Speaker 1: Happy Monday, and we have a very special Monday episode.
Speaker 1: We're doing a return of our Shitty Mayor Monday episodes
Speaker 1: for this Monday, June whatever the day. It is, twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: during the sixth week of action in Atlanta to stop
Speaker 1: Cop City, so that is ongoing. We're recording this is
Speaker 1: slightly ahead of times so we can release it during
Speaker 1: the week. So we don't know what exactly how exactly
Speaker 1: things are going to get this report.
Speaker 2: Nobody's been arrested so far, everything's gone great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sure. So yeah, we don't quite know what
Speaker 1: the first kickoff rally is going to be quite yet,
Speaker 1: but we do want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: a certain mayor for this Shitty Mayor Monday. And I
Speaker 1: have convinced Matt from the Atlantic Community Press Collective to
Speaker 1: do my work for me this episodisode by writing probably
Speaker 1: too many words about may Or Andre Dickens.
Speaker 2: It was only a little over what you told me
Speaker 2: to write.
Speaker 1: That's good. That's good, that's good. So yeah, let's hear about.
Speaker 1: Let's hear about mister Dickens. Man to take take it away.
Speaker 2: All right? So Andrea to Shawn Dickens was born June seventeenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four. The younger of two children. His mother
Speaker 2: divorced Dickens's birth father before he was born, but stepfather
Speaker 2: adopted him and his sister when Dickens was seven. Working
Speaker 2: as an airline mechanic, Dicken's stepfather taught him how to
Speaker 2: take things apart and put them back together, creating an
Speaker 2: early interest in engineering for young Andre. He grew up
Speaker 2: in Adamsville neighborhood, which went to Benjamin E. Mays High School,
Speaker 2: which is in southwest Atlanta. Dickens says the neighborhood kids
Speaker 2: were rough around the edges, As he told Atlanta Magazine
Speaker 2: and quote, we fought often, but when the fighting escalated
Speaker 2: to bats and brass knuckles, he changed course and turned
Speaker 2: to baseball in books in instead. At age sixteen, Dickens
Speaker 2: decided that he wanted to be mayor after watching then
Speaker 2: Mayor Andrew Young. This is about the time he also
Speaker 2: met Shirley Franklin, whose son he played baseball with. Franklin
Speaker 2: was Mayor Young's chief administrative officer at the time and
Speaker 2: spent time mentoring Dickens as a teenager. She would also
Speaker 2: go on to become mayor herself.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Andrew Young, I know that name because that's
Speaker 1: the street where the hard Rock Cafe is.
Speaker 2: The street where the hard Rock Cafe is. He went
Speaker 2: on to become an ambassador ambassador to the hard Rock
Speaker 2: to the hard Rock Cafe. That's also where the Swat
Speaker 2: vehicle hung out.
Speaker 1: Across the Hooters exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very notable street in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: After a week long Minorities Interested in Technology and Engineering
Speaker 2: program at Georgia Tech this summer before his senior year,
Speaker 2: someone from the program handed him an application to Georgia Tech,
Speaker 2: which he filled out while waiting on his mom to
Speaker 2: pick him up. Tech was the only college that Dickens
Speaker 2: applied to.
Speaker 1: Huh. I mostly know Georgia Tech as the place that
Speaker 1: like Raytheon and Lackey Martin go to recruit a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of their employees.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's it's the tech engineering school of
Speaker 2: the South, and all the good weapons manufacturers need to
Speaker 2: get their good Southern engineering. Yeah, he did not go
Speaker 2: that route, but it is kind of rare for black
Speaker 2: politicians in general to come from schools outside of the HBCUs.
Speaker 2: We've got that like big HBCU district here in Atlanta
Speaker 2: can explain what that is perfectly. Historically black college and universities.
Speaker 2: There are a group of them in kind of just
Speaker 2: off downtown Atlanta in an area called the Atlanta University Center,
Speaker 2: so they're all kind of together in that area, and
Speaker 2: that is where most of our elected officials who become
Speaker 2: mayor come from. Dickens is only the second mayor since
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four not to graduate from one of those HBCUs.
Speaker 2: But Dickens did join Kappa Alpha Psia, historically black fraternity
Speaker 2: when he went to Tech and was a member of
Speaker 2: the student government, kind of keeping his dream of being
Speaker 2: mayor alive. But after graduations he Brewefly left the state
Speaker 2: before returning home in two thousand and two to take
Speaker 2: care of his ill mother. This is around the time
Speaker 2: that he started his public service career and he joined
Speaker 2: NPUD NPUs our neighborhood Planning units. Atlanta is broken up
Speaker 2: into twenty five of these neighborhood units and they're each
Speaker 2: given a letter of the alphabet, so they are advisory
Speaker 2: boards that give input to the city, but they can
Speaker 2: issue like zoning variances, and some MPUs have built up
Speaker 2: like considerable power over their neighborhoods. So this is where
Speaker 2: a lot of people like first plug into Atlanta government.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's like, is this like really like the
Speaker 1: zoning board process?
Speaker 2: And yeah, if you need to get approval to have
Speaker 2: a bigger awning than you're supposed to have, you got
Speaker 2: to go through the MPU to get it.
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay, So I'll consider that for when I
Speaker 1: want to expand my awning.
Speaker 2: Yes you're onning or build your onning.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: At this point, Dickens and his sister also founded a
Speaker 2: business called City Living Home Furnishings. And the company is
Speaker 2: exactly what it's a for interest furniture store if you
Speaker 2: found the furniture store. In an interview with Georgia State
Speaker 2: University later in his life, Dickens reflected that this is
Speaker 2: where he determined that he needed to act rightly to
Speaker 2: ensure his good reputation.
Speaker 1: What furniture store teach him this lesson?
Speaker 2: Oh well, he said, Imagine I'm on TV saying trust me,
Speaker 2: and all the people would have to do is call
Speaker 2: the Atlanta Journal, Constitution or radio and say your furniture
Speaker 2: was trash. Sure history to somebody who are all these
Speaker 2: places that you know, you've really got to be consistent.
Speaker 2: It's what he said, and you know, it turns out
Speaker 2: now I have to know, Wow, spoiler, he goes bankrupt.
Speaker 2: It turns out the AGAC wouldn't be much of a
Speaker 2: problem for Dickens, as we've learned years later, that paper
Speaker 2: would be on his side, bobbing those easy questions and
Speaker 2: helping him build support for cop City. So, like I said,
Speaker 2: the family business failed in twenty ten, you can't actually
Speaker 2: blame Dickens for it was a product of the of
Speaker 2: the Great Recession.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I wonderf we can still find any of
Speaker 1: his furniture lying around.
Speaker 2: So there's there's actually a store called City Living Home
Speaker 2: Furnish Furnishing. And I don't know if.
Speaker 1: It's like somebody just laid little or Yeah.
Speaker 2: I tried to look it up and I couldn't like
Speaker 2: figure out if it was just somebody using the same
Speaker 2: name or not. But there's one that exists in like
Speaker 2: West Midtown.
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh boy, sorry, we're gonna I'm gonna get a
Speaker 1: lot of comments from people in Atlanta down because you
Speaker 1: said a West Midtown, west Side or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it, it's a it's a Southwest Piedmont. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: There's there's also so no like south of North. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we have all these these fun little little street or
Speaker 2: neighborhood names. But so after the failing business, he changed
Speaker 2: course and went to GSU for a master's of Public
Speaker 2: Administration in economic Development.
Speaker 1: So this was after twenty ten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after twenty ten. In twenty eleven he uh started
Speaker 2: attending his master's program at Georgia State University, and then
Speaker 2: he graduated in twenty thirteen, just in time for the
Speaker 2: municipal election season. So Atlanta City Council, as we've learned now,
Speaker 2: is comprised of twelve district seats and three city wide
Speaker 2: seats or what we call at large seats, and so
Speaker 2: Dickens ran for Post three against an incumbent named h
Speaker 2: Lamar Willis. Dickens kind of historically when he has these campaigns,
Speaker 2: either has really good fortune or good insight in choosing
Speaker 2: his opponent or opponents. A month prior to the election,
Speaker 2: Willis was disbarred after the Georgia Supreme Court found that
Speaker 2: he violated numerous professional conduct rules, including it in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, placing a settlement money from a child
Speaker 2: injury case into his personal bank account instead of giving
Speaker 2: it to the parents. Wait really, yes, this guy is
Speaker 2: now back in Georgia government.
Speaker 1: He is.
Speaker 2: He's part of the Beltline that makes sense management program.
Speaker 2: So this happened earlier this.
Speaker 1: Year, stealing money from injured children.
Speaker 2: I think he gave it to the child eventually. But
Speaker 2: you're supposed to put these in like escrow accounts and
Speaker 2: not in your.
Speaker 1: Own account, your personal account. No, so.
Speaker 2: Former Mayor Sureley Franklin indoors Dickens in the twenty three race,
Speaker 2: or former Mayor Surely Franklin indoors Dickens in the twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen race, which drew iron attacks by both Willis, who
Speaker 2: called Dickens out for his bankruptcy of the furniture business,
Speaker 2: and what Willis alleged was quote unlawful use of Georgia
Speaker 2: Tech government property. So on the bankruptcy, Dickens went in
Speaker 2: to about a million dollars in debt and had some
Speaker 2: tax lines against him, which he's now discharged through both
Speaker 2: bankruptcy and settling the tax lines. But the unlawful use of.
Speaker 1: Georgia Tech Georgia government property, what is that I have
Speaker 1: no idea.
Speaker 2: I don't know what they I searched pretty hard to
Speaker 2: try to find it, and I can't, like other than
Speaker 2: Will willis making the claim.
Speaker 1: I found no evidence like a computers like what is.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming like, you know, probably something like he went
Speaker 2: to a computer lab and used it off hours for
Speaker 2: some personal, weird business. But yeah, I found nothing that
Speaker 2: actually really backs up the claim against him. So he
Speaker 2: won the election in November with fifty three percent of
Speaker 2: the vote, which is surprisingly strong victory for like a
Speaker 2: relatively unknown candidate like Dickens was at the time. During
Speaker 2: his first term twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen, Dickens worked
Speaker 2: pretty quietly, but towards the end of his term he
Speaker 2: started to introduce legislation make a name for himself. So
Speaker 2: he created a forty million dollar affordable housing bond, as
Speaker 2: well as a study to raise the minimum wage for
Speaker 2: city employees to fifteen dollars an hour, which ultimately led
Speaker 2: to the city enacting that wage. Dickens ran for his
Speaker 2: second term unopposed, so naturally he won.
Speaker 1: So that's twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Now we're twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one, and this
Speaker 2: is where the story starts to get interesting. We'll see
Speaker 2: the themes that will play out in his first you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of years as mayor.
Speaker 1: Well and we will learn about that story after these
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Speaker 1: strumming away on my on my electric gold plated bass.
Speaker 2: Doesn't sound good. It doesn't sound like it's supposed to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Danell, cut cut out all of the all of
Speaker 1: the bad bass. Actually, I can go get my accordion
Speaker 1: and play that instead if you want.
Speaker 2: Let's not all right?
Speaker 1: Well continue.
Speaker 2: So we're in twenty eighteen now. So in twenty normal year,
Speaker 2: completely normal year for Atlanta. Nothing happened anywhere else in
Speaker 2: the world. One of the biggest conversations that was going
Speaker 2: around in Atlanta in twenty eighteen revolved around an area
Speaker 2: of downtown called the Gulch. So this is the area
Speaker 2: that's surrounded by most of our sports team venues, kind
Speaker 2: of like where Centennial Olympic Park is, and the streets
Speaker 2: are all elevated in that area around above ground level
Speaker 2: and at the bottom of the ground level, it's like
Speaker 2: these early twentieth century like railway lines, but it's mostly
Speaker 2: parking lots for those those to the stadiums for the stadiums.
Speaker 2: And it's known as the Gulch because you know, kind
Speaker 2: of which is a break in the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, looks look it's like a gulch kind.
Speaker 2: Of so back in it's like a coach.
Speaker 1: Ooh wow.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty twenty, twenty twelve, then Mayor Cassimri presented
Speaker 2: an idea to give a Los Angeles based firm a
Speaker 2: million dollars to build the Gulch into a mixed use
Speaker 2: high rise area. The legislation finally passed in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: but Andrea Dickens voted against it, saying directly that there
Speaker 2: wasn't enough focus in the development plans on housing affordability,
Speaker 2: and this helped cement Dickens's reputation as a housing affordability advocate.
Speaker 1: And yeah, because he also did that forty million dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just did that forty million dollar bond and
Speaker 2: we'll we'll have some more affordable housing stuff later. But
Speaker 2: you know, I should say, we're like five years on
Speaker 2: now and the gulch hasn't be gone. But they're they're
Speaker 2: trying to get it done. But before the World Cup
Speaker 2: comes in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're also it seems like they've been preoccupied with
Speaker 1: another another construction, construction project that's getting much more of
Speaker 1: the mayor's attention, which oddly does not have anything to
Speaker 1: do with affordable housing.
Speaker 2: No, it just not. Dickens also introduced legislation that led
Speaker 2: to the creation of the Atlanta Department of Transportation, which,
Speaker 2: if I'm being fair, was a good idea and pretty
Speaker 2: necessary to help address bennis decaying road infrastructure and proven
Speaker 2: No the roads, you're fine, Yeah, so you you drove on,
Speaker 2: you complained when when we had this last week of
Speaker 2: action about decap Avenue and all the potholes. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that is now repaved. That got repaid. It is a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago. They're in the process of repaving it.
Speaker 1: So the infrastructure working. It's my favorite part. My new
Speaker 1: favorite part is Moreland. Is that usually around Moreland's drive
Speaker 1: there's an area where where you're trying to get to
Speaker 1: the Wanti Forest that just is always constantly flooded no
Speaker 1: matter what. And that's my favorite area of Atlanta.
Speaker 2: And I hear that if you get rid of a forest,
Speaker 2: that will improve.
Speaker 1: Flood helps it flooding because there's more space for the
Speaker 1: dirt to soak in water.
Speaker 2: Exactly. That is how that works. It is science. So
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, Dickens introduced legislation to create a task
Speaker 2: force to decide how to repurpose the Atlanta City Detention
Speaker 2: Center or ACDC, which is really weird. Every time I
Speaker 2: hear ACDC, I think.
Speaker 1: Of this thing.
Speaker 2: It's jail, and everybody else is talking about something entirely different.
Speaker 2: So it was built in nineteen nineties leading up to
Speaker 2: the Olympics and replaced an older jail that now serves
Speaker 2: as our primary homeless shelter.
Speaker 1: So that's what ACDC is now.
Speaker 2: It's called the Gateway Center. Now that was the old jail.
Speaker 2: ACDC is the current jail.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: So in a press release, after Bottom signed this legislation
Speaker 2: to create the task.
Speaker 1: Force, whose sorry, who's bottoms?
Speaker 2: So from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one, Atlanta had
Speaker 2: a mayor name Lance Bottoms, and she was great and
Speaker 2: did not approve legislation about cop City at all.
Speaker 1: She did not, she did, she did, she did. So
Speaker 1: it was a lot. You just lied.
Speaker 2: I lied.
Speaker 1: You already purposely spread misinformation on my news podcast.
Speaker 2: Okay. So Michael Smith was Bottoms press secretary and also
Speaker 2: currently serving as Dickens press secretary. So he wrote that
Speaker 2: this legislation that authorized the task force actually authorized Bottoms
Speaker 2: to close the jail, but the ordinance did not create
Speaker 2: that authorization, only authorized this task force to recommend future
Speaker 2: uses of the site should it close. And this is
Speaker 2: going to be important. The task force met for about
Speaker 2: a year, but before turning into options, which brings us
Speaker 2: to June twenty twenty. We're going to skip straight over
Speaker 2: there with all of this going on.
Speaker 1: So what was happening in June twenty twenty in Atlanta?
Speaker 2: There were some protests going on which we're gonna key
Speaker 2: in just after the jail fight. But the task force
Speaker 2: offered four options, and the city indicated that was going
Speaker 2: to go with the second cheapest of the four, which
Speaker 2: was redoing the facade of the jail and turning the
Speaker 2: interior into a center for diversions. So instead of having
Speaker 2: a city jail, we would have this multi story diversion center,
Speaker 2: you know, to stop people from going into the criminal
Speaker 2: justice system. And in the middle of the summer of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: This was how is that not just a jail, it's you.
Speaker 2: Don't enter the criminal legal system. Yeah, so you don't
Speaker 2: talk to it. You're not in front of a judge,
Speaker 2: you are not technically arrested. You are given resources, and
Speaker 2: you are given options to you know, attend courses or
Speaker 2: counseling or whatever you need instead of entering like the
Speaker 2: criminal just yeah. And so we have a diversion program
Speaker 2: here called Policing's Alternatives and Diversions or PAD, which operates
Speaker 2: in every zone of the city. And is is you know,
Speaker 2: if somebody gets arrested, like stealing basic subsistance stuff, they
Speaker 2: are supposed to contact PAD and enter them into a
Speaker 2: diversion program where they get help instead of going to jail.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: And it works to the extent that the city of
Speaker 2: or it works to the extent that APD actually does
Speaker 2: contact PAD. And it depends on kind of the zone
Speaker 2: how effective it is. But Basically at this point everyone
Speaker 2: agreed that the jail was going to end its time
Speaker 2: as a carceral space and become this diversion center to
Speaker 2: help people avoid entering the criminal legal system. So put
Speaker 2: it in that that is the plan.
Speaker 1: Okay is during June of twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: During June twenty because, of course, the bigger news of
Speaker 2: the summer of twenty twenty was the George Floyd uprising
Speaker 2: and at that point in Atlanta, the killing of Rayshard
Speaker 2: Brooks by Garrett Rolf at the Wendy's in Southeast Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, after the killing of Brooks, Dickens posted on an
Speaker 2: Instagram saying, quote, I am saddened to start this day
Speaker 2: with news of another black person killed by police, and
Speaker 2: especially dismayed to see it happen in our city. Police
Speaker 2: must de escalate situations like these before they turned deadly.
Speaker 2: Once the suspect fled, unarmed and intoxicated through a parking
Speaker 2: lot of bystanders, this could have become an investigation rather
Speaker 2: than a shooting. So, undoubtedly spurred by the fervor and
Speaker 2: uproar of that summer, Dickens also co sponsored legislation with
Speaker 2: fellow council members Antonio Brown and Michael Julian Bond that
Speaker 2: would prohibit APD from using crowd control munitions in military
Speaker 2: style vehicles against protesters. Okay, This legislation, though, unsurprisingly, went nowhere,
Speaker 2: and we were shot by balls for the rest of
Speaker 2: the summer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they still are using them to this day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But this is also happening at the tail end of
Speaker 1: budget season. So our budget season goes from like March
Speaker 1: to or April to June of every year. And the
Speaker 1: biggest debate in Council that summer was about withholding seventy
Speaker 1: three million dollars or about a quarter of the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Police Department's funding, and so we were actually positioned police
Speaker 1: defund the police. And while the legislation was under debate
Speaker 1: in City Council, thousands of residents called in for public comment.
Speaker 1: This is the only time that i've the only time
Speaker 1: estenment I've seen for this public comment was about seventeen
Speaker 1: hours according to mainline zine.
Speaker 2: I seem to recall it being longer, but around that,
Speaker 2: which is around seventeen.
Speaker 1: Hours, comparable to the last public comment session related to
Speaker 1: cop City.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and comparable even to the first public comment.
Speaker 1: Session about seventeen.
Speaker 2: How yeah, yeah, yeah, So the actual vote happened on
Speaker 2: a especially called Saturday session of City Council. At the time,
Speaker 2: like all other municipalities, Council was meeting remotely through zoom.
Speaker 2: So the actual vote happened on especially called Saturday session
Speaker 2: of City Council. At the time, like all of the municipalities,
Speaker 2: Council was meeting remotely through zoom because of COVID. And
Speaker 2: we're going to play a clip of one of the
Speaker 2: few things that Dickens said during that debate and to
Speaker 2: set the scene. Council Member Dustin hillis one of the
Speaker 2: very pro cop members. Council proposed a much smaller cut
Speaker 2: to the budget in the amount of like a few
Speaker 2: million dollars to remove just quote unquote non essential expenditures
Speaker 2: from abd's budget, sure without risking cutting into actual pay
Speaker 2: for police or the raises to police stalary that Council
Speaker 2: and the Mayor's office previously promised. Because this was a
Speaker 2: special session on Saturday, Dickens was driving around his mother,
Speaker 2: so there's going to be a bit of background noise
Speaker 2: and the quality is not super outstanding.
Speaker 3: And it is now as much as I'm trying to
Speaker 3: figure out a way to support it. If it comes
Speaker 3: down to being two million dollars or three million dollars
Speaker 3: or each five million dollars, it just is so short
Speaker 3: of reimagining. You can't reimagine something that almost three hundred
Speaker 3: million and only take through the bombing and to reimagine
Speaker 3: it right and to kind of think through what all
Speaker 3: needs to be done at the end a strong signal
Speaker 3: that we want reform and we want change.
Speaker 2: What we hear in this clip is Dickens really doing
Speaker 2: what he's going to continue to do for the rest
Speaker 2: of his career, make overtures to the public while still
Speaker 2: ensuring that at the end of the day, the police
Speaker 2: are taken care of. He really wanted APD to know
Speaker 2: that their personal salaries were not only safe, but they
Speaker 2: were going to grow, and he would always be a
Speaker 2: champion of that. So we're going to skip here over
Speaker 2: the copsity vote in twenty twenty one. At this point,
Speaker 2: I think it's been.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this show, you're also probably somewhat there.
Speaker 2: There are several episodes that you can pause here and
Speaker 2: go back and listen to it to kind of catch
Speaker 2: up yes on on how that happened in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: So suffice it to say that Dickens did not fight
Speaker 2: against the legislation in its council phase, and what is
Speaker 2: was one of the ten votes to approve the Cops
Speaker 2: City lease in September of twenty twenty one. If anything,
Speaker 2: Dickens was one of the quieter members of council when
Speaker 2: it came to debating Cops City lease. He didn't really
Speaker 2: say much while the debates were happening. So the last
Speaker 2: few months, of course, of the Cops City fight happened
Speaker 2: during election season, and instead of running for a third
Speaker 2: term as council member, Dickens threw his hat in the
Speaker 2: ring for mayor, which was an open race, with Mayor
Speaker 2: Bottoms withdrawing her candid seat. All the way back on
Speaker 2: May six, a mid rumors that she was on the
Speaker 2: short list to be Biden's nod for VP, which did
Speaker 2: which did not happen, which did not happen. So to
Speaker 2: understand how Dickens won this election, because spoiler, we're talking
Speaker 2: about Mayor Monday, Mayor Dickens, We've got to talk about
Speaker 2: how Atlanta runs its municipal elections and how Georgia election
Speaker 2: law plays out in effect, and who the presumed front
Speaker 2: runners of the race were. First, municipal elections are run
Speaker 2: on a non partisan basis. There are no party primaries
Speaker 2: to weat out weeker candidates to run. All you need
Speaker 2: to do is get the required number of signatures, pay
Speaker 2: the fee, and file on time. So this leads to
Speaker 2: a pretty wide field of candidates than you see in
Speaker 2: most elections. Second is that quirk in Georgia election law
Speaker 2: that everyone is probably familiar with by this point in
Speaker 2: time from the last few national election cycles. In order
Speaker 2: to win Georgia outright, you need fifty percent of the
Speaker 2: vote plus one. If no candidate hits that number, then
Speaker 2: the top two candidates go to a runoff election. The
Speaker 2: state law also applies to any municipal elections for cities
Speaker 2: with the population higher than one hundred thousand people like Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Look Atlanta, which has six hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: So just around five hundred thousand, I think it's like
Speaker 2: four hundred and ninety thousand at this point, but the
Speaker 2: greater metro areas, like the Greater Metro area is something
Speaker 2: like six or seven million. Yeah, So the two front
Speaker 2: runterers of the race were not exactly popular figures. I
Speaker 2: would go so far as to say it, like in
Speaker 2: many cases votes were cast against them, like kind of
Speaker 2: like with Trump, instead of in support of.
Speaker 1: Instead of voting for Biden, you're voting against Yeah.
Speaker 2: So former Mayor Cassim Reid was one of those candidates.
Speaker 2: He left office in twenty seventeen after a second term.
Speaker 2: And then it has this two consecutive term limit, which
Speaker 2: Reid had reached. However, you can run for a third
Speaker 2: term if it's not consecutive.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So during Reid's second term, lawsuits and scandaled propagated heavily.
Speaker 2: Amongst the things that came out during both during and
Speaker 2: after Reed's administration was that Reid made nearly nine hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in illegal bonus payments to staff, had a
Speaker 2: bribery scandal in his office that resulted in an FBI investigation,
Speaker 2: and ensured that airport contracts went to his friends and associates.
Speaker 1: Based a legalist, a legalist demator.
Speaker 2: And to make matters worse for Reid, a month after
Speaker 2: he announced his candid seat, the AJAC release that it
Speaker 2: believed Reid was under investigation for allegations of wire fraud
Speaker 2: for quote using campaign funds to make purchases of jewelry,
Speaker 2: resort travel, lingerie, and furniture.
Speaker 1: I mean that would make sense considering everything else you
Speaker 1: just said. That's not really surprised.
Speaker 2: Then, on the other side was Fleesia Moore, who accurately
Speaker 2: and not was seen by opponents as the face of
Speaker 2: cop City after Joyce Shephard, who introduced the legislation authorizing
Speaker 2: the lease for COPSDY and lost her seat on council
Speaker 2: for that reason. While never forced to do so since
Speaker 2: city council presidents only vote in tiebreakers, More did say
Speaker 2: that she would vote in favor of copsidity if it
Speaker 2: was needed. Then, a week before the election, Felicia Moore's
Speaker 2: campaign Instagram account posted a video with Lee Clevinger, a
Speaker 2: white Republican donor and supporter of Moore's campaign. Clevinger can
Speaker 2: be heard saying all of Atlanta mayor since nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: nine were quote not interested in anything except lining their
Speaker 2: own pockets.
Speaker 1: Hmm, I should know. I feel like this is gonna
Speaker 1: be some Uh.
Speaker 2: Since nineteen seventy four, a black person has been mayor
Speaker 2: every single time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's that's what I was thinking. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that sounds like he's over so well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, More removed the post and return the campaign contribution
Speaker 2: from Clevelander and said later quote, it was an unfortunate
Speaker 2: statement by that constituent, and I should have corrected him
Speaker 2: or walked away.
Speaker 1: Unfortunate statement, not just like fortunate if someone saying something
Speaker 1: incredibly racist.
Speaker 2: So this was the setting that led to election night
Speaker 2: that Tuesday. To everyone's surprise, Dickens eked out a second
Speaker 2: place victory above Read with just under six hundred votes
Speaker 2: for a total of twenty two one and fifty three
Speaker 2: votes for Dickens. More had a much better showing with
Speaker 2: thirty nine two hundred and two.
Speaker 1: But neither of them was over fifty.
Speaker 2: But neither of them broke the fifty percent, so we
Speaker 2: went to a runoff. So during the runoff, More really
Speaker 2: courted conservative Buckhead.
Speaker 1: And Buckhead's like the northern we have more conservative like
Speaker 1: not suburb, but like neighborhood of Atlanta neighborhood.
Speaker 2: It's the one that wanted to turn it into its
Speaker 2: own city.
Speaker 1: Yes, which wanted to get to the kids succession, which
Speaker 1: is built on a whole bunch of legacies of red
Speaker 1: landing in segregation and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So Moore also earned the endorsement of Reed, the.
Speaker 1: Guy who just said the racist thing.
Speaker 2: Guy who know, the former mayor who lost to Dickens
Speaker 2: for second place by about six hundred votes.
Speaker 1: Okay. So I'm trying to keep all these names straight
Speaker 1: here because there's a lot of names coming into my
Speaker 1: head now.
Speaker 2: In a situation that led many progressives in advantage to
Speaker 2: look at the guy who, well, he voted for copstate,
Speaker 2: he still supported closing the jail, was willing to cut
Speaker 2: seventy three million dollars from APD, and had been a
Speaker 2: pretty consistent advocate for affordable housing on cancel On Council.
Speaker 2: So it was between More and that guy. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: progressives made a decision and went for Dickens in the runoff.
Speaker 2: Dickens won by a landside with sixty three percent of
Speaker 2: the votes, so and fifty five votes. Moore actually lost
Speaker 2: thirteen thousand votes from her general election total. Interesting, thus
Speaker 2: Mayor Andre Dickens becomes our next leader. Turn Out for
Speaker 2: the runoff was in line with what we saw four
Speaker 2: years earlier when Keisha Lance Bottom faced off against Scarrison's
Speaker 2: candidate of choice. Mary Norwood.
Speaker 1: Get wait, don't put what do you mean.
Speaker 2: If she runs for Merrigan?
Speaker 1: Right now?
Speaker 2: I misunderstood everything that has happened.
Speaker 1: She's a scary woman.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna So the Norwood Bottoms run off only
Speaker 2: had four thousand more voters than we did in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one's run off.
Speaker 1: So that was the twenty seventeen election. Twenty eighteen elections
Speaker 1: got okay, no, the Mary Norwood, that was the twenty
Speaker 1: Bottoms one. I'm gonna act like I know Atlanta history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: also a US correct you on some of this Atlanta
Speaker 1: history here. That's I feign ignorance to have you explained
Speaker 1: concepts for the audience, making me sound more ignorant than
Speaker 1: I am, but actually then explained to you. I continue,
Speaker 1: Sorry I was.
Speaker 2: We should say that twenty seventeen runoff was actually much
Speaker 2: more evenly matched. Bottoms only one by eight hundred votes.
Speaker 2: So that and that's scary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's scary because Mary Norwood cannot be the mayor.
Speaker 2: So Dickens it's Dickens has said that he won with
Speaker 2: you know, consent to govern, and it's not really stretching
Speaker 2: it when he says that Atlanta has supported him in
Speaker 2: this particular election.
Speaker 1: Yea, with this.
Speaker 2: Particular opponent, we largely did.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: In the interim period, Dickens does the usual things. He
Speaker 2: appoints a transition seam. This included your usual cast of characters,
Speaker 2: but it is also worth noting that it included Dave Wilkinson,
Speaker 2: president and CEO of the Advanta Police found.
Speaker 1: I've heard of them, the Atlanta Police Foundation. That's like
Speaker 1: a it's like a it's like a it's like a
Speaker 1: charity for police or something.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's a nonprofit, you know, your standard nonprofit.
Speaker 1: Okay, they do cool thing tax deductible.
Speaker 2: Tax yet you can donate to them, tax deductibly, just
Speaker 2: like they might advertise, just like.
Speaker 1: The stream or does today.
Speaker 2: That's the second Destiny reference in as many episodes. So
Speaker 2: as soon as Dickens is sworn in, he faces the
Speaker 2: Buckhead secession crisis. And you know, we we explained a
Speaker 2: little bit earlier what bucket is. But Atlanta is a
Speaker 2: very large metropolitan area, and much of the Fulton County
Speaker 2: itself was at one point part of unincorporated Atlanta, and
Speaker 2: then in two thousand and five an unincorporated area just
Speaker 2: to the north of Buckhead, called Sandy Springs, was the
Speaker 2: first to become its own city. The initial breakaway cities
Speaker 2: that happened after that were predominantly white, and racism played
Speaker 2: a heavy role in their formation. But starting in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: newly formed black majority cities also started cropping up around
Speaker 2: the metro area, like the city of South Bolton and Stonecrest.
Speaker 2: So Buckhead wanted to do the same thing. They wanted
Speaker 2: to become their own city, and by no means was
Speaker 2: that popular sentiment in Buckhead. But it's more complicated because
Speaker 2: the city hood drives were not like part of incorporated
Speaker 2: Atlanta the previous ones. Buckhead is incorporated Atlanta is Atlanta.
Speaker 2: It's part of the Atlanta Public school system. It's also
Speaker 2: an APD zone. It has its own parks, roadways, and
Speaker 2: water system that are all like City of Atlanta property. Ye,
Speaker 2: so to have the best chance of actually seceding, Buckhead
Speaker 2: needs a state congressional vote, Otherwise it would require a
Speaker 2: city wide vote, which it would buy with people.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So in twenty twenty two, it found that Bucket seceession
Speaker 2: bill started working its way through the legislature. The bill
Speaker 2: didn't make it very far this first time around. It
Speaker 2: dies on February eleventh, so just a couple weeks into
Speaker 2: the session. But in order to kill it, Dickens reached
Speaker 2: out to Governor Kemp and other Republican leaders and developed
Speaker 2: a working relationship early on in his term as mayor.
Speaker 2: Dickens also kind of to quell this buckhead secession played
Speaker 2: into the race of crime narrative that bucket secessionists were
Speaker 2: claiming was the reason that they wanted to seceed. Dickens,
Speaker 2: in partnership with local law enforcement agencies and the Atlanta
Speaker 2: Police Foundation, created the Repeat Offender Tracking Unit. They claimed
Speaker 2: most of the crime problem in Atlanta comes from repeat offenders,
Speaker 2: and by sharing information about so called criminals between agencies,
Speaker 2: crime would drop. Of course, this is very problematic from
Speaker 2: an abolitionist perspective. When someone enters the criminal legal system
Speaker 2: therein it haunts you. The task force only serves to
Speaker 2: reinforce that, and in response to the formation of the units,
Speaker 2: Southern Center for Human Rights said quote, if APD is
Speaker 2: planning to double down on the vary strategies that they
Speaker 2: themselves admitted do not work in pursuit of a solution
Speaker 2: that keeps people behind bars, the effort is doomed to fail.
Speaker 2: You know else is doomed to fail.
Speaker 1: Our audience is actually buying these products that are advertising
Speaker 1: on our show for some reason, probably, but who knows.
Speaker 1: I've I've heard, I've heard the I've heard the blue apron.
Speaker 1: The cooking boxes are really convenient if you live an
Speaker 1: active and busy lifestyle. Like Matt from the from the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Community Breast Collective.
Speaker 2: I actually use Hello Fresh, Okay.
Speaker 1: Good, because I think they're the ones that actually are
Speaker 1: advertising on our show. So thank you, thank you for
Speaker 1: that great, great work. You already got it, all right.
Speaker 2: We are back, all right, so kicking back in with
Speaker 2: the Buckhead session movement. In order to mollify Buckhead, there
Speaker 2: was also an opening of a police precinct in Zone two,
Speaker 2: in which Buckhead sits. This is the third precinct in Buckhead,
Speaker 2: which is made up of just twenty eight square miles.
Speaker 1: That's wild because like Portland only has like three or
Speaker 1: four precincts in total.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have six.
Speaker 1: Jortland has like more people in like Portland proper than
Speaker 1: like Atlanta does.
Speaker 2: I think our territory is more expansive, yeah, than like
Speaker 2: your population wise there's actually more people in Portland proper.
Speaker 1: Just pretty funny.
Speaker 2: I should say that the third precinct in Zone two
Speaker 2: was planned before Dickens took office, but he made sure
Speaker 2: to talk.
Speaker 1: About it a lot earlier. Yeah I bet I bet so.
Speaker 2: And then, in what would fit perfectly as a scene
Speaker 2: in the Wire, Dickens spent both this year and last
Speaker 2: year talking about how crime and Buckhead dropped more in
Speaker 2: both years than any other zones.
Speaker 1: What's the Wire?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a podcast about the wire?
Speaker 1: Oh really a podcast? Yes?
Speaker 2: Huh, I forget the name of What's the Wire? It's
Speaker 2: a it's a TV show about oh police?
Speaker 1: Is Is this one of like those like a millennial show?
Speaker 2: Are we doing a bit?
Speaker 1: Is this like one of those millennial shows?
Speaker 2: It did come out in the early so this.
Speaker 1: Is this is like succession for old people? Got it?
Speaker 2: Secession for old people?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: I highly recommend watching it and check out the podcast
Speaker 2: that I can't remember the name of.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, plug someone else's podcast. Great, great job.
Speaker 2: As the Buckhead secession issue wound down, a Southeast Atlanta
Speaker 2: apartment complex started to draw increasing attention from the press
Speaker 2: due to rampant issues in the complex. A lack of
Speaker 2: care by the owners. This sad. This massive apartment complex
Speaker 2: operator called Millennia. The company had a reputation across the
Speaker 2: country is terrible and it is deservedly so. At Forrest Cove,
Speaker 2: the complex was unfit for human habitation.
Speaker 1: Oh really? Uh?
Speaker 2: And we have to acknowledge that Dickens here had an
Speaker 2: out just to blame Millennia. And but in February he
Speaker 2: told the approximately seven hundred residents that the city would
Speaker 2: be moving them to safer housing while the complex was
Speaker 2: either fixed or rebuilt. The rollout of this wasn't perfect.
Speaker 2: On April thirteenth of this year, Sean Keenan, a local
Speaker 2: reporter really of.
Speaker 1: The friend of the show, New York Times supporter Sean
Speaker 1: Keenan makes another appearance.
Speaker 2: So Keenan released a new story eight of this year
Speaker 2: April thirteen, twenty twenty three, showing that the first that
Speaker 2: a quarter of Forest Cove residents were relocated to complexes
Speaker 2: identified as dangerous dwellings on the ajac's residential.
Speaker 1: Watchdoglyph's that's pretty funny. So I have learned a little
Speaker 1: bit about Atlanta's like rental situation here, and it seems
Speaker 1: like it kind of sucks to be a renter in Georgia.
Speaker 1: It seems like you have almost no rights.
Speaker 2: No protection. I didn't have air conditioning for a little while,
Speaker 2: and it turns out that you are not guaranteed air
Speaker 2: conditioning in any.
Speaker 1: Retali, which is hard being like in Atlanta, because like,
Speaker 1: I never had AC in Portland, but that's that's Portland.
Speaker 1: It's not We're not dealing with the Atlanta humidity in
Speaker 1: Atlanta heat.
Speaker 2: No, it's it's pretty miserable. Thankfully, my air conditioning did
Speaker 2: get fixed eventually, but yeah, there's no recourse for things
Speaker 2: like that. So until that report by Keenan, it it
Speaker 2: appeared that the city was doing diligent work taking care
Speaker 2: of displaced residents and ensuring that they retained access to
Speaker 2: care and services with as little disruption as possible. And
Speaker 2: by and large that that happened, but you know, for
Speaker 2: a quarter of residents not so much. At this point,
Speaker 2: more questions are cropping up, so the story is likely
Speaker 2: going to continue to develop, but.
Speaker 1: We don't really know where's the point going to go
Speaker 1: because this is like current events. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so another force cove issue that will probably come
Speaker 2: up later in Dickens's term was that he made a
Speaker 2: promise to residents that they'll be able to return to
Speaker 2: the apartment complex eventually. But Millennia was denied hot assistance
Speaker 2: to fix the property, and it's unlikely that they'll do
Speaker 2: so on their own, so the fate of the complex
Speaker 2: is pretty up in the air. The city does own
Speaker 2: approximately eight acres in the neighborhood, which could and should
Speaker 2: go to building low income housing, but it's prime real
Speaker 2: estate for further gentrification. So yeah, we'll see how that
Speaker 2: plays out.
Speaker 1: No. One of the first things like that I noticed
Speaker 1: when I was visiting Atlanta like last year, was that
Speaker 1: like all of like this most of the Section eight
Speaker 1: housing has been converted into like luxury condos or like
Speaker 1: new new like like a like a five story apartment complexes.
Speaker 1: And no, like the speed of the gentrification was was
Speaker 1: kind of surprising to me coming coming from Portland. Like
Speaker 1: there's still gentrification of Portland, absolutely, but did the the
Speaker 1: expansiveness of it here and the speed of which it's
Speaker 1: accelerating was was surprising to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're not building like low income housing complexes,
Speaker 2: but what's happening here is that they're they're adding a
Speaker 2: certain percentage of new like if you're building a massive complex,
Speaker 2: a certain percentage of your off like your dwellings have
Speaker 2: to go at at a certain point of the average
Speaker 2: monthly income. Yeah, but that's not really addressing this like
Speaker 2: large scale issue that is going because you still.
Speaker 1: Have hundreds of them that it costs like three thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and you have like a dozen that are a low
Speaker 1: income and you just you do the barest amounts to
Speaker 1: script by while still filling up most of the available
Speaker 1: real estate with very expensive apartments.
Speaker 2: And I should plug here. There is a fantastic book
Speaker 2: called Red Hot City by GSU professor named Dan Immerglock.
Speaker 2: If you want to learn more about gentrification in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: It's great. Yeah, absolutely and set vital reading. So towards
Speaker 2: the end of Dickens's first one hundred days in office,
Speaker 2: APD chief Rodney Bryant announced that he was going to retire.
Speaker 2: Bryant was not very well liked by city leadership. Felicia
Speaker 2: Moore had made a campaign promise to get rid of
Speaker 2: Bryant on her first day in office, but Dickens said
Speaker 2: he'd give him one hundred days to improve public safety
Speaker 2: and kind of see where things were at before firing him, and.
Speaker 1: What happened after those one hundred days.
Speaker 2: Bryant stepped down and Dickens tapped then Deputy Chief Darren
Speaker 2: Sheerbaum as interim replace.
Speaker 1: I've heard of this guy before. This is the guy
Speaker 1: who made that weird confess about having sex in the
Speaker 1: woods with all those police officers. I heard that a
Speaker 1: podcast recently. That's so crazy.
Speaker 2: Sheerbom, who may or may not have said those things.
Speaker 2: His prior role was overseeing the Cop City development, and
Speaker 2: he was also pretty well liked by APD officers, so
Speaker 2: Dicks officially hired him in October of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: But if you're a leftist or even just against Cop City,
Speaker 2: this is actually like kind of a lost Cheerbomb is
Speaker 2: incredibly pr savvy, as you saw in that city council meeting,
Speaker 2: and he does pretty well when he's talking to them.
Speaker 1: No, when I was first doing stuff on Cops C
Speaker 1: I remember when he was just like the spokesperson for
Speaker 1: he wasn't actually like the chief yet. And then he
Speaker 1: became the chief in like last fall, and they've gotten
Speaker 1: better at their propaganda since then, a lot better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, I watched this like every week
Speaker 2: he does a pretty good job. Yeah, this brings us
Speaker 2: to budget season twenty twenty two. In April, Dickens tells
Speaker 2: the AGC that he wants to hire two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty APD officers a year for three years, hoping that
Speaker 2: the total of seven hundred and fifty new hires will
Speaker 2: net a four hundred and fifty increase in officers for
Speaker 2: the department.
Speaker 1: Okay, so hiring a lot, some of them might nutrition raise,
Speaker 1: other people might not stay on, but you're trying to
Speaker 1: like net to get another like four hundred or so officers.
Speaker 2: Yep. So Dickens also approved four thousand dollars bonuses for APD,
Speaker 2: paid using American Rescue Plan Act money.
Speaker 1: And great useful.
Speaker 2: Initially, in June, Dickens promised police a raise of three
Speaker 2: and a half percent, but in November it became apparent
Speaker 2: that the city would have a budget surplus, so Dickens
Speaker 2: and council raised that to nine percent, bringing APD to
Speaker 2: a total of a twenty seven percent raise over the
Speaker 2: course of three years.
Speaker 1: Funny how much money they're just getting pumped this past.
Speaker 2: Three years, and I don't know what happens, Like three
Speaker 2: years ago, but it seems like something shouldn't.
Speaker 1: No. I mean, like you were talking about how like
Speaker 1: how Dickens was like previously working to get like like
Speaker 1: a seventy million reduction in police budget. You know, probably
Speaker 1: probably in some ways, probably just like for pr raates,
Speaker 1: because during twenty twenty that was the popular thing to do.
Speaker 1: And now we used to like funneling millions and millions
Speaker 1: dollars towards the police Foundation, towards individual officers, towards raises, bonuses,
Speaker 1: you know, standard mayor stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh, and we're not done. In November, it was an
Speaker 2: early Christmas for APD. Dickens also debuted forty new SCAD
Speaker 2: and so SCAD is the Savannah College of Art and
Speaker 2: Design Arts college.
Speaker 1: A big art college in Georgia.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they designed these police Ford Explorer vehicles for
Speaker 2: an officer take home program.
Speaker 1: Via looked like shit.
Speaker 2: Each vehicle cost sixty thousand dollars. So the total price
Speaker 2: tag of this was two point four million dollars to
Speaker 2: improve officer morale.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, let's let's get them, get them, you know,
Speaker 1: two million dollars with the cars, just to make them happy.
Speaker 2: U seventy additional take home vehicles are in the pipeline
Speaker 2: once equipment becomes available to out cool. So yeah, this
Speaker 2: this program is just continuing to grow.
Speaker 1: Fuck whatever scad designer was paid to fucking design those
Speaker 1: shitty cars.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that was missing during the
Speaker 2: budget season back back in spring was the very thing
Speaker 2: that helped Dickens solidifies his image as a Progressive Council
Speaker 2: member affordable housing. In his initial budget, Dickens put no
Speaker 2: increase in affordable housing for his alleged ship.
Speaker 1: You had a budget surplus, and you're like, no, let's
Speaker 1: give them a to give all the money to the
Speaker 1: police who are already getting a ninety million dollar training facility.
Speaker 1: Let's giving even more money. Sure. Great.
Speaker 2: So Dan Emergleckt, the GSU professor I just mentioned he was,
Speaker 2: he's an affordable housing advocate and he was part of
Speaker 2: Dickens's transition team, and he told Capital B after the
Speaker 2: prospective budget was released, quote, for this to be his
Speaker 2: first budget to make a step backwards is extremely disappointing.
Speaker 2: And that's basically how all the progressives felt. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: Dickens did cave to housing advocate pressure and he added
Speaker 2: an additional seven million dollars in the affordable Housing budget
Speaker 2: before the budget was passed in June.
Speaker 1: Cool cool, cool.
Speaker 2: Remember back in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one, everyone
Speaker 2: was in agreement that the jail was going to close.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the a, they were going to convert it to
Speaker 1: that other thing.
Speaker 2: That it was going to be a center for Diversion
Speaker 2: in Equity. Yeah, it was going to be great. And
Speaker 2: by this point it actually had a name, the John
Speaker 2: Lewis Center for Diversion in Equity.
Speaker 1: Great.
Speaker 2: But in June of twenty twenty two, city council voted
Speaker 2: down legislation authorizing the mayor to close the jail. Then
Speaker 2: plans came out in early August that instead of closing ACDC,
Speaker 2: Fulton County in Atlanta were in talks to rent seven
Speaker 2: hundred beds from the facility to Fulton County to address
Speaker 2: the overcrowding problem at Rice Street, Fulton County's main jail.
Speaker 1: Maybe they should just keep less people in jail.
Speaker 2: Activists warned that the lease would not alleviate these issues
Speaker 2: and that city council needed to instead focus on decarceration.
Speaker 2: And then there was an acl report that came out
Speaker 2: later in the year that found forty five percent of
Speaker 2: the overall jail population in Fulden County is unindicted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're just holding people that actually have not been
Speaker 1: indicted offertic crime.
Speaker 2: Great. Remember it was Dickens who introduced the legislation to
Speaker 2: find a way to repurpose this jail, he said in
Speaker 2: a statement when the lease to Fulton County was coming up. Quote,
Speaker 2: as I've continually supported since my time on Atlanta City Council,
Speaker 2: I remained committed to fully repurposing the ACDC facility for
Speaker 2: non incarceration purposes. But we are also confronted by a
Speaker 2: real and immediate crisis of overcrowding at the Fulton County Jail.
Speaker 2: Many of these detainees are Atlanta residents, and our conscience
Speaker 2: calls us to act. This is a temporary lease agreement
Speaker 2: and will allow the City of Atlanta to play a
Speaker 2: role in alleviating this humanitarian crisis and to provide the
Speaker 2: necessary time for Fulton County to develop and implement a
Speaker 2: long term solution humanitarians, because we always know adding more
Speaker 2: prison beds really reduces the problem. So the temporary solution
Speaker 2: that we're talking about is a four year agreement, and
Speaker 2: Fulton County is paying the City of Atlanta fifty dollars
Speaker 2: per bed per night. So when the full seven hundred
Speaker 2: beds are taking Atlanta will be making twelve point seven
Speaker 2: million dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Remember when we had to release all those people from
Speaker 1: prison and jail in twenty twenty to to overcrowding and
Speaker 1: then violent crime dropped. Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2: That is crazy. So the twelve point seven million dollars
Speaker 2: sounds like a lot of money, But before the lease
Speaker 2: went into effect, acdc's average population was under fifty individuals
Speaker 2: per night. The city's Department of Corrections budget is sixteen
Speaker 2: point one million dollars a year. So the city is
Speaker 2: still going to lose money running this jail, even with
Speaker 2: Fulden County paying for their.
Speaker 1: Retaining for their share.
Speaker 2: State answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then on April fourteenth of this year, the news came
Speaker 2: out that Lashawan Thompson died in Rice Street Jail, having
Speaker 2: been neglected and ignored by Fulden County deputies. When they
Speaker 2: finally checked on Thompson, they found that he had been
Speaker 2: eaten alive by bugs as he lay dying. And this
Speaker 2: was in September of twenty twenty two, just after Atlanta
Speaker 2: approved this lease. The cell Thompson was in was so
Speaker 2: disgusting that a jail employee refused to enter without putting
Speaker 2: on a hazmat suit first.
Speaker 1: Oh, imagine what it was like to live in there.
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
Speaker 2: And this death isn't the result of overcrowding. Thompson was
Speaker 2: in jail on simple battery charges and being held on
Speaker 2: a twenty five hundred dollars bond. He was also unindicted.
Speaker 2: There was no reason for Thompson to be in jail
Speaker 2: at the time of his death. If he had the money,
Speaker 2: he probably would have been it live today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just blocking up poor people.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so this is the sort of thing that
Speaker 2: Dickenson Council have enabled with this new jail lease. Before
Speaker 2: we get into Dickenson copp City in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: we need to talk briefly about some more American Rescue
Speaker 2: Plan Act Sheck Henry Dickinson Council pulled off this year.
Speaker 2: At the end of January, Atlanta announced that it was
Speaker 2: returning ten million dollars in ARPA funds earmarked for rental
Speaker 2: assistance that the city never used. What did just use
Speaker 2: infromental assistance. So this naturally upset a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Public comment was quite feisty that day. Atlanta is of
Speaker 2: course increasingly pricing out. It's like see residents as we
Speaker 2: just talked about, and ten million dollars would go a
Speaker 2: long way to helping combat that. And then to add
Speaker 2: insult to injury. A few weeks later, Council passed and
Speaker 2: Dickens signed legislation that gave five hundred thousand dollars in
Speaker 2: ARPA funds to the Atlanta Police Foundation to provide additional
Speaker 2: police and first responder housing. So really reinforcing the city's
Speaker 2: going to take care of police before everyone else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh boy.
Speaker 2: So let's move on to how Dickens handled cop city
Speaker 2: since January eighteenth. I think it is probably a good
Speaker 2: place to start, or the killing of Tortigito by Georgia
Speaker 2: State Patrol officers the day that everything happened, Dickens wished
Speaker 2: the trooper a speedy recovery. I can find nowhere in
Speaker 2: which Dickens made any comment other than it's unfortunate that
Speaker 2: Tortigito was killed. Not surprising. He never accepts any level
Speaker 2: of responsibility for towards death, insisting instead that responsibility lies
Speaker 2: with Georgia State Patrol or DECAP County. He refuses to
Speaker 2: ignore coledge of the fact that the city's insistence on
Speaker 2: trying to build Cop City both ensured TOT and the
Speaker 2: officer's presence in the.
Speaker 1: Woods and napd's involved in the raid.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, so this moment also kind of changed how
Speaker 2: Dickens approaches cop City. Before he was relatively quiet, but
Speaker 2: he begins this like full court media press after January eighteenth,
Speaker 2: and we don't know the exact details, but it does
Speaker 2: seem like to Cab County. Atlanta officials in APF came
Speaker 2: to an agreement in January to pass this land disturbance permit.
Speaker 2: In February, after a student protest at the Atlanta University
Speaker 2: Center and letters from AUC faculty that opposed construction of
Speaker 2: Cop City and expressed solidarity with protesters, Dickens announced that
Speaker 2: he would hold a forum with the president of Morehouse College,
Speaker 2: David A. Thomas, who is a vocal Cop City supporter.
Speaker 2: This was a big problem for Dickens, as the colleges
Speaker 2: that make up the AEC and we didn't talk about
Speaker 2: which one those were earlier. It's more House, Spellman, Clarken University,
Speaker 2: Morehouse College of Medicine. All of them carry with them
Speaker 2: an incredible amount of historical and political power in the
Speaker 2: city of Atlanta, so keeping AUC support is pretty vital
Speaker 2: if you want to continue to run for elections. The
Speaker 2: attendance at the forum was limited to only AUC students
Speaker 2: and faculty, but a stream was duped and broadcast on
Speaker 2: Instagram Live. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find
Speaker 2: a complete copy, but there are definitely highlights that have
Speaker 2: made it out. Overall, Dickens was pretty patronizing and sarcastic
Speaker 2: to students. Several times students called the mayor out for
Speaker 2: his behavior, but he continued to show distain the rest
Speaker 2: of the night. One student called him out for his
Speaker 2: lack of prior acknowledgment of towards death and Dickens's usual
Speaker 2: sidestep responsibility, again saying that it was unfortunate toward died,
Speaker 2: but insisting he was the wrong person to blame because
Speaker 2: it didn't happen in the city of Atlanta and the
Speaker 2: officer was not from APD. At one point, Dickens went
Speaker 2: on a TI raid after a student called him a sellout.
Speaker 2: This we do have audio four.
Speaker 3: Let me just chany this witch. I ain't never been out.
Speaker 3: You can't you can't you Yeah, you got the wrong
Speaker 3: resume that you're looking at.
Speaker 1: I know, I know.
Speaker 3: We like to yell and shout out things just to
Speaker 3: be heard. You've been heard, You've been heard. I guess what.
Speaker 3: You picked the wrong resume to pull him on a
Speaker 3: race car.
Speaker 2: Whatever Dickens was hoping to accomplish that night, he failed.
Speaker 2: Several Memes and audio remixes of Dickens's performance went viral
Speaker 2: in the Atlanta Twitter sphere and continue to crop up
Speaker 2: this day, like the I Am not a sellout one.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've seen.
Speaker 1: It, is that the I'm still ruined by the by
Speaker 1: the by the doctor, Han good good doctor memes. That
Speaker 1: just reminded me of the I Am a surgeon memes.
Speaker 1: A great job, great job, Yeah, great work.
Speaker 2: So Dickens does, of course, continued to try or to
Speaker 2: build or manufacture support for Copsody over the next two months.
Speaker 2: In March, she was visiting the neighborhoods around Copsody to
Speaker 2: hear feedback from residents, and he, of course started in
Speaker 2: the wealthier neighborhoods and he only went to the less
Speaker 2: affluent neighborhood, which, like cop City, is actually in after
Speaker 2: a member of the Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee called him
Speaker 2: out for only favoring the wealthy communities. Local residents have
Speaker 2: told ACPC that Dickens skips over the houses with DTF
Speaker 2: signs out front.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, yeah, checks outy.
Speaker 2: He's done several interviews now on cop City with both
Speaker 2: the AJAC and wab a local public radio station. The
Speaker 2: AGAC interview was particularly interesting because one of the interviewers
Speaker 2: asked Dickens what would happen if cop City ended in
Speaker 2: a cost overrun. Dickens told her that any large overruns
Speaker 2: would be paid for by philanthropic dollars from the foundation.
Speaker 2: He said this out. He said this, but a member
Speaker 2: of his cabinet had already confirmed that two APF City
Speaker 2: was willing to pay thirty two million dollars at that point,
Speaker 2: and of course we've now learned that that number is
Speaker 2: sixty seven million dollars. Uh. Did you follow the City
Speaker 2: of the Lanta's Twitter account?
Speaker 1: No, I don't want to see that ship, but I
Speaker 1: know they have turned it into just a cop city
Speaker 1: of propaganda chan.
Speaker 2: It's a NonStop propaganda channel, which is like really fun
Speaker 2: to watch because every cop City post is like bombarded
Speaker 2: with negative replies and quot tweets.
Speaker 1: I've seen these posts, I know, I know. I've talked
Speaker 1: about how they launched their own website trying to combat
Speaker 1: all of those top cop City websites, and yeah, they've
Speaker 1: really accelerated their propaganda the past few months. And yeah,
Speaker 1: just turned the actual City of Atlantic account into a
Speaker 1: cop City propaganda UH like platform, which is funny because
Speaker 1: they oft They also will often advocate and say like,
Speaker 1: this isn't the City of Atlanta's project, this is the
Speaker 1: APS project, which they'll often like use that use that refrain,
Speaker 1: and yet we have the City of Atlanto account being
Speaker 1: turned into a into a megaphone to promote to this project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Atlanta Police Foundation doesn't actually give interviews to
Speaker 2: UH like news anymore. Yeah, they filter everything through the
Speaker 2: City of Atlanta, which.
Speaker 1: Normal charity organization.
Speaker 2: It's completely normal for them never to show up at
Speaker 2: city Council to talk about anything and to hide from
Speaker 2: the public. It's fine. So meanwhile, Dickens is of course
Speaker 2: like dogged by opposition to cop City at every turn.
Speaker 2: On April thirteenth, three, Georgia State University students, with the
Speaker 2: support of this keynote speaker, interrupted a global symposium Studies
Speaker 2: that Dickens was giving opening remarks. Dickens grows increasingly frustrated
Speaker 2: as the disruptors will not leave, and eventually Dickens and
Speaker 2: his retinue like just walk out. On April eleventh, Dickens
Speaker 2: had hired a new senior policy advisor named Karen Rodgers.
Speaker 2: Dickens brought Rogers over from the Atlanta Police Foundation, where
Speaker 2: she'd spent seven years working in community engagement, and he
Speaker 2: brought her on, of course, to advise about cop City.
Speaker 2: On April eighteenth, Dicab County Medical Examiner released the autopsy
Speaker 2: on Towards death, and that same day, just before the
Speaker 2: article came out that the autopsity was released, Dickens held
Speaker 2: a press conference on the steps of City Hall. He
Speaker 2: was surrounded by a group of nearly one hundred all
Speaker 2: older black leaders, including former Mayor Bill Campbell and Andrew Young.
Speaker 2: This appears to have been a hastily thrown together event
Speaker 2: and only a few media outlets were even aware that
Speaker 2: it was happening. Like, we didn't get an update that it.
Speaker 1: Was going on. I didn't know that was happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just it kind of cropped up and seemed
Speaker 2: to take everyone by surprise. And of course it looks
Speaker 2: like the press conference was held to counteract the autopsy
Speaker 2: report coming out that day. Yeah, but that failed, and
Speaker 2: the autopsy report was the bigger story. Notably, the AJAC
Speaker 2: did not print the autopsy report on the first day,
Speaker 2: but it was pretty well covered elsewhere on the landscape.
Speaker 2: And the autopsy caused a second city councilor to speak
Speaker 2: out against cop city, and a growing number of state
Speaker 2: representatives have started to speak out, you know, as that happened,
Speaker 2: and as the rest of the solidarity fund. But Dickens
Speaker 2: is of course unmoved and preparing for this fight to
Speaker 2: last a while. Then, of course, there was the city
Speaker 2: council vote on June fifth, and there had been some
Speaker 2: work done behind the scenes to try to get this
Speaker 2: set back to committee. Apparently Dickinson like peeled off city.
Speaker 2: He called the maybe votes into his office early that
Speaker 2: morning and peeled off the votes and to ensure that
Speaker 2: that copsidy continued on. We should I wrote this, of course,
Speaker 2: I think two months ago point. So, yeah, a couple
Speaker 2: quick highlights again, the affordable housing. So with our affordable housing,
Speaker 2: it is supposed to get a certain percentage of our
Speaker 2: general operating budget, and it started out at one and
Speaker 2: a half percent, and then it was supposed to go
Speaker 2: up to two percent, and two and a half percent
Speaker 2: is where it's going to cap out. So this year
Speaker 2: was supposed to go to two percent. He kept it
Speaker 2: one and a half percent, but he did announce a
Speaker 2: public private partnership to offer one hundred million dollars in
Speaker 2: in affordable housing bonds. Real, So we love our public
Speaker 2: private partnership at lant away things to get things done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems like the way. That's I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm excited about. For for the the extra thirty
Speaker 1: million dollars bond to APF, that'll certainly get paid back
Speaker 1: in a reasonable time period.
Speaker 2: Any completely reasonable time period. And you know that'll get
Speaker 2: paid back, I'm sure, And we're not going to continue
Speaker 2: to pay anything and APF is not going to make
Speaker 2: any money off. No, this is surely.
Speaker 1: This project's not a massive taxpayer sinkhole.
Speaker 2: So that's it.
Speaker 1: That's the mayor.
Speaker 2: That's the mayor. That's where we are.
Speaker 1: And then when's the next mayoral election.
Speaker 2: So twenty twenty five, and of course Dickens has to
Speaker 2: move the needle. There was there were like some calls
Speaker 2: for a recall campaign around Chickens, especially amongst the movement,
Speaker 2: Like I personally don't think that it would have any
Speaker 2: chance of succeeding. There's kind of there's a perception that
Speaker 2: he's doing okay. And you know, when you have somebody
Speaker 2: that was probed by the FBI for corruption just a
Speaker 2: few years ago, your standards of what the area kind
Speaker 2: of changes.
Speaker 1: People seem to be putting lots of there. They're dedicated
Speaker 1: some of their dedicated efforts in terms of like electoral
Speaker 1: sign up stuff as being put towards the referendum which
Speaker 1: got approved a few days ago. To continue, they need
Speaker 1: to clutch like what seventy five thousand signatures from people
Speaker 1: who were residents of Atlanta and registered to vote in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, which seems like a pretty high bar.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of signatures.
Speaker 2: So it's a lot of signatures. And because the organizers
Speaker 2: say this municipal clerk was like playing games and withholding
Speaker 2: approving the signatures, so they don't have approving the referendum,
Speaker 2: and so they don't have the full like sixty days,
Speaker 2: it's like two weeks fifty No, it's fifty seven days.
Speaker 2: So I think it's like it's they have to have
Speaker 2: them by August fifteenth.
Speaker 1: Which is a lot of signatures, and augustifting is around
Speaker 1: when construction was supposed to start for cup City. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and then for other mayor role candidates, I've heard rumor
Speaker 1: that friend of the show ontologically evil Mary Nor would
Speaker 1: may be interested in trying to run again.
Speaker 2: So this is like her her kind of move is
Speaker 2: she does she runs from mayor. All right, Well, first
Speaker 2: she does a term of city council and then she
Speaker 2: runs from mayor, and then she doesn't get the mayor
Speaker 2: all spots, so she takes a you know, four years off,
Speaker 2: she comes back, runs for city council, runs from mayor,
Speaker 2: takes four years off. So we were now in her
Speaker 2: you know, mayor, her city council term, and if she's
Speaker 2: going to do this for a third time, then she
Speaker 2: will run for mayor in twenty twenty five, which would suck.
Speaker 2: I mean, she came close last time she.
Speaker 1: Did, and I think how depending on if depending on
Speaker 1: how progress in the cop City construction goes, she has
Speaker 1: a way to frame this being like like I was
Speaker 1: the one who was actually in support of this popular
Speaker 1: proposal the whole time. And look we succeeded only because
Speaker 1: of me.
Speaker 2: Yes, she can do that, and there's so then as
Speaker 2: demographics are changing, we're no longer a majority block city.
Speaker 2: The population is down to like forty eight percent black people.
Speaker 2: So there Dickens is being called possibly the last black
Speaker 2: mayor of Atlanta, and you know that will be a
Speaker 2: shock to our systems. And Mary Norwood would be like
Speaker 2: just a way to quickly kill that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like I said, the only way to accurately
Speaker 1: describer is just ontologically evil. Like she is. She she
Speaker 1: is just that bad. She's like she's yeah, it's not great,
Speaker 1: would not be fun. But she's not the mayor. It is.
Speaker 1: It is Mayor Dickens who is the shitty mayor of
Speaker 1: this episode, and based on how much power he has
Speaker 1: to change things and how much what he's decided to
Speaker 1: do with that power, when instead of actually supporting all
Speaker 1: the affordable housing things, he's funneled millions of dollars to
Speaker 1: cop City, to the Atlanta Police Foundation, has refused any
Speaker 1: measure to revoke the land lease ordinance, and even even
Speaker 1: even if not not to cancel the project, even just
Speaker 1: to move it somewhere else. He's refused every step of
Speaker 1: the way. And yeah, well we'll see how that does
Speaker 1: him in the next election cycle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really interested to see, uh, how he plays
Speaker 2: the referendum.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm I'm interested to see if the referend
Speaker 1: then will even be a threat at all, because if
Speaker 1: it if it's if it's if it fails to get
Speaker 1: a significantbortion of signatures, then he may just ignore it
Speaker 1: because why would he bother to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're definitely not going to devote any resources to
Speaker 2: it until they're sure that it is a threat. But once,
Speaker 2: once it, you know, potentially becomes a threat, they will
Speaker 2: They've got to start doing something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we are. We are like what two or
Speaker 1: three days into the week of action at this point.
Speaker 1: I definitely I don't know what what things are like,
Speaker 1: but there's still is some days left. So yeah, if
Speaker 1: you if, if you're if you're in Atlanta, try to
Speaker 1: stay safe and stay as dangerous as you feel comfortable.
Speaker 2: Say hey to us when you see us, Sure, do.
Speaker 1: You have any do you have any things you would
Speaker 1: like to plug Matt from the Atlanta Community Press Collective.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I am Matt and I work for the
Speaker 2: Atlantic Community Press Collective. If you want to check out
Speaker 2: our work, our website is Atlpresscollective dot com. We also
Speaker 2: do a lot on Twitter. Our handle is at Atlanta
Speaker 2: Underscore Press and our Instagram, where we post a lot
Speaker 2: of our videos is atl Press Collective.
Speaker 1: And then you can also donate to a solidarity fund,
Speaker 1: not at the regular solidary fund website. Still, I believe
Speaker 1: it's I believe it's still the National Bail Fund one, right.
Speaker 2: I believe it is still the National Bail Fund until
Speaker 2: probably until that court case is settled.
Speaker 1: Got it all right? So yeah, make sure you go
Speaker 1: to the right site for the for the Act Blue
Speaker 1: National bil Bail Fund towards the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So that was the shitty mayor of today, Mayor Andre Dickens.
Speaker 1: I'll make the joke again. I think it's funny that
Speaker 1: the previous mayor was named Bottoms. The current mayor is
Speaker 1: named Dickens. It's Dickens, Dickens Bottoms anyway. Comment, that's the
Speaker 1: joke that I've made before. I'm gonna keep making it
Speaker 1: until he's until he's no longer mayor unless someone else
Speaker 1: runs for we could do, nor would dickens Bottom. No never,
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna bother joking with that because that
Speaker 1: would be so don't exactly exactly that doesn't need that anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: see you on the other side, Stay safe, stayed interesting
Speaker 1: the Week of Action TATA. It Could Happen Here as
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zonemedia
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