It's Halloween night. I haven't bought a costume, I've just woken from a nap with a headache, and I know nobody here who's throwing a party. I may as well go out and eye the nightlife, just so I can claim not to be a total shut-in. However, as I am personally committed to keeping this a daily blog, I simply can't leave without making a post.
Atlanta is a truly scary place, or, for fans of Hallmark, "spooky." This is partly due to the insane overall crime rate. The barren, soundstage feel of most of the city after dark adds to the fearful atmosphere. This city may just be scariest, however, for job seekers--it took me eleven months to find the first job that I currently have, and if I hadn't been in school, it most likely wouldn't have happened.
The scariest thing about Atlanta, despite our city's horrid countenance on paper when compared with others, is that no amount of negativity, nor of positivity, can prepare a newcomer for life here. Atlanta is a very surprising place. One could live next to a homeless shelter and down the street from the Atlanta City Jail, and be within walking distance of one of the chillest nightlife neighborhoods in the city. One could end up commuting from Downtown to Sandy Springs, or from Sandy Springs to Downtown, or one could work from home in, say, a five-story apartment building designed to lovingly embrace one of our many colorless limited-access highways. One could be a socially inept college kid raised in the suburbs and have not one, but two jobs Downtown; one could likewise have many friends and lovers, a Master's degree, and fail to find decent work. One could find that MARTA, one of America's most maligned transit systems, actually functions as an acceptable replacement for a car intown.
This is what restores my hope, even on my gloomiest days, in the city where I was born. Atlanta, rather than being easily definable in words, is one shock to the system after another.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
The Shelter That Wouldn't Die
I probably should have expected to see Occupy Atlanta occupy the Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter, officially known as the Metro Atlanta Task Force For The Homeless. Still, I didn't think their support for the Task Force would prove so intimate.
I was happy to see the occupiers in Woodruff Park for as long as they were. Having an activist presence that is not in any was corporately funded or promoted is highly refreshing, and helps to remind Atlantans and visitors that we are a real city, with real inhabitants, who have real beliefs. This urban moonscape, as it was constructed, can sometimes belie the reality of human existence here, let alone the real suffering of those who have fallen afoul of monolithic capitalism, and a simple assertion of civil defiance brings a necessary realist jolt to the local, national and global discourse.
Let me make it known, however, that I am no admirer of this particular homeless shelter. It was bad enough that, when I lived a third of a mile away in 2008, I would witness petty thieves scouring paid parking lots near the shelter, not even trying to hide their actions. Crack baggies formed a speckled layer over the nearby sidewalks of Peachtree Street. Sometimes the homeless would wait at the door of my building to beg people entering and leaving. But it got still worse than that. The complete free reign given the shelter's inhabitants, to continue using drugs (which requires money, which for them necessitates theft) and to stay there indefinitely, has killed most nearby business on Peachtree since I moved out of the neighborhood three years ago. Django, Mick's, and their neighbors are all gone, except for one barbershop and Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffles, where the wait to enter on the weekends is still more than an hour long (and the food is still fantastically indulgent). Bear in mind, also, that Emory Crawford-Long (whoops, Emory University Hospital Midtown) is directly across the street from this row of now-empty storefronts.
I am furious at megabanks and other corporate scavengers for the damage they have wrought on American lives, and Occupy has rightfully directed anger at them for this. The business casualties of Peachtree-Pine, however, were no such malefactors; indeed, they gave ordinary people a reason to be in this part of town (what is it called? South Midtown? SoNo?). Beyond that, any institution that warehouses drug-addicted homeless men without any definite time limit, does not force them to get help for their addictions, and refuses to pay its water bill for several years until Friday, or so they say, is no good citizen.
I have a question for Mayor Reed, to which I honestly couldn't guess the answer: Why are you being so conciliatory all of a sudden towards the Task Force?
I was happy to see the occupiers in Woodruff Park for as long as they were. Having an activist presence that is not in any was corporately funded or promoted is highly refreshing, and helps to remind Atlantans and visitors that we are a real city, with real inhabitants, who have real beliefs. This urban moonscape, as it was constructed, can sometimes belie the reality of human existence here, let alone the real suffering of those who have fallen afoul of monolithic capitalism, and a simple assertion of civil defiance brings a necessary realist jolt to the local, national and global discourse.
Let me make it known, however, that I am no admirer of this particular homeless shelter. It was bad enough that, when I lived a third of a mile away in 2008, I would witness petty thieves scouring paid parking lots near the shelter, not even trying to hide their actions. Crack baggies formed a speckled layer over the nearby sidewalks of Peachtree Street. Sometimes the homeless would wait at the door of my building to beg people entering and leaving. But it got still worse than that. The complete free reign given the shelter's inhabitants, to continue using drugs (which requires money, which for them necessitates theft) and to stay there indefinitely, has killed most nearby business on Peachtree since I moved out of the neighborhood three years ago. Django, Mick's, and their neighbors are all gone, except for one barbershop and Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffles, where the wait to enter on the weekends is still more than an hour long (and the food is still fantastically indulgent). Bear in mind, also, that Emory Crawford-Long (whoops, Emory University Hospital Midtown) is directly across the street from this row of now-empty storefronts.
I am furious at megabanks and other corporate scavengers for the damage they have wrought on American lives, and Occupy has rightfully directed anger at them for this. The business casualties of Peachtree-Pine, however, were no such malefactors; indeed, they gave ordinary people a reason to be in this part of town (what is it called? South Midtown? SoNo?). Beyond that, any institution that warehouses drug-addicted homeless men without any definite time limit, does not force them to get help for their addictions, and refuses to pay its water bill for several years until Friday, or so they say, is no good citizen.
I have a question for Mayor Reed, to which I honestly couldn't guess the answer: Why are you being so conciliatory all of a sudden towards the Task Force?
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Police Priorities?
I was ill for almost the entire month of October, and in the midst of recovery I have nearly become a shut-in. I was brashly awoken by the Susan G. Komen breast cancer marchers headed north on Central Avenue, shouting such delightfully clever phrases as "Hey hey! Ho ho! Cancer's got to go!" Still, I fell back asleep, and only woke just before 4 PM. It's moments like these when one realizes that one's life is out of order.
Just before 7, I forced myself out of my apartment, to remind myself that I was alive and that I had a full weekend to myself. I walked to No Mas! Cantina and spent a fortune on food, tequila and beer. Too timid to chat up the impeccably-dressed young women to my left, I sauntered home, feeling satisfied. Though I would have rather little to write about here, I felt proud of myself for leaving the apartment like a normal member of society.
As I passed the Garnett MARTA station, the tone of the evening changed. A stocky man of about thirty was calling out to me from the long pedestrian entry to the station, across the street: "Hey! How you doin'? Wassup man?" Knowing that such random salutations after sundown usually come from drug peddlers, I feebly grunted a standard reply and kept walking. Another man, this one decidedly more geriatric, asked if I was cold in my t-shirt, then offered to sell me some green. I politely declined. Not fifty feet ahead, another, fatter salesman offered me coke and weed. I used my (light) drunkenness as a reason that I didn't need any such thing. After the last syllable left my mouth, a Fulton County police car sped southbound across Pryor Street.
Would you believe that this homeless shelter is three blocks from the almost three-year-old Atlanta Public Safety Headquarters building? How is it that the Atlanta Police can deploy up to 150 officers to arrest peaceful protestors, about 9% of the total police force, but open drug sales in the shadow of their headquarters are untouchable?
Just before 7, I forced myself out of my apartment, to remind myself that I was alive and that I had a full weekend to myself. I walked to No Mas! Cantina and spent a fortune on food, tequila and beer. Too timid to chat up the impeccably-dressed young women to my left, I sauntered home, feeling satisfied. Though I would have rather little to write about here, I felt proud of myself for leaving the apartment like a normal member of society.
As I passed the Garnett MARTA station, the tone of the evening changed. A stocky man of about thirty was calling out to me from the long pedestrian entry to the station, across the street: "Hey! How you doin'? Wassup man?" Knowing that such random salutations after sundown usually come from drug peddlers, I feebly grunted a standard reply and kept walking. Another man, this one decidedly more geriatric, asked if I was cold in my t-shirt, then offered to sell me some green. I politely declined. Not fifty feet ahead, another, fatter salesman offered me coke and weed. I used my (light) drunkenness as a reason that I didn't need any such thing. After the last syllable left my mouth, a Fulton County police car sped southbound across Pryor Street.
Would you believe that this homeless shelter is three blocks from the almost three-year-old Atlanta Public Safety Headquarters building? How is it that the Atlanta Police can deploy up to 150 officers to arrest peaceful protestors, about 9% of the total police force, but open drug sales in the shadow of their headquarters are untouchable?
Friday, October 28, 2011
Atlanta's Transportation Tax: Why I'm Voting 'Yes'
You may or may not have read about a certain one percent sales tax that has been proposed for metro Atlanta. This would fund transit and highway improvements across ten metropolitan counties (specifically, Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton, Cobb, Gwinnett, Douglas, Fayette, Henry, Cherokee and Rockdale), and, as unpopular as the idea of added taxation always seems to be in this country, it is being heavily promoted by the Atlanta Regional Commission and has the support of the mayors of Atlanta and Norcross. Many other regional politicians are either ambivalent about or adamantly opposed to the tax, for various reasons. Many transit advocates have planned to vote against it because some proposed transit lines, such as an eastward expansion of MARTA's Blue Line and a light rail line to Cobb County, recently lost their place on the list of projects to be funded by the tax. Transit skeptics and anti-tax advocates are likewise prepared to vote against it, some actually attempting to stop it from coming to a vote.
Why am I, a college student who can barely afford an increase in the price of anything, voting for this tax? I'm a transit advocate, and I have been since I discovered, as a young teenager, that other lifestyles exist beyond driving uncountable miles per month and stewing, slowly losing one's health and will to live, in heavy traffic. This is the first time since 1971 that the entire Atlanta region has considered a vote to fund any mode of transportation not related to the automobile, and though roughly half of the funding list has been given over to road projects, that's noticeably less than their usual 100%. The bombshell, for me, was the Clifton corridor transit line between Lindbergh Center and Emory University. It takes a bit of digging to find mention of it, but it's on the final project list, and it has been described as a new heavy rail MARTA line.
If this vote fails, which I fear it will, we won't have another chance for quite a while. After all, it's not easy to bring so many mayors and county commissioners into the same room, let alone spend years narrowing down a list of projects, then spreading awareness of a vote that happens on a date with which most voters are unconcerned. The will to try again won't be there.
So what's the big deal? Pretend you're on the board of directors of a large multinational corporation with offices in Atlanta. It's 2013, and Atlanta's voters have demonstrated that they would rather save on groceries than pay for an alternative to some of the United States' worst traffic congestion. Workers continue to come in late, day after day. You fire some of them. Others quit because they cannot sustain their commute with what you pay them. Then, another city with either lighter traffic or better public transit offers a hefty incentive for you to relocate your company's Atlanta offices. What would you do? Better yet, imagine that your company has no offices in Atlanta, but is considering establishing some in any given southern city. Would you choose Charlotte, where light rail extensions are underway? Would you choose Nashville, where suburban-to-urban commuter rail actually exists? Or would you choose Atlanta, a region that, now resembling Tetsuo's mutant form, is perfectly content that way and vehemently resists change?
What happens when corporations leave? Paid positions leave. The city's income gap widens further as fewer residents are employed. Recent college graduates leave at an accelerating pace, eliminating what would have been contributive gains to the health, culture and intellectual wellsprings of Atlanta. Conventions that regularly met in Atlanta leave, and potential incoming conventions avoid the city, siphoning yet more money from the local economy. Restaurants and stores close, the zoo and museums raise ticket prices, and services such as sanitation and park groundskeeping decline in frequency. Fewer people fly into the airport, depriving the city of landing fee revenue, and routes to Atlanta are discontinued, leading to peripheral job losses extending far beyond the region geographically.
The city becomes quieter and noticeably more "dead" with passing months. Because of drastic declines in revenue, Atlanta city government eliminates emergency personnel. Crime of all sorts increases, and slowly, the death toll rises from slower ambulance and fire brigade responses. The suburbs experience large numbers of job losses from this fallout, but because of the relatively isolated nature of these environs, neighbors do not immediately notice. Despite a plateaued or declining population, suburbs begin to turn inward to justify their existence, with mixed success.
This cycle continues until it has reached terminal velocity.
Currently, the vote is scheduled for July 31st, 2012, though supporters are still trying to reschedule it for the Presidential election.
Why am I, a college student who can barely afford an increase in the price of anything, voting for this tax? I'm a transit advocate, and I have been since I discovered, as a young teenager, that other lifestyles exist beyond driving uncountable miles per month and stewing, slowly losing one's health and will to live, in heavy traffic. This is the first time since 1971 that the entire Atlanta region has considered a vote to fund any mode of transportation not related to the automobile, and though roughly half of the funding list has been given over to road projects, that's noticeably less than their usual 100%. The bombshell, for me, was the Clifton corridor transit line between Lindbergh Center and Emory University. It takes a bit of digging to find mention of it, but it's on the final project list, and it has been described as a new heavy rail MARTA line.
If this vote fails, which I fear it will, we won't have another chance for quite a while. After all, it's not easy to bring so many mayors and county commissioners into the same room, let alone spend years narrowing down a list of projects, then spreading awareness of a vote that happens on a date with which most voters are unconcerned. The will to try again won't be there.
So what's the big deal? Pretend you're on the board of directors of a large multinational corporation with offices in Atlanta. It's 2013, and Atlanta's voters have demonstrated that they would rather save on groceries than pay for an alternative to some of the United States' worst traffic congestion. Workers continue to come in late, day after day. You fire some of them. Others quit because they cannot sustain their commute with what you pay them. Then, another city with either lighter traffic or better public transit offers a hefty incentive for you to relocate your company's Atlanta offices. What would you do? Better yet, imagine that your company has no offices in Atlanta, but is considering establishing some in any given southern city. Would you choose Charlotte, where light rail extensions are underway? Would you choose Nashville, where suburban-to-urban commuter rail actually exists? Or would you choose Atlanta, a region that, now resembling Tetsuo's mutant form, is perfectly content that way and vehemently resists change?
What happens when corporations leave? Paid positions leave. The city's income gap widens further as fewer residents are employed. Recent college graduates leave at an accelerating pace, eliminating what would have been contributive gains to the health, culture and intellectual wellsprings of Atlanta. Conventions that regularly met in Atlanta leave, and potential incoming conventions avoid the city, siphoning yet more money from the local economy. Restaurants and stores close, the zoo and museums raise ticket prices, and services such as sanitation and park groundskeeping decline in frequency. Fewer people fly into the airport, depriving the city of landing fee revenue, and routes to Atlanta are discontinued, leading to peripheral job losses extending far beyond the region geographically.
The city becomes quieter and noticeably more "dead" with passing months. Because of drastic declines in revenue, Atlanta city government eliminates emergency personnel. Crime of all sorts increases, and slowly, the death toll rises from slower ambulance and fire brigade responses. The suburbs experience large numbers of job losses from this fallout, but because of the relatively isolated nature of these environs, neighbors do not immediately notice. Despite a plateaued or declining population, suburbs begin to turn inward to justify their existence, with mixed success.
This cycle continues until it has reached terminal velocity.
Currently, the vote is scheduled for July 31st, 2012, though supporters are still trying to reschedule it for the Presidential election.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
The Problem with King Reed
There's nothing like an inflammatory post title to get things started, I always say. I am, however, rather inflamed at the sudden authoritarian swing of the mayor's office regarding Occupy Atlanta.
As far as I can see, the movement has been rather aggressively paused by the Atlanta Police. By this, I mean that Occupy has yet to regroup elsewhere. It might even appear to some that this was the outcome, not just the simple clearing of Woodruff Park, for which Mayor Reed was hoping. After all, despite the ugly, latent racial tension across town that was ignited during his electoral standoff with a white woman, he owed at least some of his victorious fraction of a percentage point to our city's business community. He was tactful, amicable towards state Republicans and willing to be the yes-man for corporate Atlanta, who obviously would have little sympathy for those who protest their behavior.
Is this powerful influence upon Reed's office the reason that more than two officers were deployed for every protestor almost 48 hours ago? It's not hard to believe. Local executives would, as a group, be far more upset by a gathering of socialists, hippies and general skeptics of the financial industry than by open prostitution, mugging and murder in less visible parts of the city. A less theatrical distribution of officers would leave fewer openings for those criminal acts which are truly harmful to society (and, yes, corporate executives are part of society), but it wouldn't make for a grand statement, packaged and ready for media distribution.
I visited Woodruff Park on Monday night, when the threat of mass arrest was looming. The protestors were friendly, calm and mostly rational; they never behaved in a way that would justify the comically large group of officers that would descend on the park the following evening, or the rage directed at the park's media liaison, Tim Franzen. According to somebody I met who is a friend of Tim, Mayor Reed was shouting at the top of his lungs and pounding his table on Saturday, while threatening arrests that very night (mercifully proving that Atlanta is not an absolute monarchy). Tim was more than a little shaken afterward.
There are aspects of Kasim Reed's mayorship that I can admire. He has not openly antagonized us white Atlantans as his friend Bill Campbell did. He appointed an APD veteran of more than thirty years as Police Chief, rather than somebody from another horribly corrupt police department who only wanted a paycheck, as his friend and promoter Shirley Franklin appointed. If Mayor Reed does not come to decide that we, ordinary Atlantans, are less important than members of the Maynard Jackson dynasty and the directors of corporations in town, it is time for a new mayor who not only believes that we are equally important, but, indeed, sees himself or herself as one of us.
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