By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on June 27, 2014
The Piedmont Park Conservancy board has selected Mark Banta as its new president and CEO to run the 25-year-old organization starting July 1.
Banta, who has been serving as the Conservancy’s chief operating officer since January, spent 16 years (from 1996 to 2012) as the general manager of Centennial Olympic Park.
By Maria Saporta
As she formally opened the new Center for Civil and Human Rights in downtown Atlanta, former Mayor Shirley Franklin called it “just a step” along the city’s way towards justice and freedom.
“We believe we are just starting,” Franklin told the crowd of hundreds of dignitaries and well-wishers who braved the stifling heat to be part of the historic opening. “Some people see this as an end. We the people who love freedom, as did Nelson Mandela, understand that this is just a step along the way.”
The step, however, was shared by a host of civil rights legends and supporters of Atlanta’s newest destination.
“Atlanta, it’s time to wake up.”
So began my column in the July 19, 2004 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
I serendipitously ran across that column – “Civil Rights museum a natural for Atlanta” – a few months ago. Upon reading the column nearly a decade later, I was pleasantly amazed at the challenge I had thrown out to Atlanta and how the Atlanta community ultimately responded to that challenge.
So here we are as the Atlanta unveils its newest destination to the world — the Center of Civil and Human Rights — holding its Grand Opening Celebration on June 23.
Political lightning can be tricky to judge. You can’t always tell from the following thunder how close it has struck.
Last Tuesday evening there was a bright flash over Virginia, and the thunder that followed it reverberated across the country. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s defeat at the hands of an unheralded college economics professor, David Brat, was quickly pronounced the greatest political upset, ever. By many standards — the difference in money spent, polls, the fact that a majority leader had never been defeated in a primary — there was justification for that claim.
Earlier I wrote of the anniversaries this year of some significant events in the American civil rights story, moments that bear discussing as we welcome the long-awaited opening of the Center for Civil and Human Rights here in Atlanta. And I began describing how small victories in the civil rights struggle led to real change and to more struggle, paving the way for a remarkable moment in the history of the movement as well as the state: that of the Albany Movement.
Two years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court (which made the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional), the surprise victory of the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott catapulted into international notoriety Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the icon of a community deep in the South whose courage in the face of threats to life and limb radiated commitment and strong leadership.
Without men, you can’t spell menstruation. And that’s as far as most men want to read about this subject. But local men like Nathan Hilkert are manning up to encourage other men to pitch in for Days for Girls, a volunteer effort that targets a big barrier to educating girls in developing countries. When they have their periods, they miss school. Days for Girls prepares and delivers reusable feminine hygiene kits.
Men and boys play an incredibly important role in tackling the taboos around menstruation that isolate and weaken girls and help lead to sexual exploitation and violence.
Center for Civil and Human Rights will boost conventions and tourism, serve as a forum for issues such as diversity, human trafficking and oppression
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on June 13, 2014
As the new Center for Civil and Human Rights prepares for its unveiling on June 23, it already is being woven into the business fabric of Atlanta.
By Guest Columnist JON McCULLOUGH, executive director of BlazeSports America
Atlanta’s Olympic legacy has not just been about buildings and landmarks but it’s also been about the longstanding impact it has set in motion.
In discussing the merits of Atlanta’s Olympic Games on this site in recent weeks, a key element that must not be forgotten is Atlanta’s Paralympic legacy — it is one that has continued to grow since the flame was doused for the last time on August 25, 1996.
The influence and the legacy of the Atlanta Paralympic Games has reached far beyond Georgia.
I commonly use a ridesharing service around town and, when possible, while traveling.
It wasn’t until a recent trip to Savannah that I realized how accustomed I’ve become to using them. When getting out of a cab on River Street, I nearly forgot to pay the driver, instead thinking my card had already been charged as it would if I were using Uber or Lyft.
Uber, leading the ridesharing pack, just received a remarkable $18 billion valuation. Venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, whose early startup portfolio included Facebook and Airbnb, has put its money behind Lyft.
At age 63, C.S. Lewis had written his last book and was facing the end of his life, already one of the most influential writers of his era. Now 63, just as he has for nearly four decades, Atlanta actor Tom Key will bring the renowned British academic, novelist and theologian to life once again next week.
Key will reprise his one-man show, “C.S. Lewis On Stage,” at the Theatrical Outfit starting June 19. The show will run until June 29. Lewis renounced his Christian faith and then reclaimed it. And through his radio broadcasts, writing and speeches, he inspired others to take a look at what they believed and why.
By Guest Columnist TRACY HOOVER, president of the Atlanta-based Points of Light, the largest organization in the world dedicated to volunteer service.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.”
In a matter of days, more than 4,000 leaders in volunteering and service from around the world will gather in Atlanta to share ideas, learn from each other and – as you might expect in Dr. King’s hometown – serve together.
At Points of Light and Hands On Atlanta, I’ve seen our city of volunteers in action: planting trees along the Atlanta BeltLine, tending community gardens in vacant lots, tutoring children in afterschool programs and serving meals to the homeless.
By Maria Saporta
One of Atlanta’s legendary leaders in public relations — Norman Wolfe — has passed away. Wolfe was a co-founder of the prestigious public relations firm – Cohn & Wolfe — now a global communications firm.
“It is with great sadness that I share the news of the death of Cohn & Wolfe’s co-founder, Norman Wolfe,” Stephen M. Brown, managing partner of Cohn & Wolfe’s Atlanta office, wrote in an email this morning.
It is difficult for many born after 1965 to imagine what life was like in the South before the “freedom movement,” which is exactly what the civil rights crusade was.
Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a mere fifty years ago, life in the segregated South was risky, even fatal, for those who crossed the line of racial mores engraved in law and social customs.
Felt by everyone and in every dimension of life, the danger of disregarding segregation affected persons of all color, gender, and age. Any attempt at change to this bedrock of social order, from any quarter, by anyone, became a threat to the South’s way of life and was immediately responded to.
Some economic indicators just don’t make sense and that adds to the uncertainty of forecasting this phase of the economy, a leading Atlanta economist said Thursday.
Rajeev Dhawan, of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University, wondered, for example, how the construction industry could have added jobs in the first three months of the year, when the region was paralyzed by two ice storms.
“Construction was so strong in February; that is a mystery to me,” Dhawan said, before concluding that he is “gingerly betting on growth” in the regional and state economy.
By Maria Saporta
The business relationship between the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce and the Metro Atlanta Chamber began a healing process Thursday when Hala Moddelmog was invited to speak at the 1818 Club on Satellite Boulevard.
The healing is being made possible because there is now new leadership in place at both organizations, leadership that does not have a history of competition and a struggle for power.
Not many people realize that the proposed health care reforms of the Clinton administration and President Obama’s national healthcare plan have roots in the term of a former African American Secretary of Health and Human Services who served under a Republican president.
That information is only one of the revelations to be found in Breaking Ground: My Life in Medicine (University of Georgia Press, 2014), coauthored by Dr. Louis W. Sullivan and David Chanoff.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on May 16, 2014
PHILADELPHIA – A delegation of 111 metro Atlanta leaders, who just returned from a study mission to Philadelphia, learned how Drexel University hopes to bridge its campus with its surrounding community by building over rail yards near the 30th Street Amtrak train station.
The air quality in metro Atlanta is showing significant improvements in terms of a reduction in the amount of fine particulates, according to a preliminary report by GRTA.
The number of “good” air quality days reached a preliminary figure of about 50 percent in 2013, the best year on a chart that shows years going back to 2004. The air quality index hovered in the mid 60 percentile range from 2012 back to 2009.
If the preliminary findings stand, the region will meet the stricter air quality standards the federal EPA imposed in December 2012. Metro Atlanta’s improvements coincide with the great recession and a number of rules implemented by Georgia.
This commencement address was delivered by Jamil Zainaldin at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia, on May 3, 2014.
This is an important day for graduating seniors. It marks the completion of the requirements for a bachelor’s degree. You are about to walk out the doors of this college and into the waiting arms of the world.
And what kind of world is that? Let’s take a quick survey. First, the difficult part: we have poverty, here and abroad. We have war. We have various kinds of inequalities and unfairness. Today we have competition — plenty of competition — in the world marketplace, and that brings its own kind of pressure to bear on U.S. companies and workers.
There’s good news, too, about our world. We’ve experienced in recent years amazing breakthroughs in science, medicine, and public health. And we are seeing great strides in human rights and equality that have their roots right here in Georgia and the civil rights movement of the last century. And we might add, at long last.
Atlanta has won the first round of the legal fight over its authority to issue more than $278 million in bonds for the future Falcons stadium.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville ruled last week in the city’s favor. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s office issued a statement saying the mayor was “pleased” with the outcome.
However, the city cannot issue any bonds during the 30-day period during which the opponents can appeal the court ruling. Opponents said Sunday they are weighing their options and previously have said they would appeal an unfavorable ruling. They already have delayed a sale that was on a fast track in February.
