slated to feature 229 rentals that could one day be packed with educators and other intown school employees, as well […]
Posted inHousing Affordability
Why it’s so complicated for Atlanta to punish scofflaw property owners
More than a few local leaders think Atlanta’s laws are too lax for folks who sit on properties and let them decay, hoping they’ll one day be worth a pretty penny. Blight certainly isn’t rare in Atlanta, especially on the city’s Westside and Southside. It’s also not easy to get these properties — eyesores of boarded-up homes, […]
Posted inHousing Affordability
Atlanta mayor says density-focused zoning changes could be “scaled down”
The City of Atlanta’s ongoing zoning code update, which planning department officials have said would make the city more welcoming to truly dense development, might not be as drastic as urbanists and housing affordability advocates had hoped, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Wednesday during a Zoom discussion hosted by Leadership Atlanta. “It’s a process,” Bottoms said, […]
Posted inHousing Affordability
Atlanta’s emergency housing assistance program to accept new applicants next week
At long last, the City of Atlanta is set to begin accepting new online applications for emergency housing assistance funds. In December, the city closed its online application portal for the federally supported program that provides households financially encumbered by the COVID-19 pandemic with money for rent, utility bills and other housing-related costs. Officials said they were […]
Posted inDemocracy
Georgia vs Colorado: Who does voting better?
This summer, Coloradans will enjoy the economic fruits of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, thanks to Georgia’s controversy over how it plans to handle future elections. In a last-ditch, good-riddance jab, Gov. Brian Kemp in an appearance on Fox News blasted MLB’s decision to leave Georgia for Colorado saying both states have similar voting regulations. So who’s […]
Posted inHousing Affordability
Surge of applications swamping metro Atlanta rent relief programs
A flood of applicants scrambling for housing assistance amid the pandemic seems to be overwhelming the government programs that distribute the money. “Some jurisdictions, of course, have just cut off their [online] portal processes while they process applications that are already in,” said David Whisnant, housing director at the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA), […]
Posted inHousing Affordability
Atlanta aches for crackdown on absentee property owners, blight contributors
While luxury high-rises sprout like weeds in Atlanta’s wealthier neighborhoods, many of the city’s underprivileged communities remain littered with run-down, boarded-up residences. Concentrated on Atlanta’s Southside and Westside, many of those dilapidated properties are uninhabited — not to mention uninhabitable. Sometimes, that’s because those homes belonged to longtime Atlantans who have passed away and perhaps left the […]
Posted inDemocracy
Georgia’s new election reform law pits democracy against dollars
The fight over how Georgia will conduct future elections has gone straight for the wallet. Major League Baseball, the nation’s oldest professional sports league, pulled its prestigious All-Star Game and Draft out of Atlanta in protest of a new voting law. MLB’s departure will strip metro Atlanta businesses of millions of dollars in revenue. If anyone had […]
Posted inDemocracy
MLB yanks All-Star game from Atlanta in protest of Georgia’s new elections law
Major League Baseball threw Georgia an economic curveball Friday in protest of the state’s new controversial election law. The professional baseball association announced it will move the 2021 All-Star Game and MLB Draft, which was set for Atlanta this summer, to another yet-to-be-determined city. The decision to move the All-Star Game was “the best way […]
Posted inColumns
The nation’s focus has been on Georgia, for way too long; the voting law won’t help that much
Big Media’s searching eye is, in fact, quite lazy. It drifts familiarly over Washington and New York, with an occasional glance toward bad weather or civil unrest in the hinterlands. Only rarely is its gaze trained on one place for as long as it has been, over the past several months, on Georgia.
Posted inHousing Affordability
Cobb County’s $22.8 million rental assistance program debuts today
Yet another metro Atlanta government has launched a program to help people financially affected by the coronavirus pandemic get housing help. On Thursday, Cobb County opened the online application page for its $22.8 million rental assistance program, which is supported by federal COVID-19 relief dollars. This program adds to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) […]
Posted inDemocracy
Ga. Senate to take up protest bill on last day of legislative session
A driver who plows into a crowd of protestors blocking a street and injures or kills several people before driving away would conceivably be protected from prosecution while the protestors who blocked the street would face felonies. And if you’ve ever participated in any form of civil disobedience, you can kiss your chances of working […]
Posted inHousing Affordability
As CDC extends eviction moratorium, 11,000 landlord-tenant filings float in Fulton County limbo
A Trump-era stay on eviction proceedings has again been extended, affording a little extra breathing room for the millions of Americans threatened with displacement amid the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it would extend the federal eviction moratorium, which was set to expire on Thursday, until at least June […]
Posted inDemocracy
Game-changing probation bill headed to Gov. Kemp’s desk
Georgians interminably entangled in the parole system may finally have a chance at getting on with their lives through an early end to probation under a bill headed to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk. Senate Bill 105 creates a uniform path to getting more Georgians serving supervised felony probation quickly through the system and out of the […]
Posted inDemocracy
Lawsuits against Georgia’s new controversial voting law mount
Legal challenges against Georgia’s new law governing voting procedures are ramping up in earnest. Six multicultural civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against the state Sunday night to block enforcement of SB 202, an omnibus bill signed last week by Gov. Brain Kemp that some argue suppress voting rights in the state. The plaintiffs, which include the […]
Posted inColumns
The next election won’t be like the one the voting bill is based on
By Tom Baxter If they had been thinking more about the next election than the last one, the voting bill passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp might have been a lot different. The last election was a contest of giants, with Georgia playing a prominent (though not decisive, as some now […]
Posted inDemocracy
Georgia voting rights fight heads to court
Georgia’s battle to overhaul its elections process is headed to court. Hours after Gov. Brian Kemp signed a sweeping, controversial elections bill into law Thursday, voting rights groups filed a lawsuit in federal court in Atlanta. The 35-page complaint says minority voters will be harmed by the new legislation, which, plaintiffs say, illegally suppresses voters’ rights and […]
