Healing the divide: Matt Westmoreland and Liliana Bakhtiari offer hope

A community divided. 

The plans for a new public safety training center have polarized Atlanta into two camps – those for and those against.

That was evident during a confrontational Atlanta City Council meeting that began at 1 p.m. June 12 and lasted for nearly 17 hours, with an overwhelming number of speakers passionately arguing against what they have labeled “cop city.”

Just before 6 a.m. the following Tuesday morning, the Atlanta City Council voted 11-4 in favor of funding the public safety training center being built on the site of the old Atlanta Prison Farm – a move met by an onslaught of boos.

Surprisingly, the whole ordeal has brought some members of the Council closer together.

I reached out to two City Council folks – Matt Westmoreland and Liliana Bakhtiari – to see if we could digest what happened to get us to this divided place and suggest ways to bring the community back together.

Westmoreland and Bakhtiari were the perfect pair for this conversation. They are both Atlanta natives. They are both 35. They are both gay. And they are close friends and colleagues.

Westmoreland voted for the center. Bakhtiari voted against it.

“Matt and I come from two very different worlds,” Bakhtiari said referring to her Iranian American heritage and her career in social justice and crisis relief work.

Bakhtiari was elected to Atlanta City Council District 5 in 2021 after losing a race for the same seat by only 247 votes in 2017.

“I tell people all the time that Matt is my sibling,” Bakhtiari said. “I love him. Does he get on my nerves? Absolutely.”

Westmoreland grew up in the intown Morningside community and worked for Teach for America after graduating from Princeton. In 2013, Westmoreland was elected to the Atlanta Board of Education when he was only 26, before being elected as a citywide council member in 2017 and re-elected in 2021.

“Lillie and I have a relationship that’s increasingly built on candor and truth,” Westmoreland said, adding that he genuinely loves her and their friendship. “She keeps me true to my roots.”

The three of us got together this past weekend, in two different visits totaling four hours, when they shared their reflections on what went wrong and how we can help make it right.

Both agreed there had been a void of city leadership on the building of public safety training center, and the Atlanta Police Foundation stepped in to fill the void. A press release announcing the project in March 2021 “kind of caught people off guard,” Westmoreland said.

Both agreed the process was flawed from the beginning. 

“I very much felt like the public was gaslit,” said Bakhtiari, who was then on the outside looking in. “The pandemic didn’t really allow for real public engagement.” Plus, “the information changed almost weekly,” which led to a lack of public trust.

Both agreed the city needs a new training center. 

But looking back, they believe the city should have more publicly considered alternate sites and invited the community to weigh in.

Instead, the city, with the backing of the Atlanta Police Foundation, introduced legislation “with the location already decided,” Bakhtiari said. “The prison farm site was presented as a done deal.” 

The community surrounding the site believed the land was slated to be greenspace – the centerpiece of the South River Forest concept that had been adopted in the 2017 Atlanta City Design plan. 

“There are countless ways the process went sideways,” Westmoreland said.

Seeing the wedges in the community, Bakhtiari said she “begged to be a resource” and work on solutions as soon as she joined Council. “At every turn, I was completely blocked,” she said.

Bakhtiari, who described herself as being heartbroken, had issues with folks on both sides.

“The opposition was hijacked by people on the fringe,” she said. “I’m comfortable with protesting. ‘I don’t condone the use of violence, threats, stalking or intimidation.”

On the other hand, she doesn’t “equate this to domestic terrorism. The use of those words is very scary.”

Plus, the killing of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, a climate change protestor, aggravated the situation – especially given the numerous questions still surrounding their death. 

“We should have put everything on pause the day of the shooting,” Bakhtiari said. 

To make things worse, there was a raid at the home of three protestors, who were charged with money laundering and labeled domestic violent extremists.

“Based on information shared with the public so far, the raid was super troubling,” said Westmoreland, who also felt the domestic terrorism charges for some of the protestors were excessive.

“I empathize with the protesters. Their pain is visceral,” Bakhtiari said. “When people don’t have hope or faith in the democratic process, people take actions manifesting in the very thing we are trying to avoid.”

Both agreed that the controversy is not going away despite the 11-4 vote. There’s a petition drive for a referendum vote, and there are potential lawsuits.

“There are people who have totally lost faith, and we are actually creating a more divisive community,” Bakhtiari said. “The movement was hijacked in some instances by people on the fringe. I fully support the right to protest, and I encourage debate. But what I do not condone are threats, retaliation and overt efforts to intimidate anyone for having a different point of view. Community is at the crux of everything we do in local government. For the Atlanta Way to prove successful, we have to get to a place where we view each other as neighbors rather than the opposition.”

So, what can be done to help bridge the divide?

“There needs to be public acknowledgment of what happened with someone who was shot and killed,” Bakhtiari said. “People are believing different realities.”

“I do deeply believe the city absolutely owes people an apology for the way this has been handled, which has broken a great deal of trust,” Westmoreland agreed.

That said, Westmoreland said: “I don’t know how we can bring people in our community back together.”

Still, the relationship between Westmoreland and Bakhtiari gives me hope.

Explaining his yes vote, Westmoreland said he weighed the facts and how he could make the project better. “I’m by nature trying to make things better,” he said. “I’m always trying to get to yes.”

Bakhtiari also has been trying to improve the situation.

“We are aligned much more than we’re not,” Westmoreland said of Bakhtiari. At the same meeting as the training center vote, Bakhtiari – working with environmentalists, and Westmoreland – working with the administration, were able to get a unanimous resolution passed for the City of Atlanta to help fulfill a $100 million transformation of the South River Forest, urging the Mayor’s office to deliver an implementation plan by Dec. 1.

The council also passed several amendments – disallowing helicopters, prohibiting use of non-City entities without Council approval and revising the site plan based on all 15 recommendations from the community stakeholder committee. 

Westmoreland said the tactics of some of the protestors at the council meeting were not effective in getting him to change his vote. He has been subjected to death threats and harassment. 

“For the better part of 17 hours, it was the most emotionally charged and intense room I’ve ever been in,” he said. 

During the meeting, Westmoreland’s admiration and respect for Bakhtiari only grew. Bakhtiari tried to make sure people’s voices were heard. And when the situation grew increasingly tense, Bakhtiari walked into the thick of it, trying to deescalate the situation.

“There might have been riots and arrests if Lillie hadn’t been a hero,” Westmoreland said.

Both Westmoreland and Bakhtiari feel the city’s civil rights reputation has taken a hit nationally and internationally over the way the public safety training center has been handled. But they are both intent on trying to heal the community.

“It is very hard to have a conversation about how we can heal because there’s so much emotion involved,” Bakhtiari said. “The healing process can’t just be dictated by the facts.”

“The project has taken on a life of its own far beyond what it actually is,” Westmoreland said. 

Then looking to Bakhtiari, he said: “We have got a relationship that can withstand tension because, at the end of the day, we have so many other things to work on together.”

And that gives me hope for Atlanta.