I was riding the 1 today to the Atlanta location of what turned out to be a pleasant but fairly pricey pizzeria. A man boarded at Five Points and asked the obliging female passengers where he could buy a specific fashion magazine, to take with him to his home country of Zambia.
I was struck by how far this man had traveled simply to be here. When I was born, Atlanta had perhaps a modest Korean and South Asian population, but no more exotic migration than that. Coincidentally, later that same year, we were stupefyingly awarded the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Due to corporate drama, my family had moved out of state in 1995, so unfortunately, I remember literally nothing of this once-only event but Izzy erasers given out to us in Sawnee Elementary.
We moved back to the area five years later, and, over the years, I noticed Atlanta's immigrant population steadily grow. It captivated and thrilled me; my staidly Southern hometown was now an international destination. The reasons for moving here from Seoul or Tallinn are, of course, up for lengthy discussion, but there were more varieties of people in our neighborhoods than just us Americans. I believe that immigration has made our city much richer, and it has obviously made us more prominent in the world.
What I want to know is when, or if, we can regain the enthusiasm of 1996. Atlanta boosterism seems to me to have largely died out over fifteen years, killed by both real and illusory forces in town. We need to see the return of the same drive that got the MARTA Act passed, gave the world 24-hour television news, built the world's busiest airport (operated until the Olympics by robotic overlords), and elected the first black mayor of a major American city. After all, apathy never really benefitted anybody, let alone 423,000 anybodies.
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