When Noel Khalil moved to Atlanta in 1983, chasing development deals on the affluent north side of Atlanta seemed as natural to him as it was unusual to the white men who dominated the industry in that part of town.
After closing a few deals in the northern suburban counties of Atlanta, Noel was surprised when the secretary of Atlanta’s most prominent African-American developer called to say her boss, Herman Russell, wanted Noel come to his office for a meeting.
Southern Republicans are coming to their Pogo moment.
Back when they were a persecuted minority in states across the South, Republicans used to wail about the corruption and arrogance of the Democrats, at their blatant abuses of power and craven self-aggrandizement.
Now the Republicans are riding high, and looking forward to riding higher with the new legislative and congressional maps aimed at cementing their control. Republican presidential candidates swear their affection for grits, and Southern Republican legislators feel secure enough in their seats to quarrel with Southern Republican governors.
Yet all does not rest well within the region’s now solidly majority party. They have met the enemy, and to paraphrase Walt Kelly’s Okefenokee critter, they are them.
By Chris Schroder
Chuck Leavell leads a musical life that most guys would trade everything to have – playing keyboards for the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton the Allman Brothers and later next month with John Mayer – but his Moment was one all the ladies will love.
Now at age 59, looking back on all that rock ‘n’ roll, Chuck really wants to talk about his true loves: his wife, family and his deep abiding care for the environment, support for which he is spending an increasing amount of his time and treasure.
If you’ve seen Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed give a speech over the past couple of years, you’ve probably heard his pitch about how important the deepening of the Savannah River is to Atlanta’s future.
For Reed, deepening the Port of Savannah’s channel to accommodate the larger ships soon to be coming through the Panama Canal is key to the development of the region, and thereby to the future health of our city.
If the mayor is correct, events took a fateful turn last week. Reed and other supporters of the Savannah harbor-deepening project now find themselves hostage to something with which they are ill-prepared to cope, namely, politics in South Carolina.
This is really the story of a sort of three-legged sack race, prompted by the Panama Canal expansion to be completed in 2014, and the lure of the riches to be gained by accommodating the larger container ships coming in its wake.
It should be so simple.
Establishing a regional transit governance structure and tweaking the MARTA Act to make the transit system more functional should be no brainers.
But when sound ideas are placed in the hands of some members of the General Assembly they somehow become distorted, convoluted and warped with political baggage.
Then when people and institutions object to proposed bills have been drafted with flawed thinking rather than common sense, those bills often just die on the vine and nothing gets done.
By Chris Schroder
For more than 20 years, Bill Nigut was a mainstay of Atlanta’s WSB-TV’s political coverage and it looked like he would end his career there – until the day in 2002 when his Leadership Atlanta class walked into a non-profit taking care of international refugees in Clarkston. That was the Moment that changed his life.
“Compared to what those people are doing in Clarkston, all I do is blab on television every day,” he thought. “I really need to make a change. I need to get across the wall that separates reporters who are observers from the leaders who are making a real difference in our community.” Today he’s Southeast director of the Anti-Defamation League.
By Guest Columnist JERE WOOD, mayor of the City of Roswell
Metro Atlanta needs more than a one-cent transportation sales tax to recover from the recession and regain its position in a competitive world. We need to work together as a region, not independently, to meet our transportation, water and other regional challenges.
To act as a unified region, we need leaders with the authority to speak for the region.
Who has the authority to speak for metro Atlanta?
As I watch Dr. Evelyn Wynn-Dixon glide into her stride, telling her life story, I try to brush away a nagging premonition that we might soon see her firing up a Monday night crowd at a national political convention – but then again, other people’s premonitions is how she ended up in the mayor’s chair of Riverdale, Georgia.
Evelyn was driven to find a way out of her situation for both her and her children and serves now as an inspiration to her seven grandchildren and others who meet her.
The two men, connected by a last name and DNA, separated by two generations and different dreams, together reflected on the forces that have driven their family.
Driven Jimmy Carter past national vilification for his presidential failures, driven him into the humanitarian work that has changed the world, and driven his grandson to appreciate the example set by the older generations – especially the women behind the men.
Challenges continue to mount for the proposed 1 percent sales tax for transportation, which is up for a vote in exactly 24 weeks.
In Congress, a new debate is starting over a transportation funding bill described by its Republican sponsors as the most sweeping reform plan since 1956. It could reduce the amount of federal money available to help pay for projects on metro Atlanta’s $6.14 billion list.
At the state Capitol, pending legislation could delay a sales tax referendum for at least two years. Even then, a sales tax vote could be called only if Georgia voters first agree to amend the state Constitution.
At the grassroots level, the campaign that’s to urge voters in metro Atlanta to approve the sales tax is still taking shape. The original campaign budget of $6 million to $8 million evidently has been revised. A spokeswoman said Monday the team is not ready to reveal its fundraising goal or how much money has been raised.
Steve Nygren’s decades-long work amidst the rolling farms and forests of Chattahoochee Hill Country in south Fulton County is akin to a sculptor carefully studying each sliver of stone before slicing it from an eventual masterpiece.
Steve’s Moment occurred in 2000 when he and his daughter were jogging along the property line and their bucolic run was disturbed when they came upon bulldozers tearing down trees in the forest next door. Many in his situation would have shrugged their shoulders and planted a long row of leyland cypress. Others might have bought a different farm, further from Atlanta. Steve decided to stay and fight. His life changed, again, that instant.
Numbers speak loudly on Transportation Referendum Voters in the Atlanta region have the opportunity to pass a referendum on July 31 that would raise $8.5 billion through a one percent sales tax to fund transportation projects across the region. Based on the list of priority transportation improvements developed by a Regional Transportation Roundtable of local […]
If a boss in Philadelphia hadn’t called Chris White into his office one moment 35 years ago, hundreds and perhaps thousands of men in Atlanta would be a lot more spiritually adrift today. Count me as one of them.
Within a few years, a hundred men were walking into an Atlanta restaurant at 7am each Friday to hear Chris lead them through a a few passages of the Bible. Chris can look back on a brilliant case study of word of-mouth marketing, counseling men to be leaders in the office and servants to their wives and children at home.
Last week’s story of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure cancer charity’s hasty retreat from its new policy excluding Planned Parenthood from funding followed what in the past few months has become a familiar arc.
Like Bank of America’s abandonment of its announced debit card fee, the Netflix retreat from its bivalved pricing system, and the reversal of fortunes for the SOPA/PIPA anti-piracy bills in Congress, that arc was a very short one. An aroused universe of customers/contributors/online users emerged quickly and a blast of media exposure forced the organizations involved to reverse themselves.
Certainly, these examples speak to the already well-understood power of the internet to focus a firestorm of negative attention, sometimes on subjects as passing as a singer’s performance on Saturday Night Live. But they may point to something deeper, a new wrinkle in a culture already molded by the requirements of rapid response.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, January 27, 2012
KIPP Metro Atlanta — a charter school nonprofit organization that has been focused on middle school and high school students — will launch its first elementary school in July.
By Maria Saporta
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said Wednesday that he has problems with the recommendations of the Regional Transit Governance Task Force. Reed was one of the members of that task force.
The recommendations that have been put in a draft bill include several issues that could be detrimental to the Atlanta region, and especially its largest transit system — MARTA.
“I’m going to be calm and thoughtful, but at this point I don’t have a very favorable view of the bill,” Reed said. “I have real unreadiness about it.”
Ben Dempsey says of his lifelong battle against overeating,
“I had done all kinds of strange diets, like eating tofu straight for six weeks, but when I lost 30 pounds, I would gain 40. At the rate I was going, I would have weighed 420 pounds today.”
From his work in physical therapy, he knew change was possible if he could just slip that elusive mental switch.
The economic downturn has been tough on millions of Americans and 24-year-old Atlantan Josh Starks was just one of the recession’s many casualties. By the afternoon of October 13, 2010, Josh said he had “pretty much lost everything that I worked hard for in life. You name it I lost it, or had to get rid of it to pay a bill or because I couldn’t find any work.”
When he woke up that Wednesday morning, Josh didn’t plan on that being his last day on the planet and he certainly didn’t plan to be on that night’s TV news, attracting headlines around the world.
To view Josh Starks’ Moments HD video, click here.
How disappointing.
After months and months of study, the Transit Governance Task Force has come up with recommendations that are unacceptable — especially for residents in Fulton and DeKalb counties who have been investing in MARTA for the past four decades.
Gov. Nathan Deal’s transit task force has recommended making GRTA responsible for all transit operations in the state – except MARTA, according to a report made public Wednesday.
The proposed legislation (available here) is included in the report and is more than 50 pages long. The proposal significantly rewrites Title 50 of the Georgia Code, which creates the structure for GRTA – the Georgia Regional Transporation Authority.
The draft legislation specifically says the authority will not have control over MARTA. But it does say that MARTA may sign an agreement with GRTA and would gain more flexibility over its spending if such an agreement existed.
