Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes a
Speaker 2: little deeper into topics and segments that originally aired on
Speaker 2: The Daily Show. This is what you gotta think of
Speaker 2: this podcast as right, okay, Like you know how you
Speaker 2: got prom? Right, you go to your senior prom, you
Speaker 2: have a good time at the dance. This podcast is
Speaker 2: everything that happens after the prom. We're the party bus,
Speaker 2: where the tickets to the club. We're the fight at
Speaker 2: waffle house.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, we.
Speaker 2: Still gonna get your home by midnight, and your daddy
Speaker 2: ain't gonna know that you tore up to tuxedo and
Speaker 2: your ruin his deposit. This week, we're delving a little
Speaker 2: deeper into a topic that we just recently discussed on
Speaker 2: the show. I went down to Atlanta to learn about
Speaker 2: a place called cop City. Cop City is a training
Speaker 2: facility that's being presented as the new way to train
Speaker 2: Atlanta's police and fire departments. But Cities brought a lot
Speaker 2: of controversy.
Speaker 1: Give it a clip.
Speaker 3: Atlanta's busy downtown descended into chaos over the weekend. Hundreds
Speaker 3: of protesters marched in the streets in the wake of
Speaker 3: the death of a twenty six year old environmental activist.
Speaker 3: The activist was killed on Wednesday as officers cleared protesters
Speaker 3: from the site of a planned police training center.
Speaker 2: The Police Training Center. But these guys are trained, right,
Speaker 2: This isn't an our militia of interns. Back before things
Speaker 2: got this bad, I went to Atlanta and met with
Speaker 2: local activists Jasmine Burnett that.
Speaker 4: Atlanta Police Foundation is building a massive urban warfare training
Speaker 4: facility with bomb testings, tear gas explosions, a shooting range.
Speaker 2: Given people march to defund the police. They look like
Speaker 2: a refunded Bailey did. Activists have dubbed this development cop City,
Speaker 2: an eighty five acre, ninety million dollar complex including a
Speaker 2: shooting range, burn buildings, and a mock city that includes
Speaker 2: apartments at school even a bar.
Speaker 1: So this is basically six flags for the police.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's a playground.
Speaker 2: You can't call it a playground. M hm oh what
Speaker 2: you read this? Literally a playground. But I had to
Speaker 2: dream about how they could make this project more appealing
Speaker 2: to activists. We name it after Mantin Luther Camp doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: Tyler Perry presents the training facility.
Speaker 1: The name doesn't change the impact.
Speaker 2: To help us get deeper into the weeds of this conversation,
Speaker 2: I'm joined by two wonderful Atlanta based journalists, George Cheaty
Speaker 2: and King Williams. George, King, how you doing today?
Speaker 5: We're awesome. I'm awesome.
Speaker 1: You're awesome, George.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that. Now, King, you got to top that.
Speaker 2: Make me feel more than awesome.
Speaker 6: Please, Hi, you're the greatest of all time.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I'll take that
Speaker 2: that was better than yours, George. George, you gotta work
Speaker 2: on your greetings too.
Speaker 5: I will suck less later.
Speaker 2: Before we get into the back and forth controversy that
Speaker 2: is cop City, let's just define what cop City is, George.
Speaker 2: I'll start with you break down what it is exactly,
Speaker 2: so cop city. And by the way, there are people
Speaker 2: who hate call it at cop city because it's They
Speaker 2: think it's pejorative and I think it's short. The Atlanta
Speaker 2: Police Training Center is a replacement for the Atlanta Police
Speaker 2: departments police training facilities, which are garbage. I'll be honest, like,
Speaker 2: that's that's just the truth of it. Problem is it's
Speaker 2: a ninety million dollar like park, like a fun amusement
Speaker 2: park for cop training, So like a real world like
Speaker 2: in the military where they recreate urban warfare in the
Speaker 2: Middle East and doors and rooms and all of that.
Speaker 2: Was the fire department training aspect of Cop City always
Speaker 2: party or was that rolled into it as part of
Speaker 2: a pr Oh No, it's not all about the police.
Speaker 5: No, it's evidently was always part of it. And again,
Speaker 5: like the current facilities are inadequate, Like that's the truth,
Speaker 5: Like they're falling apart, there's mold all over everything. It's awful. However,
Speaker 5: what they're trying to build is expensive and people are
Speaker 5: not happy about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so then King, give me some examples some of
Speaker 2: the stuff that's in cop City. I imagine, for a
Speaker 2: fire department, you need to build a that can catch
Speaker 2: on fires so you could work on putting out fires.
Speaker 2: But for the police aspects of it. At a time
Speaker 2: where we're talking about defunding the police and taking less resource,
Speaker 2: taking some resources away from police departments and reallocating them
Speaker 2: to education and infrastructure and other things that could also
Speaker 2: help reduce crime, what are some of the things within
Speaker 2: cop City that has people so riled up?
Speaker 4: King, Yeah, so in addition to the price, it's really
Speaker 4: about the terms of the deal. So the site that
Speaker 4: Georgia is talking about is three hundred and fifty acres.
Speaker 4: For perspective, all of six Flags over Georgia, including the
Speaker 4: parking lots, is two hundred and ninety acres. So this
Speaker 4: lets you know initially what that was. And the thing
Speaker 4: that was more egregious was that three hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: acres was going to be given to the Atlanta Police
Speaker 4: at a rate of ten dollars a year. And so
Speaker 4: you know, that's a part of Atlanta and south southwester
Speaker 4: of calf County East s.
Speaker 1: Per acre per year or ten dollars the whole.
Speaker 4: Lot ten dollars a number three at McDonald's. That's how
Speaker 4: much it was going to be per year. And so
Speaker 4: when we're talking at half six flags for one, that yes,
Speaker 4: and so then people got upset, and so then they
Speaker 4: reduced the acreage down to still to still ten dollars
Speaker 4: a year, but now at eighty five acres, and so
Speaker 4: eighty five acres is still a pretty large amount of
Speaker 4: space for this particular facility shopping mall. It is it
Speaker 4: is a very large suburban shopping mall. And so then
Speaker 4: the other part of the cost that you asked, was
Speaker 4: there's a couple of things that they're doing that in
Speaker 4: many ways, this is their they're owed to the Atlanta Police,
Speaker 4: and so you have everything from a horse training facility
Speaker 4: which they're already currently trained nearby at Grant Park, which
Speaker 4: costs them effectively nothing because they're given a lease through
Speaker 4: the zoo to also have their training facility for their
Speaker 4: horses there. They're bringing the burn building in, which is
Speaker 4: going to be at a cost, which they used to
Speaker 4: do off of Metropolitan Avenue University Avenue, which coincidentally enough,
Speaker 4: was not too far from the place where rayshar Brooks
Speaker 4: was murdered at. They're also bringing in every particular unit
Speaker 4: that they've had before in one unified facility in that facility.
Speaker 4: Right now, they're estimating that construction costs will be about
Speaker 4: ninety million. There's a high probability due to the insurance
Speaker 4: that's going to be on it, as what happened yesterday
Speaker 4: when some processors set fire to some equipment, that that
Speaker 4: insurance is probably gonna bump this whole project up to
Speaker 4: twelve over one hundred million dollars when it's all said
Speaker 4: and done.
Speaker 2: How long have the two of you been both covering
Speaker 2: this development. And you know, like, when did this become
Speaker 2: a huh that's peculiar because it was seen off the top,
Speaker 2: George if you say that the training facilities are inadequate,
Speaker 2: and I would imagine after the race Shard Brooks fiasco
Speaker 2: and everything that happened with George Floyd in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: and then you all had the blue flu thing with
Speaker 2: the Atlanta PD where droves of officers were calling in
Speaker 2: sick as a form of silent protest to the officers
Speaker 2: being charged in everything that happened there. So I would
Speaker 2: imagine something like cop City. If the police department has
Speaker 2: an adequate training and then there is a new facility,
Speaker 2: there's gonna be multimillion and bells and whistles that would
Speaker 2: help morale in theory. So when did this become a
Speaker 2: thing of huh, why is this bad? Beyond the fact
Speaker 2: that why y'all spending all that money on that and
Speaker 2: not stuff over here.
Speaker 5: So one, you're really well informed. I'm impressed.
Speaker 2: And that's the staff that ain't me. I'm to tell
Speaker 2: you right now, We've got a great team behind the
Speaker 2: scenes that make me sound intelligent.
Speaker 1: Keep going, No, but thank you.
Speaker 5: Both of us have been watching this since the beginning,
Speaker 5: and part of it is that people were in the
Speaker 5: street in twenty twenty saying we want better cops, we
Speaker 5: want fewer cops, we want more social workers and fewer
Speaker 5: people in jail. And then the city turned around and said,
Speaker 5: we're going to spend thirty million in public money and
Speaker 5: sixty million in private money to build this sort of
Speaker 5: playground for cops. And that's not the thing. If that
Speaker 5: was just it, people would be irritated. It's not the
Speaker 5: city who's going to own this thing. It's this Atlanta
Speaker 5: Police Foundation. The second largest police foundation in the United
Speaker 5: States is at the Atlanta Police Foundation. It's not the
Speaker 5: Chicago Cops Foundation. It's not la it's not Baltimore, it's
Speaker 5: not it's Atlanta, which is crazy to begin with, and
Speaker 5: it looks like this thing where they're going to be.
Speaker 5: It's not just the Atlanta police who are going to
Speaker 5: train there. Anybody who's got a police force in the
Speaker 5: whole South Southern United States is going to be able
Speaker 5: to go there too. And so even if the Atlanta
Speaker 5: cops are training like we want them to train, some
Speaker 5: po dunk yogl Town from North Tennessee who wants to
Speaker 5: learn how to kick the crap out of people more effectively,
Speaker 5: can come down there and train any way they like,
Speaker 5: and there's nothing that the city can do to change
Speaker 5: that because they don't run the facility, and so this
Speaker 5: thing can. Instead of propagating the best possible police training
Speaker 5: you could get, you end up with this thing that
Speaker 5: could propagate the very worst kind of police training that
Speaker 5: you could get. All over the times, all over the Southeast,
Speaker 5: people are comparing this to the School of Americas, where
Speaker 5: out in at Fort Benning and Columbus, for years, South
Speaker 5: American dictators would send their troops to learn how to
Speaker 5: put down riots. You know, that's the comparison that's being made.
Speaker 2: Gentlemen, talk to me a little bit about how the
Speaker 2: construction of this facility is going to affect the surrounding
Speaker 2: counties and areas like that. Part of it was something
Speaker 2: within our daily show piece that we did. We weren't
Speaker 2: able to get into that at the depth that I
Speaker 2: wanted to in the actual segment, even though I was
Speaker 2: outside with Jackie Echos on that damn river for about
Speaker 2: four hours and a kayak and I don't know if
Speaker 2: y'all ever been in a river and a kayak, and
Speaker 2: you ain't had breakfast.
Speaker 1: And the water is low.
Speaker 2: So you keep hitting sandbars, so you got to scoot
Speaker 2: your booty across the ruined the good Pat Jordan's talk
Speaker 2: to us about why I was on a damn river
Speaker 2: miles away from the actual construction site of cop City,
Speaker 2: and why that part of the story is as equally
Speaker 2: important as it is about the over policing aspects of it.
Speaker 4: All Right, So for people at home who don't know
Speaker 4: what this is, Atlanta is very unique in the sense
Speaker 4: that it sits in between two counties, Fulton County and
Speaker 4: Decab County. And the TLDR version of this is that
Speaker 4: the site that cop City is in is in a
Speaker 4: part known as colloquially as Atlanta de caap, so it's
Speaker 4: the City of Atlanta property, but within Decab County. And
Speaker 4: how this plays out is all of the wastewater that
Speaker 4: comes through both the City of Atlanta and Decab County
Speaker 4: go along the South River, which is what Rory was
Speaker 4: paddling on. That river in particular, though, has a lot
Speaker 4: of people who dump things illegally and a lot of
Speaker 4: dumps who legally dump into that space. Cop City is
Speaker 4: now going to be contributing to the South River's pollution
Speaker 4: as well. And because of the terms of the deal,
Speaker 4: there is no oversight for what happens on the site,
Speaker 4: especially the burn building, and also with everything that's in
Speaker 4: the sedtiment that's already on the site, So that sediment
Speaker 4: is going to just be impacted more with the construction
Speaker 4: and then with the activities on there, and that's going
Speaker 4: to also be getting back into the river, and that
Speaker 4: river in particular. It's a piece that I'm working on
Speaker 4: for something else, is that we think that that may
Speaker 4: actually be a cancer alley. And what that means is
Speaker 4: for a lot of the black people who live in
Speaker 4: southwest to Cab County and people who live on that
Speaker 4: side of the City of Atlanta, they're getting inundated with
Speaker 4: a lot of air pollution and a lot of water pollution,
Speaker 4: and a lot of ground pollution as well from all
Speaker 4: the people who are dumping into that. And the police
Speaker 4: and cop city are also going to be contributing to
Speaker 4: that as well. And as a result of that, we
Speaker 4: have this issue where the place that you were paddling
Speaker 4: eventually goes back into the South River fully and that
Speaker 4: thing goes all the way through to Cab County, which
Speaker 4: has seen an influx of teachers in particular who are
Speaker 4: teaching along this river path get cancer, die of cancer,
Speaker 4: and get other related diseases. Now because of all of
Speaker 4: the environmental things that are happening just from that river
Speaker 4: in particular.
Speaker 2: Then also, George, what Jackie was trying to explain to me,
Speaker 2: and this is a part of the piece that we
Speaker 2: ended up cutting out because environmental issues and then environmental racism.
Speaker 2: It is very hard to make quick and concise, to
Speaker 2: fit into a thirty minute television show and also will
Speaker 2: make it funny. But she was trying to explain to
Speaker 2: me basically, the bill site for cop City is a
Speaker 2: lot of dirt. Dirt absorbs water. You put concrete over dirt,
Speaker 2: the water got to go somewhere. When it rained, the
Speaker 2: water would now go downstream and tear up most shit.
Speaker 2: Explain to me. She didn't say it like that, Jackie Eckles.
Speaker 5: Is no, she is filled with unimpeachable truth.
Speaker 2: But the flooding, the flooding aspects of it as well,
Speaker 2: any ways to measure that or has that been taken
Speaker 2: into account?
Speaker 5: So yeah, let me talk about that a little bit
Speaker 5: like Atlanta. Everybody wants to move to Atlanta. Everybody wants
Speaker 5: to move to Atlanta. Seventy five thousand people end up
Speaker 5: in Metro Atlanta every year, and we're not building anything
Speaker 5: for them except that we are like the you look
Speaker 5: around Atlanta, they're construction cranes everywhere, and they're paving everything.
Speaker 5: And whenever you pave enough stuff, the water that would
Speaker 5: normally go one way goes another. And so like, you
Speaker 5: get a really good rain in Atlanta and the highway
Speaker 5: will flood, like that's how bad it is, Like a
Speaker 5: really solid couple of days of rain and you can't
Speaker 5: drive on I two eighty five without going through ten
Speaker 5: inches of water. The worst flooding is happening in decap
Speaker 5: because we're Our sewer systems are garbage because we didn't
Speaker 5: overbuild for all the people that have been coming here,
Speaker 5: and all this runoff is being created, and it's going
Speaker 5: into black neighborhoods. It's going to neighborhoods like mine. I
Speaker 5: live on a creek and we had to do a
Speaker 5: million dollars worth of remediation on that creek because you know,
Speaker 5: when we had a good, a good rain, it would floodhouses.
Speaker 5: So let's drop a mall in the middle of this
Speaker 5: river essentially, and see how many houses of black people
Speaker 5: we're gonna flood downstream. And the worst part of this
Speaker 5: is that area is getrifying, but it's also filled with
Speaker 5: black homeowners. Black homeowners are rare, Like, we don't have
Speaker 5: enough black homeowners. And so you're gonna tell me that
Speaker 5: people who are actually starting to get equity in their
Speaker 5: houses are those of the folks you're gonna flood out
Speaker 5: by building this. Yeah, people are kind of pissed off
Speaker 5: about that, but they're only kind of pissed off. They're
Speaker 5: not super pissed off because it hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we've covered what cop City is. We've covered
Speaker 2: all of the different ways that it could be bad
Speaker 2: for the community, be it fiscally, be it environmentally. Now
Speaker 2: we need to talk about the people and what they're
Speaker 2: doing to try and stop it. After the break, I
Speaker 2: want to talk about this group of people I met
Speaker 2: called the Forest Defenders, who are actually living on the
Speaker 2: cop City construction site.
Speaker 1: And who the hell us for cop City?
Speaker 2: If everything that y'all have just laid out it's talking
Speaker 2: about as bad for this is bad for that is
Speaker 2: bad for that. Who was the person that wrote a check.
Speaker 2: I was like, here's forty million, good luck, and go
Speaker 2: build it. It's beyond the scenes. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Beyond the scenes. We are back.
Speaker 2: We are discussing cop City, or excuse me, George, the
Speaker 2: Atlanta City of Police Training and Fire Medical Facility Readiness
Speaker 2: Activity Zone.
Speaker 1: That's not call it.
Speaker 5: Cop city, calling cops City, Like, don't ever make me
Speaker 5: put that in a headline. Nobody will read the.
Speaker 2: Story we've covered so far, the cons of cop City
Speaker 2: and the fact that it could become a place to
Speaker 2: mistrain a lot of offices in a lot of different places,
Speaker 2: their environmental issues that will come from cop City. It
Speaker 2: is a fiscal boondoggle as well. Part of the reason
Speaker 2: cop City is started to cost a lot of money
Speaker 2: is because there are a group of people that have
Speaker 2: encamped themselves in the construct, like literally living in this area.
Speaker 2: They call themselves to Forest Defenders. And I was able
Speaker 2: to meet some of these people for my story, and
Speaker 2: they were extremely secretive because you know, we're getting into
Speaker 2: like real secret enemy of the state type stuff where
Speaker 2: they believe their cell phones are being tapped, they're being monitored,
Speaker 2: by drones. They believe the police are trying to come
Speaker 2: in undercover and invent themselves with them, Like it is
Speaker 2: a lot of different things that are being accused from
Speaker 2: the Forest Defenders towards the city of Atlanta. And you
Speaker 2: all's coverage of this from the inception of cop City.
Speaker 2: When did you start seeing the Forest Defenders start to
Speaker 2: become a thing and how did that whole movement emerge
Speaker 2: and when did it start becoming deadly?
Speaker 4: So to that point, Atlanta's overall activist ecosystem for the
Speaker 4: last couple of years have been relatively decimated, and so
Speaker 4: the few activists who really knew about it almost from
Speaker 4: the beginning had already started stage in protests either just
Speaker 4: online or throughout the city and especially around.
Speaker 6: That place, were already there almost from day one about the.
Speaker 2: Site decimated in what sense like arrest and just kind
Speaker 2: of torn apart during George Floyd movement or.
Speaker 6: Well even before George Floyd. So that's a good point.
Speaker 4: So a lot of our activists, there's no infrastructure, So
Speaker 4: activists can't necessarily go into a heritage foundation, they don't
Speaker 4: get into law, they don't get into the universities. Even
Speaker 4: so after a series of crackdowns on various protests, with
Speaker 4: the last being this thing called Tent City over at
Speaker 4: the old Turner Field which is now Georgia State Stadium.
Speaker 4: A lot of them after getting arrested, a lot of
Speaker 4: them after being fired from their jobs, they just left.
Speaker 4: They either left the city or they left the movements
Speaker 4: all together, and then there was no other people to
Speaker 4: kind of come in and take over, like that next
Speaker 4: wave of leadership, which is something you see in most
Speaker 4: political movements. And so the people who started coming around
Speaker 4: and started encamping themselves, a lot of them weren't necessarily
Speaker 4: from Atlanta, but a lot of them were getting news
Speaker 4: about Atlanta from people on the ground or former activists,
Speaker 4: of people sharing things in their social fees. So they
Speaker 4: felt emboldened to come here because there was nobody to
Speaker 4: literally defend the force that was there. Because the activists
Speaker 4: who normally would have been here in most cities just
Speaker 4: aren't here anymore. We just don't have that ecosystem, not
Speaker 4: because they are are weak or anything like that, just
Speaker 4: because there's nothing to support them. There was no way
Speaker 4: to level up. So that's kind of how we get
Speaker 4: to that point of the forest defenders. And also the
Speaker 4: forest defenders. I want to add into that is that
Speaker 4: a lot of them also interact with other groups like
Speaker 4: general historic preservationists, arborous local DICAB residents who didn't like
Speaker 4: the project. So it was a lot easier for them
Speaker 4: to start getting familiar with the city, get familiar with
Speaker 4: the players really fast, because there was a lot of
Speaker 4: people who just didn't like this project for various reasons.
Speaker 2: What was interesting when I was out there king was
Speaker 2: that locals were like bringing them food and little debbies
Speaker 2: like legit care packages. You know, George, if we want
Speaker 2: to get into the military.
Speaker 1: You know, they was.
Speaker 2: Dropping off the mr kits, They was dropping off the supply,
Speaker 2: but like they were like straight up supply drops, like
Speaker 2: from just strangers being sent money a number of different ways.
Speaker 2: I won't say how, but they had infrastructure set up
Speaker 2: where they could get that level of support from outsiders.
Speaker 2: So they get in, they starting camping, and they start
Speaker 2: doing things to kind of be you know, a pain
Speaker 2: to the construction companies. You know, like they may tear
Speaker 2: up some of the equipment, or they'll set up a
Speaker 2: blockade so you can't get that particular tree cutting saw
Speaker 2: down this path or whatever, and the police always come
Speaker 2: in and try to tear down their barricades, and people
Speaker 2: have started butting heads more and more as the price
Speaker 2: of this project increases. George, it seems that tension has
Speaker 2: also seemed to increase because there's a level of urgency
Speaker 2: to just get it done that starts coming from people.
Speaker 2: When do you think that tensions start? When did things
Speaker 2: start to turn for the worse with this?
Speaker 5: Oh, I want to say maybe fall last year. You
Speaker 5: started to see like a truck get overturned here or there.
Speaker 5: You had a few arrests, and the cops have made
Speaker 5: a big deal about the fact that the folks who
Speaker 5: are getting arrested are generally from out of town, that
Speaker 5: they're white people with money, from places like Kitabunkport, Maine.
Speaker 5: And that's important, I think, because it shows that there's
Speaker 5: a national interest in what's going on here. Things really
Speaker 5: like the But when Tortuguita is an activist who was
Speaker 5: killed by the police, and there's still some controversy over
Speaker 5: the circumstances of that they found a gun. The gun
Speaker 5: was registered to him, but there's a question about how
Speaker 5: the shooting actually started.
Speaker 1: Who shot first, who shot first?
Speaker 5: There is some non zero.
Speaker 2: Chance you met this guy I met twenty to thirty.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't all agree to be on camera. The ones
Speaker 2: that you saw on camera firepiece, that was a small
Speaker 2: fraction as a Forest defenders I met that day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that's sort of that energized things. That there
Speaker 5: were vigils in fifty other cities around the country in
Speaker 5: the days that followed Tortuguita's death. And I think that's
Speaker 5: what led to what happened last night, where they've started
Speaker 5: a week of protest. You know, they had a concert
Speaker 5: out in the forest, like sort of a festival, and
Speaker 5: then a bunch of guys dressed up in black and
Speaker 5: set construction equipment on fire and started throwing fireworks at
Speaker 5: the cops that came to put it out. They arrested.
Speaker 5: Usually it's five or six people, maybe ten. They arrested
Speaker 5: thirty five last night. I think we're gonna steam more escalation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was at the beginning of March in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three when that happened, like to that point. And
Speaker 2: I want to be fair to the forest offenders, but
Speaker 2: I want to kind of pose a question to the
Speaker 2: two of you, does protest because they love to get
Speaker 2: into you know, respectability politics. When it's time to protest, right,
Speaker 2: they go, well, you're protesting, but you have to leave
Speaker 2: at eight pm. The proper protest, though, is there's time
Speaker 2: and stand here, and there's that protest way. Whereas the
Speaker 2: forest defenders have done what they've done with cop City,
Speaker 2: and they have effectively delayed construction, they have effectively increased
Speaker 2: awareness of the issue. They have effectively drawn more attention
Speaker 2: to the issue. But does the way that they are
Speaker 2: drawing attention to the issue then give the police and
Speaker 2: the supporters of this issue justification to go see they
Speaker 2: are terrorists? Are that guy was shooting fire? I'm a
Speaker 2: sworn law enforcement officer. Does that approach to protesting only
Speaker 2: embolden the people who want cop City to happen?
Speaker 6: Yes, directly. Yes.
Speaker 4: And in the case of Atlanta is a city built
Speaker 4: on respectability politics, and especially with black respectability politics. And
Speaker 4: I think it's interesting, especially in the real world, that
Speaker 4: the average person in Atlanta still vaguely understands what cop
Speaker 4: City is. But what they do understand is that, oh know,
Speaker 4: these weird leftists from Portland are burning police things again, right,
Speaker 4: And so that's kind of been used as like some
Speaker 4: of the copaganda and getting this promoted. And so now
Speaker 4: you have general other police departments from around the metro
Speaker 4: area who are starting to show up. Like last night
Speaker 4: there was a bunch of them who showed up as
Speaker 4: a show of force to the site for no reason.
Speaker 4: But now it's becoming like a slight culture war in
Speaker 4: that respect as well. And Atlanta really doesn't historically doesn't
Speaker 4: really budge against authority for the most part. This Alanta
Speaker 4: way of doing things, of having respectability politics, protests before dark,
Speaker 4: make sure you're in the house, have you applied for
Speaker 4: a permit to protest? All those things have played into
Speaker 4: like the ecosystem of Atlanta. And I do want to
Speaker 4: add just one other thing, which is it is now
Speaker 4: becoming more and more difficult to protest. You have to
Speaker 4: not only apply for permits to protesting. But we have
Speaker 4: this thing that happened in the summer of twenty twenty
Speaker 4: then double down again in this upcoming legislative session about
Speaker 4: cracking down on protests, and this thing called the police
Speaker 4: Officer's Bill of Rights, which makes it really hard now
Speaker 4: for protests.
Speaker 6: It's not only protests.
Speaker 4: Police directly, but if offer you know, let's say he
Speaker 4: pushes a person and that person falls on another office
Speaker 4: of that person could be charged with assault, or if
Speaker 4: somebody wants to fund the Forest Defenders, that person could
Speaker 4: be charged with aiding a terrorist organization or aiding an
Speaker 4: organization against law enforcement. So they're slowly and systematically reducing
Speaker 4: the parameters of protests to make it seem as if
Speaker 4: no protests exists in Atlanta.
Speaker 5: The other side of this, in a matter of speaking,
Speaker 5: is that there is a the protest. They may actually
Speaker 5: have a practical veto here. So this project is looks
Speaker 5: like ninety million, looks like it's actually going to be
Speaker 5: more than ninety million. But here's the thing. The Atlanta
Speaker 5: Police Foundation says that they've got sixty million dollars in pledges,
Speaker 5: but they're also trying to borrow money in order to
Speaker 5: get this thing built. And the longer this takes, with
Speaker 5: interest rates doing what interest rates are doing, and what
Speaker 5: construction costs are doing, like, at some point, it's entirely
Speaker 5: possible that this gets away from the Atlantic pl Police
Speaker 5: Foundation financially simply because this gets delayed. They if the
Speaker 5: Forest Defenders can delay this thing for a year or
Speaker 5: eighteen months, it may no longer be financially viable. And
Speaker 5: what they're they may be counting on is that the
Speaker 5: Atlanta Police Foundation will try to go hat in hand
Speaker 5: to the City of Atlanta and say, I know that
Speaker 5: we said that you only needed to spend thirty million,
Speaker 5: but we really need sixty million. And at that point,
Speaker 5: the city will have to put this up in a
Speaker 5: bond referendum and there will be a vote on whether
Speaker 5: or not cop City should go forward. And if you're
Speaker 5: one of the forest defenders, you think you could win
Speaker 5: that vote. And that's so strategically, it's not Yeah, you're
Speaker 5: gonna piss off a lot of people, but that's not
Speaker 5: stupid in that regard.
Speaker 2: Sent in to that point, George, what the people that
Speaker 2: are in support of building cop City? If we know
Speaker 2: cop City is bad for the environment, we know that
Speaker 2: they could create a culture of potential over policing, over
Speaker 2: aggressive policing. If we're not focusing all the on all
Speaker 2: the other aspects of police training that helped to de escalate.
Speaker 2: Because it sounds like cop City is one big a
Speaker 2: When When when should escalate? This is when you come
Speaker 2: here to learn how to handles it? When should escalate?
Speaker 1: How?
Speaker 2: Who are the people that are bankrolling this, and why
Speaker 2: are they still okay with it? There's gotta be something
Speaker 2: that is big. It's got to be some corporate money
Speaker 2: behind it. It's gotta be some government money behind it.
Speaker 2: Like how are these people still how are those organizations
Speaker 2: still okay with cop City moving forward?
Speaker 5: So there's a lot of there's a lot of corporate
Speaker 5: money here. Uh. The Atlanta Police Foundation has got a
Speaker 5: bunch of banks, including Wells Fargo, there's Chick fil a, Truest,
Speaker 5: I think Cox enterprises like Cox Cable, which it includes
Speaker 5: the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which makes for fun reading about this,
Speaker 5: like the paper swears on a stack of bibles. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: we're not biased. Even though the corporate owners are leading,
Speaker 5: they're the guys who are leading the fundraising effort for this.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of corporate money involved, and it's suspicious
Speaker 5: in my opinion. But I think here's the thing, though,
Speaker 5: those corporations that are contributing to this, all they're doing
Speaker 5: is buying influence. I don't think they actually give one
Speaker 5: damn about copp City as a thing, but they know
Speaker 5: that the Atlanta Police Foundation can jerk the city council
Speaker 5: around and potentially cost some city council seats, and as
Speaker 5: long as that's true, they can influence the city council
Speaker 5: by funding the Atlanta Police Foundation.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I won't get into the weeds of the things I
Speaker 2: learned in the state of Alabama when I was trying
Speaker 2: to shoot my sitcom for Comedy Central in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: But I did learn that if you want to get
Speaker 2: a politician to do something, you don't talk to the politician.
Speaker 2: You talk to the politician's bankroll. And so if the
Speaker 2: Atlanta Police are the people that have the leverage over
Speaker 2: the politicians, and you do something in their favor, then
Speaker 2: they are more likely to So yeah, I could, I could.
Speaker 2: I could see that. So it's less of a yay
Speaker 2: police versus sooner or later, we need you to pass
Speaker 2: the law that's gonna help our company, we Chick Filate.
Speaker 2: We need the chicken to be cheaper. So if I
Speaker 2: give you a little money for cop City, make sure
Speaker 2: the chicken is cheap so I can make a little
Speaker 2: bit extra proNT just increasing the cost of cop City.
Speaker 2: Is that the only effective way to get corporations to
Speaker 2: go Wait a minute, we got to pull out of
Speaker 2: this because it sounds like it sounds like money is
Speaker 2: the only thing that's really getting anything done so far
Speaker 2: or affecting the cost of it. It doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: morals have entered the conversation at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, at this point, right now, it's definitely money. And
Speaker 4: you said something earlier. I do want to add into that,
Speaker 4: which is that the average person at Lance again and
Speaker 4: still really doesn't know what cop City is. Like they
Speaker 4: get their news from either social fees of the five
Speaker 4: o'clock news for the most part, and when they hear
Speaker 4: about this and they're kind of ambivalent. The difference is
Speaker 4: once you start getting into a lot of like the
Speaker 4: details of the deal, it goes from like ambivalent to
Speaker 4: a we should really reconsider a lot of parameters on
Speaker 4: this really fast. And the reason why I think there's
Speaker 4: a lot of money trying to push this ahead of
Speaker 4: time is because once the average person Atlanta starts to
Speaker 4: learn a little bit more about it, and especially now
Speaker 4: with the communities in South to cab who are also
Speaker 4: now becoming including this conversation about the environmental racism, there's
Speaker 4: a lot more people now who are really starting to
Speaker 4: question the nature of this project. Yeah, they may not
Speaker 4: necessarily like the out of towners pushing over cars and
Speaker 4: you know, throwing firecrackers, but they do want to know
Speaker 4: there's some other things Cop City is representing that they're
Speaker 4: either not getting directly in directed aid or that's going
Speaker 4: to affect them really fast. So it's kind of become
Speaker 4: an issue of time and money is like proceeding faster
Speaker 4: than the time is allowed for people to really think
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 2: Would it have mattered if the protester was from Decatur
Speaker 2: or whether or not they from Maine. If they're there
Speaker 2: to fight against something, why is that even a talking
Speaker 2: point to try and get people to disregard what these
Speaker 2: people are willing to die for.
Speaker 4: It's an old nativest strategy. But I promise you I'm
Speaker 4: from Decatur. If that person would have been from Decatur,
Speaker 4: there wouldn't have been no Cops City, there wouldn't been
Speaker 4: no force. Like people indicator that they operate very differently.
Speaker 4: And so I do think that people when they bring
Speaker 4: up this out of talent ey thing, it makes the
Speaker 4: narrative that you know what, people in Atlanta support this.
Speaker 6: These are people.
Speaker 4: It's like the good old boy system of like, oh,
Speaker 4: these outside agitators coming in and really like stirring up
Speaker 4: the pot. But if it was again, somebody from a Decatur,
Speaker 4: if it was a nineteen year old from Decatur, I
Speaker 4: guarantee you not only would COP City not be there.
Speaker 4: Andre Dixons is probably not the mayor at this point, right, Like,
Speaker 4: people in Atlanta move very differently if they feel like
Speaker 4: one of their own have been disrespected, And I think
Speaker 4: that's something that they've been leaning on with with regards
Speaker 4: to cop cities, like, Hey, one of us didn't do this,
Speaker 4: this was one of them from outside of our state.
Speaker 4: And that's kind of what we're seeing play out right now.
Speaker 2: Does the environmental racism part of this when we talk about,
Speaker 2: you know, creating care answer alleys from a lot of
Speaker 2: the burnoff. You know you got a burn building, that
Speaker 2: means you got smoke, that means you got chemicals going
Speaker 2: in the water, because they take chemicals to make fake fire,
Speaker 2: you know, to make control fires. So what about the
Speaker 2: surrounding cities? Because the river don't stop in the Atlanta
Speaker 2: metro it keeps running on down the state. Have any
Speaker 2: of the other states even came in and just has
Speaker 2: Lawrenceville checked in? Has making Georgia checked in? Hey, could
Speaker 2: y'all not send the cancer downstream?
Speaker 6: Please?
Speaker 2: We would appreciate. Like how much is the rest Where
Speaker 2: does the rest of surrounding Georgia? You know, I can't God,
Speaker 2: I can't remember the comedian that made the joke Atlanta
Speaker 2: is Atlanta, but it's surrounded by Georgia. Has Georgia checked
Speaker 2: in on what Atlanta is doing?
Speaker 5: So for the most part, I don't think Georgia cares.
Speaker 5: I think part of it is because like the rest
Speaker 5: of the Georgia hates Atlanta, Like like once you get
Speaker 5: out of Metro Atlanta, like if they could shoot Atlanta,
Speaker 5: they would, like there's literally they like they were ready
Speaker 5: to blow up Atlanta and split off Buckhead from the rest.
Speaker 2: Of the city. We don't even have a time to
Speaker 2: talk about it, trying to secede from the city.
Speaker 5: Everybody else every Like if you're a politician from the
Speaker 5: rest of the state, like you run against those horrible
Speaker 5: liberals in Atlanta and they could do nothing right and
Speaker 5: to heck with them, Like that's that is the attitude
Speaker 5: outside of Metro Atlanta.
Speaker 1: But how's it going to affect them? Don't they know that?
Speaker 1: First off?
Speaker 2: Lay out some of the ways this could affect those
Speaker 2: surrounding areas, and are they gonna just you know, just
Speaker 2: not gonna say nothing.
Speaker 5: So it depends on exactly who you're talking to, Like
Speaker 5: because if you are in suburban Columbus, you know, and
Speaker 5: it's a like red state Georgia, uh like you're like, yeah,
Speaker 5: maybe there's a runoff, but we don't care because it's
Speaker 5: not gonna hurt us. I would be the attitude. But hey,
Speaker 5: maybe we can drive our police department up there and
Speaker 5: go do some fancy training for a lot cheaper than
Speaker 5: we could do it before, and it'll be better. For
Speaker 5: the most part. I think the rest of the state
Speaker 5: and maybe even surrounding states, like the police narrative controls
Speaker 5: how they're going to view this. If they're pro cop
Speaker 5: they're pro cop city. If they want police accountability, then
Speaker 5: they've heard about why cop city is wrong. But I
Speaker 5: don't think that they're going to have as much. Like
Speaker 5: here's the thing Atlanta does not want, Like the city
Speaker 5: of Atlanta and decap County really don't want the rest
Speaker 5: of the country and the rest of the state weighing
Speaker 5: in on this. They want to be in control of
Speaker 5: what's happening in their own backyard, because generally speaking, when
Speaker 5: other people come in like that's that's when you get
Speaker 5: like our red state Republican governor like taking a dump
Speaker 5: on the city. And they're afraid of that. And I
Speaker 5: understand that that's why they're pushing this outside agitators thing,
Speaker 5: even though it is this horribly racist callback. I gotta
Speaker 5: tell you to like nineteen sixties, those northern agitators are
Speaker 5: coming in here like that's what it sounds like to
Speaker 5: me because I know these things, but they think that
Speaker 5: it'll buy them some space.
Speaker 2: Well, after the break, we're gonna bring it home and
Speaker 2: talk about some of the other initiatives that have been
Speaker 2: going on in and around the city of Atlanta to
Speaker 2: help rectify a lot of issues that have been happening
Speaker 2: in Atlanta. Also, after the break, I need to get
Speaker 2: your recommendations for the best limon pepper wings. That's why
Speaker 2: seventy five thousand people a year moving to Atlanta. It's
Speaker 2: them damn wings. Stop having good wings, and then maybe
Speaker 2: people wouldn't move there. This is beyond the scenes. We'll
Speaker 2: be right back beyond the scenes. We round in third
Speaker 2: and headed for home. We are talking about cop City
Speaker 2: and the different pros and cons of it. Now, before
Speaker 2: we got to the break, we were laughing but still
Speaker 2: being a little serious about some of the different initiatives
Speaker 2: and referendums that have been put in place in Atlanta
Speaker 2: in the last couple of years. We talk about the
Speaker 2: city of Buckhead trying to set like essentially the way
Speaker 2: Beverly Hills eate part of Los Angeles. No more like
Speaker 2: it's still LA but with Beverly Hills, we have our
Speaker 2: own city hall, we have our own police department. King
Speaker 2: have there been other initiatives and referendums that have been
Speaker 2: passed in the last couple of years in Atlanta.
Speaker 4: In terms of secession, no, not like the Bucket city
Speaker 4: hood thing, But in terms of city hood, yes. Everyone
Speaker 4: right now Metrolanta is trying to create their own fiefdoms.
Speaker 4: And Sandy Springs really kicked that off there in North
Speaker 4: Fulton County, just outside the city limits of Buckhead actually,
Speaker 4: and in two thousand and five they became the first
Speaker 4: to really kick off this modern cityhood movement, and since
Speaker 4: then every municipality has tried to do their own version
Speaker 4: of Hey, we're not going to allocate our tax dollars
Speaker 4: to help those people you can infer what that means
Speaker 4: when every time that comes up. The thing that makes
Speaker 4: it different now is that we've had since two thousand
Speaker 4: and five, we've only had two black ones. One is
Speaker 4: the city of Stone Crest, and then we also have
Speaker 4: South Fulton, And so those are two majority black city
Speaker 4: hood efforts, and they have had a varying degree of
Speaker 4: success compared to the white ones. But everyone right now
Speaker 4: is trying to be their own version of a city,
Speaker 4: and Buckhead being its own version of a city led
Speaker 4: by people outside of the state, I mean, outside of
Speaker 4: the metro Atlanta area is the latest in a long
Speaker 4: chapter in that.
Speaker 2: But if these predominantly white areas, which I would assume
Speaker 2: are probably red parts of town little okay, wealthy, but
Speaker 2: not necessarily red purplish if you will, Georgia is like
Speaker 2: kind of sort of why leave Atlanta?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 2: Is it decisions? Like the cop city thing? Is it
Speaker 2: decisions like you know, the way that the rayshar Brooks
Speaker 2: trial of those officers was handled. What are the pros
Speaker 2: and cons of leaving the city And why can't at
Speaker 2: Land and just say get the hell on and we
Speaker 2: don't need you a little fucking little tax dollars.
Speaker 1: I'm good. I got Chick fil A in my backpacket.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna go off for a second because the whole
Speaker 5: Buckhet thing was a lot. How much profanity can I use?
Speaker 1: Do what you want?
Speaker 5: So the whole it's just bullshit that was created by
Speaker 5: one guy who was a fundraiser for Trump, like this
Speaker 5: one racist felt straw piece of shit, like it decides
Speaker 5: I can. Like, there's this untapped group of rich white
Speaker 5: conservative Tucker Carlson watching people who've got more money than
Speaker 5: since who the Republican Party has never figured out how
Speaker 5: to fundraise off of effectively. And so comes this guy
Speaker 5: from New York who moves into Buckhead and says we
Speaker 5: should split Buckhead off because Atlanta sucks, and he's just
Speaker 5: it's just an excuse to send out newsletters raising money.
Speaker 5: It was never going to pass. It was never ever
Speaker 5: ever going.
Speaker 2: To arouse to fundraise. And then when you lose, you
Speaker 2: go see they don't want us to be great. Join
Speaker 2: me in the fight with the fave down a donation,
Speaker 2: you're more like a five thousand dollars donation. Oh shit,
Speaker 2: hang on, hey hey man, it's Buckhead. I mean, you
Speaker 2: gotta know it's like, that's it. That's all that was,
Speaker 2: And a lot of this other stuff is like in
Speaker 2: the same vein. It's this idea that black communities can't
Speaker 2: figure out how to govern themselves. At least that's the
Speaker 2: that's the lie, and so like if you don't like,
Speaker 2: if you don't like the idea of having a black
Speaker 2: mayor as a white person, here's a way for you
Speaker 2: to get up and around that.
Speaker 4: Even to that point, though, like what you said about
Speaker 4: the Buckett city hood thing was interesting because for a
Speaker 4: host of reasons that was never going to work, which
Speaker 4: is why Brian Kemp had to come in and kind
Speaker 4: of put the foot down on that one. But the
Speaker 4: other issue is cop City was brought to the Buckhead
Speaker 4: business leaders as a way to keep away secession from Atlanta.
Speaker 4: It was like, hey, you know, you want police around
Speaker 4: the Ray Sharbrooks. Around June of twenty twenty, I mean
Speaker 4: we have even by August of twenty twenty, they're already
Speaker 4: in cahoots with a couple of day I'm not going
Speaker 4: to say certain city council members are already talking to
Speaker 4: Buckhead leaders about what can they do to support the police,
Speaker 4: And by December of twenty twenty, we already have like
Speaker 4: the plan that would eventually become cop City, So it
Speaker 4: was always always going to be a part of it,
Speaker 4: and Buckheat was always going to be leading that effort
Speaker 4: to have cop City. So the fact that this person
Speaker 4: in particular wanted to lead a fundraising effort to secede
Speaker 4: from Atlanta based on the notion of police was just
Speaker 4: one of the best scans in Atlanta history.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's maybe a top five moment.
Speaker 2: How much do the police respect the data of how
Speaker 2: crime is lowered versus simply passing thing that will get
Speaker 2: them the support of their community. Like if we're talking
Speaker 2: local politician and you know X y Z reading initiative
Speaker 2: will help. We know that the connection between literacy and
Speaker 2: crime rates. The more area can read, the lower the
Speaker 2: crime rate is in that area. We also know that
Speaker 2: you could take some of the money for the police
Speaker 2: tank and create a non weaponized response like they have
Speaker 2: in Portland. Portland has a division that is just responding
Speaker 2: to mental health and minor domestic stuff that the cops
Speaker 2: normally would be the ones going to, which is less
Speaker 2: work on your police, which is less stress on your police,
Speaker 2: which equals a higher morale and a better, better work environment.
Speaker 2: Those things could all contribute to lowering crime. So why
Speaker 2: be so dedicatedly invested into the one thing that makes
Speaker 2: it seem like the only way to be tough on
Speaker 2: crime is in a punitive way. Because let's be as
Speaker 2: three Southerners this on this podcast right now. We all
Speaker 2: came up in the ass whooping phase of the South.
Speaker 2: So tough, heavy hand billy club. Do cops and politicians
Speaker 2: do they really believe that all this and all these
Speaker 2: other initiatives will really help to lower crime?
Speaker 5: And all got a lot to say about this.
Speaker 2: Because if that'sn't just selling to the cab and Sandy
Speaker 2: Springs and fucking Villerica, if that's what you're trying to
Speaker 2: get them to be a part of, aren't you still lying?
Speaker 1: Like a shooter's gonna shoot and drama is still gonna
Speaker 1: be drama.
Speaker 5: So it's funny like the city's got like a Portland
Speaker 5: style thing. They started it a few years ago. I
Speaker 5: was actually on the design team for the pre Arrested
Speaker 5: version initiative in Atlanta. Okay, add the thing is it
Speaker 5: gets like three or four million dollars a year. It's
Speaker 5: got like a dozen, maybe two dozen people who are
Speaker 5: working on it, and it's hamstrung by all of the
Speaker 5: other things that are broken. The jail is broken, the
Speaker 5: courts are broken, the cops are kind of broken. The
Speaker 5: District Attorney's office doesn't have enough staff to really do
Speaker 5: all the things they need to do. There aren't enough
Speaker 5: public defenders to go around. Like it's like there's this
Speaker 5: gigantic mess in the system. Meanwhile, like they're gonna spend
Speaker 5: thirty million dollars on Cop City and there their idea
Speaker 5: here is okay, so we're spent. They're in their head,
Speaker 5: they're going, well, we're already spending all this money on
Speaker 5: all of these other things like bail reform and all
Speaker 5: the rest, so we should probably spend more money on
Speaker 5: the cops too. Like in their head, this is a balance,
Speaker 5: Like this is the balancing point to all of the
Speaker 5: other stuff that they're doing, even though all the other
Speaker 5: stuff that they're doing is really not nearly enough, that
Speaker 5: is a lot less than that they're spending on police.
Speaker 5: The problem is, as soon as you say that, somebody
Speaker 5: comes in and says you want to defund the police,
Speaker 5: and then ah, and everybody turns into a Muppet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's also because before on wasn't the best
Speaker 2: word because people thought they didn't take all the bunny.
Speaker 2: It was like, nah, man, just you don't need a tank.
Speaker 2: Here's an suv instead. Here's a fortified suv instead of
Speaker 2: a tank. And we're gonna take that tank money, and
Speaker 2: we're gonna put some Doctor Seuss books in the hood
Speaker 2: and we're gonna lower crime. That's all we were trying
Speaker 2: to do. Uh. I'll end with this question for the
Speaker 2: two of you. How do you all feel the city
Speaker 2: of Atlanta is being perceived nationally? How is the perception
Speaker 2: of the city of Atlanta? Has it evolved or devolved
Speaker 2: over the last few years with Cop City being a
Speaker 2: big part of this, and you know Governor Kemp threatening
Speaker 2: to send in the National Guard, you know, the national
Speaker 2: Guard on coming in. Let's just say the National Guard.
Speaker 2: Ifause anybody need to go to Cop City for some training,
Speaker 2: it's probably the National Guard because they ain't training as
Speaker 2: often as the cops about how to do cop stuff.
Speaker 1: How do you all feel the.
Speaker 2: City of Atlanta has been perceived like this? Does this
Speaker 2: set a bad precedent for the city, you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of the reputation of it. Does it encourage other
Speaker 2: cities to build their own cop city? Is Memphis gonna
Speaker 2: be inspired? Is Miami gonna be inspired?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: My God?
Speaker 4: All right, I swear to God, I hope everyone does
Speaker 4: not try to make their own cop City. For a
Speaker 4: host of reason. It's bad for money, bad for Atlanta,
Speaker 4: he's bad for the environment. That's personally what I do think.
Speaker 6: Though.
Speaker 4: Over time, Atlanta is gonna win. Atlanta always wins out.
Speaker 4: That's the beauty of being in Atlanta's no matter what,
Speaker 4: you always win. Over the last couple of years, though,
Speaker 4: and in combination with cop City, in the last few
Speaker 4: years of the previous mayor and just in general, there
Speaker 4: has been a push of like Atlanta's it's black, but
Speaker 4: it's not the Mecca anymore. And I do think that
Speaker 4: if Atlanta's not working on brand control right now, you
Speaker 4: could have a scenario in which people really just leave
Speaker 4: Atlanta right Atlanta doesn't have the infrastructure that Atlanta doesn't
Speaker 4: have necessarily connective tissue like a New York City does
Speaker 4: or a Miami that you mentioned even in LA to
Speaker 4: keep attracting black people.
Speaker 6: So I do think the.
Speaker 4: Current mayor, after this cop City phase goes over. He's
Speaker 4: going to try to figure out how to make Atlanta
Speaker 4: the Black Mecca again or make the Mecca great again,
Speaker 4: because you can't lose that representation that we have otherwise
Speaker 4: and we're no different from any other city across the country.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the thing I turned my mind is you're asking
Speaker 5: this question is the twenty twenty four National Democratic National Convention.
Speaker 5: So the mayor's trying Michel to get the convention in Atlanta,
Speaker 5: and I think he might actually be successful. It's they're
Speaker 5: going to be here in Chicago. Like, the thing is,
Speaker 5: if Atlanta is perceived as a place where we've got
Speaker 5: a bunch of protests over stuff like this, that's the
Speaker 5: image that Atlanta, like this whole cop city has the
Speaker 5: potential to change the perception of Atlanta across the country
Speaker 5: depending on what's going on. You know what, year, three
Speaker 5: or four months from now, I'm with King on the
Speaker 5: Black Meca thing, Like there's a group of us who
Speaker 5: are trying to strangle that in a bathtub somewhere. Like
Speaker 5: this is a great city, it's a great city to
Speaker 5: be black. But if you were born black and poor
Speaker 5: in Atlanta, like you are screwed in a lot of
Speaker 5: ways like it does not. It is not a happy
Speaker 5: place for you. We've got less mobility for less economic
Speaker 5: mobility than almost anywhere else in the United States. Uh,
Speaker 5: it's hard to get up. It's hard to climb out
Speaker 5: of poverty in Atlanta, and we don't see that. We
Speaker 5: see love and hip hop, we see you know, the
Speaker 5: Atlanta TV show, We see the Marvel movies. You know
Speaker 5: we got rappers Eight Ways to Sunday talking about Atlanta. Like,
Speaker 5: they don't see the hard parts. They don't see why
Speaker 5: we've got like a crime problem that people think we
Speaker 5: need to build a cop city to deal with. And
Speaker 5: I think that's gonna change.
Speaker 2: And if it doesn't, you can always sell the city
Speaker 2: to Tyler Perry and he'll fix it immediately. Gentlemen, I
Speaker 2: cannot thank you all enough for this wonderful, wonderful conversation.
Speaker 2: When I get down to Atlanta, I'll let you all
Speaker 2: take me out to your wing spot of choice. We
Speaker 2: don't have to name no places right now. They didn't
Speaker 2: pay us for no endorsements. But just please don't take
Speaker 2: me to the Varsity. I've had everything on the menu
Speaker 2: that I've ateed the Varsity forty eight different times.
Speaker 1: I just don't. Don't take me to the varsity.
Speaker 6: I got I got it.
Speaker 2: George King, thank you so much for going beyond the
Speaker 2: scenes with me.
Speaker 6: Thank you, thank you.
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