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