It Could Happen Here - Bad Mayor Monday: Andre Dickens

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Matt from the Atlanta Community Press Collective talks to Gare about Andre Dickens’ political career from an affordable housing advocate to alleged sellout for the Atlanta Police Foundation.    https://secure.actblue.com/donate/atlantasolidaritySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. 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 date is 26th 26th uh during the the uh sixth week of action in atlanta to stop cop city so that is ongoing we're recording this is slightly ahead of time so we can release it during the week so we don't know what, how exactly things are going to go. And I'm pleased to 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, I have, uh, uh, convinced, uh, Matt from the Atlantic community press collective to do my work for me this episode, um, by writing probably too many words about mayor 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 Mr. Dickens, Matt. Take it away. All right. So Andre Deshaun Dickens was born June 17th, 1974,

the younger of two children. His mother divorced Dickens' birth father before he was born, but stepfather adopted him and his sister when Dickens was seven. Working as an airline mechanic, Dickens' 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, and 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, quote, we fought often. But when the fighting escalated to bats and brass knuckles, he changed course and turned to baseball and books instead.

At age 16, 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. This is the street where the Hard Rock Cafe is. He went on to become an ambassador. Ambassador to the Hard Rock. To the Hard hard rock cafe that's also where the swat vehicle hung out in front of the hooters exactly yeah it's a very notable street in atlanta yeah after a week-long uh 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 lockheed martin go to recruit a whole bunch of their employees yeah you know it's it's the uh 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 uh 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 you explain what that is yes historically black college and universities uh there are a group of them in uh 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 1974 not to graduate from one of those HBCUs. But Dickens did join Kappa Alpha Psi, a 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. Got it. After graduations, he briefly left the state before returning home in 2002 to take care of his ill mother.

This is around the time that he started his public service career, and he joined NPUD. NPUs are neighborhood planning units. Atlanta is broken up into 25 of these neighborhood units, and they're each given a letter of the alphabet. So they're advisory boards that give input to the city, but they can issue like zoning variances. And some NPUs have built up like considerable power over their neighborhood. So this is where a lot of people like first plug into Atlanta government. Okay, so it's like, this like related to like the zoning board process and yeah if you if you need to get approval to uh 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 your awning or build your awning okay yeah yeah at this point dickens uh and his sister also also founded a business called city living home

furnishings. And the company was exactly what it's a furniture store. It's a furniture store. He founded a 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?

What? What? How does owning a 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 is trash. Your history to somebody. Who are all these places that, you you know you've really got to be consistent is what he said and you know turns out what's his furniture track now i have to know well spoiler

he goes bankrupt uh it turns out the ajc wouldn't be much of a problem for dickens as as we've learned years later the paper would be on his side bobbing those easy questions and helping him build support for cop city uh so like i said the family business failed in 2010 you can't actually blame dickens for it was a product of the of the great uh recession okay uh so i wonder if we can still find any of his furniture lying around so there's there's actually a store called city living home furnishing and i don't know if it's like somebody just related at all or yeah i tried to look it up and i couldn't like figure out if if it was just somebody using the same name or not but there is one that exists uh in like west midtown okay whoa oh boy sorry we're gonna i'm gonna get a lot of comments from people in atlanta now because you said a west

midtown oh boy i'm sorry west side or whatever you want to call it it's uh it's a southwest piedmont i don't know. There's also Sono, like south of North Ave. Yeah, we have all these fun little street or neighborhood names. 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 2010? public administration in economic development. So this was after 2010? Yeah, after 2010. In 2011, he started attending his master's program at Georgia State University. And then he graduated in 2013, just in time for the municipal election season. So Atlanta City Council, as we've learned now, is comprised of 12 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 2009 placing a settlement money from a child injury case into his personal bank account instead of giving it to the parents wait wait really yes and this guy this guy is now back in uh georgia government he uh is he's part of like the beltline um that that makes sense management program so

like i 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 not your personal account no so uh former mayor shirley franklin endorsed dickens in the 23 race or former mayor shirley franklin endorsed Dickens in the 2013 race, which drew ire and 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 to about a million dollars in debt and had some tax liens against him which he's now discharged through both bankruptcy and settling the tax liens okay but but the unlawful use of georgia tech government property what is 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 willis willis making the claim i i

found no evidence like a computer like computers like what is it 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 i found nothing that actually really backs up uh the claim against him so he won the election in november 53% of the vote, which is a surprisingly strong victory for a relatively unknown candidate like Dickens was at the time. During his first term, 2013 to 2017, 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 $40 million affordable housing bond, as well as a study to

raise the minimum wage for city employees to $15 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 2017. Now we're at 2017 to 2021. And this is where the story starts to get interesting. We'll see the themes that will play out in this first, you know, a couple of years as mayor. Well, and,

and, and we will learn about that story after these messages from our lovely sponsors, or if you're subscribed to the new Apple premium plus the cooler zone media, you just hear us do the ad breaks without any ads at all. So in lieu of that, um,

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez.

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At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back i'm strumming away on my on my electric gold plated bass this doesn't sound good it doesn't sound like it's supposed to yeah dan i'll 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 uh we're in 2018 now. So in 20 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 2018 revolved around an area of downtown called the Gulch. So this is the area that's surrounded by most of our sport team venues, kind of like where Centennial Olympic Park is. And the streets are all elevated in that area around, uh, above ground level. And at the bottom of the ground level, it's like these early 20th century, like railway lines.

Uh, but it's mostly parking lots for those, those. For the stadiums and stuff. Yeah, for the stadiums. And it's known as the Gulch because, you know, it's kind of just a break in the ground. Yeah, it's like a gulch, kind of. So back in... It's like a gulch, kind of. That's the name.

Oh, wow. Back in 2012, then-Mayor Kasim Reed 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 2018, but Andre Dickens voted against it, saying correctly that there wasn't enough focus in the development plans on housing affordability.

And this helped cement Dickens' reputation as a housing affordability advocate. Yeah, because he also did that $40 million package. Yeah, he just did that $40 million bond, and we'll have some more affordable housing stuff later. But I should say we're like five years on now, and the Gulch hasn't begun, but they're trying to get it done before the World Cup comes in.

Yeah, it seems like they've been preoccupied with another... Another construction project? Another 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 does 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 Atlanta's decaying road infrastructure and improve. No, the roads here are fine. Yeah. So you you drove on.

You complained when when we had this last week of action about dekab avenue and all the potholes yeah and that is now repaved that got repaved like a couple weeks ago they're well they're in the process of repaving it so i'd love to see infrastructure working it's my favorite part my new favorite part is uh moorland is that usually around moorland drive um there's an area where you're trying to get to the Wani 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 flooding. That helps the flooding because there's more space for the dirt to soak in water. Exactly. That is how that works. It is science. So in 2019, Dickens introduced legislation to create a task force uh 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 as jail and everybody else is talking about something entirely different uh-huh uh so it was built in 1990s leading up to the olympics and replaced an older jail that now serves as our our primary homeless shelter so that's what acdc is now uh gate it's called the gateway center now that was the old jail acdc is the current jail okay okay uh so in a press release uh after uh bottom signed this legislation to create the task force who's bought sorry first who whose bottoms? So from 2017 to 2021, Atlanta had a mayor named Lance Bottoms. And she was great and did not approve legislation about Cop City at all. She did not. She did.

She did. So that was a lot. You just lied to me. I lied. I'm sorry. You purposely spread misinformation on my news podcast. Okay. I lied. I'm sorry. You purposely spread misinformation on my news podcast. OK, so Michael Smith was Bottoms press secretary and also currently serving as Dickens press secretary. OK, 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. It only authorized the 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 before turning in options, which brings us to June 2020. We're going to skip straight over there

with all of this going on. So what was happening in June 2020 in Atlanta? There were some protests going on, which we're going gonna key in just after the jail fight but the task force offered four options and the city uh indicated that was going to go with the 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 um you know to stop people from going into the criminal justice system.

OK. And in the middle of the summer of 2020, 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 you're not in front of a judge. You are not technically arrested. you are given resources and you are given options to attend courses diversion program where they get help instead of going to jail. And it works to the extent that APD actually does contact PAD.

And it depends on the, 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 a pin in that. That is the plan. Okay. It is during June of 2020. During June of 2020. The entire nation is in That is the plan. Okay. It is during June of 2020. During June of 2020. The entire nation is in an uproar.

Okay. Because of course, the bigger news of the summer of 2020 was the George Floyd uprising. And at that point, it implanted the killing of Rayshard Brooks by Garrett Rolfe 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 deescalate situations like these before they turn deadly. Once the suspect fled unarmed and intoxicated through a parking lot of bystanders, this could have become an investigation rather than a shooting. 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 hit with tear gas and shot by pepper 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 April to June of every year. And the biggest debate in council that summer was about withholding $73 million or about a quarter of the Atlanta Police Department's funding. And so we were actually positioned to 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 estimate I've seen for this public comment was about 17 hours, according to Mainline Zine.

I seem to recall it being longer, but around 17 hours. Comparable to the last public comment session related to Cop City. Yeah, and comparable even to the first public comment session. Yeah, which was also 17 hours. Yeah, so the actual vote happened on a specially 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 a specially called Saturday session of city council. At the time, like all other 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 of 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 without risking cutting into actual pay for police or the raises to police salary 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 $2 million or $3 million or $5 million, it just is so short of reimagining. You can't reimagine something that's almost $300 million and only take $2 to $5 million to reimagine it, right? And to kind of think through what all needs to be done and to send 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 2021. At this point, I think it's been... If you're listening to this show, you're also probably somewhat familiar. There are several episodes that you can pause here and go back and listen to to kind of catch up on how that happened in 2021. So suffice it to say that Dickens did not fight against the legislation in its council phase and was one of the 10 votes to approve the Copsity lease in September of 2021. If anything, Dickens was one of the quieter members of council when it came to debating the Copsity lease. He didn't really say much while the debates were happening.

So the last few months, of course, of the cop 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 candidacy all the way back on May 6th amid rumors that she was on the short list to be Biden's nod for VP. Which did not happen. Which did not happen. So to understand how Dickens won this election, cause spoiler we're talking about shitty 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. Um, and who the presumed front runners of the race were. First, municipal elections are run on a nonpartisan basis.

There are no party primaries to weed out weaker 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 50% 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 a population than 100 000 people like atlanta like atlanta which has 600 000 just uh around 500 000 i think it's like 490 000 at this point but then but the greater metro area is like the greater metro area is something like six or seven

million yeah uh so the two front runners of the race were not exactly popular figures uh i would go so far as to say like in many 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 Trump. Yeah. So former Mayor Kasim Reed

was one of those candidates. He left office in 2017 after a second term. Atlanta has this two consecutive term limit, which Reed had reached. However, you can run for a third term

if it's not consecutive. Okay. So during Reid's second term, lawsuits and scandal propagated heavily. Amongst the things that came out during both during and after Reid's administration was that Reid made nearly $900,000 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 mayor. And to make matters worse for Reed, a month after he announced his candidacy, the AJC released that it believed Reed 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 surprising. Then on the other side was Felicia Moore, who accurately or not was seen by opponents as the face of cop city after Joyce Shepard, who introduced the legislation authorizing the lease for cop city and lost her seat on on council for that reason. While never forced to do so since city council presidents only vote in tiebreakers, Moore did say that she would vote in favor of cop city if it was needed.

Then a week before the election, Felicia Moore's campaign Instagram account posted a video with Lee Clevenger, a white republican donor and supporter of moore's campaign clevenger can be heard saying all of atlanta mayors since 1979 were quote not interested in anything except lining their own pockets hmm i should know there's here i feel like there's gonna be some uh since 1974 a black person has been mayor every single time yeah that yeah that's that's what i was thinking yeah so that sounds like he's just a racist over so well yeah uh more removed the post and returned the campaign contribution uh from clevenger 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 like 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 Reid with just under 600 votes. For a total of 22,153 votes for Dickens, Moore had a much better showing with 39,202 votes. But neither of them was over 50%.

But neither of them broke the 50%. So we went to a runoff. So during the runoff, Moore really courted conservative Buckhead. And Buckhead's like the northern, more conservative, not suburb, but neighborhood of Atlanta. Neighborhood. It's the one that wanted to turn it into its own city. Yes, wanted to do the Buckhead Succession,

which is built on a whole bunch of legacies of redlining and segregation and blah, blah, blah. Oh, we'll talk about that. Okay, good. So Moore also earned the endorsement of Reid. The guy who just said the racist thing? The guy who, no, the former mayor who lost to

Dickens for second place by about 600 votes. Okay, I'm trying to keep all these names straight here because there's a lot of a lot of names coming into my head now uh in a situation that led many progressives in advantage to look at the guy who while he voted for cop still supported closing the jail was willing to cut 73 million dollars from apd and had a been a pretty consistent advocate for affordable housing on council. So it was between Moore and that guy. Yeah. So progressives made a decision and went for Dickens.

And in the runoff, Dickens won by a landslide with 63% of the votes. Okay. So 44,655 votes. Moore actually lost 13,000 votes from her general election total. Interesting. Thus, Mayor Andre Dickens becomes our next leader. Turnout for the runoff was in line with what we saw four years earlier when Keisha Lance Bottom faced off against Garrison's candidate of choice, Mary Norwood.

Wait, what? Don't put, what do you mean my candidate of choice? You're going to back Norwood if she runs for mayor again, right? No. Oh, I misunderstood everything that has happened. She's a scary woman. I'm not going to... So the Norwood Bottoms runoff only had 4,000 more voters than we did in 2021's runoff.

That was the 2017 election. 2018 election. Got it. Okay. The Mary Norwood Kiesha Lance Bottoms one. got it okay no the mayor norwood that was the 2017 bottoms one i i i'm gonna act like i know atlanta history yeah i'll just correct you on some of this atlanta history here as i feign ignorance to have you explain concepts for the audience making me sound more ignorant than i am but actually then explain to you anyway i continue sorry i was going off in a ramble we should say

that 2017 uh runoff was actually much more evenly matched bottoms only won by 800 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 um with you know consent to govern and it's not really stretching it when he says that atlanta supported him in this particular election yes this particular opponent. We largely did. In the interim period, Dickens does the usual things.

He appoints a transition team. This included your usual cast of characters, but it is also worth noting that it included Dave Wilkinson, president and CEO of the Atlanta police foundation. I've, I've, I've heard of them. The Atlanta police foundation.

It's like a, it's like a, it's like police foundation it'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 non-profit you know your standard non-profit okay they do cool things tax deductible tax yeah you can donate to them tax deductibly just like this they might advertise just like the streamer destiny 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 we explained a little bit earlier what Buckhead is. But Atlanta is a very large metropolitan area.

And much of Fulton County itself was at one point part of unincorporated Atlanta. And then in 2005, 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 2016, newly formed black majority cities also started cropping up around the metro area, like the city of South Fulton and Stonecrest. so buckhead wanted to do the same thing they wanted to become their own city and by no means was that like popular sentiment in buckhead but it's more complicated because the cityhood drives uh were not like part of incorporated

atlanta the previous ones okay it is incorporated atlanta it 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 yep so to have the best chance of actually seceding bucket needs a state congressional vote otherwise it would require a city-wide vote which it would why would people yeah yeah so in 2022 it found that uhhead secession bill started working its way through the legislature. The bill didn't make it very far this this first time around. It dies on February 11th. So just a couple of 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. his term as mayor. Dickens also kind of to quell this this Buckhead secession played into the race of crime narrative that Buckhead secessionists were claiming was the reason that they wanted to secede. 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 you're basically marked it haunts you the task force only serves to reinforce that uh and in response to the formation of the unit southern center for human rights said

quote if apd is planning to double down on the very 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 heard the Blue Apron cooking boxes are really convenient if you live an active and busy lifestyle, like Matt from the Atlanta Community Press Collective.

I actually use HelloFresh. Okay, good. Because I think they're the ones that actually are advertising on our show. So thank you. Thank you for that. Great work. You already got it.

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters.

To bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge

and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,

as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back. All right, so kicking back in with the Buckhead Session movement, in order to mollify Buckhead, there is also an opening of a police precinct

in Zone 2 in which Buckhead sits. 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 28 square miles that's wild because like portland only has like three or four precincts in total yeah so we have six zones has like more people in like portland proper than like atlanta does i think our territory is more expansive yes yes but like population wise, there's actually more people in Portland proper. Just pretty funny.

I should say that the third precinct in Zone 2 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 in Buckhead dropped more in both years than any other zones. What's The Wire?

But well, there's a podcast about The Wire. Oh, really? A podcast? Yes. Huh? I forget the name of it. What's The Wire? It's a it's a TV show about.

Oh, police. And is it like one of those like millennial shows? Are we doing a bit? Is this like one of like those like millennial shows are we doing a bit is this like one of those millennial shows um it did come out in the early oh so this is like succession for old people got it this is a session for old people yes uh 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 said this massive apartment complex operator called millennia the company had a reputation across the country as terrible and it is deservedly so at forest 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 700 residents that the city would be moving them to safer housing while the complex was either fixed or rebuilt the rollout of of this wasn't perfect um on aprth of this year, Sean Keenan, a local reporter, released... Friend of the show, New York Times reporter Sean Keenan makes another appearance.

So Keenan released a new story of this year, April 13th, 2023, showing that a quarter of Forest Cove residents were relocated to complexes identified as dangerous dwellings on the AJC's residential watchdog list. 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 rental. Which is hard being like in Atlanta. Because I never had AC in Portland. But that's Portland. We're not dealing with the Atlanta humidity and Atlanta heat.

No, it's pretty miserable. Thankfully, my air conditioning did get fixed eventually. But yeah, there's no recourse for things like that. But yeah, there's no recourse for things like that. So until that report by Keenan, 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 it's going to go.

Because this is like current events. Yeah. Yeah. So another Forest Cove issue that will probably come up later in Dickens' 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 HUD 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 80 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 that I noticed when I was visiting Atlanta last year was that most of the Section 8 housing

has been converted into luxury condos or new five-story apartment complexes. And no, the speed of the gentrification was kind of surprising to me, even coming from Portland. There's still gentrification in Portland. Absolutely. But did the,

the expansiveness of it here and the speed of which it's accelerating was, was surprising to me. And we're not building like low income housing complexes. What's happening here is that they're, they're adding a certain percentage of new, like if you're building a, a massive complex, a certain percentage of your uh off like your

dwellings have to go at at a certain point of the uh 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 low income and you just you do the barest amount to skirt 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 a GSU professor named Dan Emmerglock. If you want to learn more about gentrification in Atlanta. OK, great. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a vital reading.

So towards the end of Dickens' first 100 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 100 days to improve public safety and kind of see where things were at before firing him. And what happened after those 100 days? Bryant stepped down and Dickens tapped then-Deputy Chief Darren Shearbaum as interim replacement.

I've heard of this guy before. This is the guy who made that weird confession about having sex in the woods with all those police officers. I heard that in a podcast recently. That's so crazy. Shearbaum, 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 Dick officially hired him in October of 2022. But if you're a leftist or even just against cop city, this is actually like kind of a loss. Sheer bomb 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 cop city, I remember when he was just like the spokesperson for it.

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. And, you know, I watch this like every week. He does a pretty good job. Yeah. This brings us to budget season 2022.

In April, Dickens tells the agency that he wants to hire 250 APD officers a year for three years, hoping that the total of 750 new hires will net a 450 increase in officers for the department. Okay. So hiring a lot, some of them might not stay on, other people might not stay on, but you're trying to like net to get another like 400 or so officers yep uh so dickens also approved four thousand dollar bonuses for apd uh paid using american rescue plan act money and great great great use of funds initially in june dickens promised police a raise of three and a half percent but in november uh 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 27 raise over the course of three years funny how much money they're just getting pumped this past yeah and i don't know what happened like three years ago but it seems like something shouldn't no i mean like you were talking about how like how how how dickens was like previously working to get like a like a 70 million reduction in police budget you know probably but like in some ways probably just like for pr rates and strict because during 2020 that was the popular thing to do and now he's just 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 40 new scad and so scad is the savannah college of art and design uh arts college the big art college in georgia yeah uh so they designed these police ford explorer vehicles uh for an officer take home program they look like shit each vehicle cost sixty thousand dollars so the total price tag of this was 2.4 million dollars to improve officer morale oh yeah let's let's get them let's get them you know two million dollars with their cars just to make them happy uh 70 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 this budget season uh 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 you had a budget surplus and you're like no let's give them to give all the money to the police who are already getting a 90 million dollar training facility let's give even more money sure great so dan emmergluck the gsu professor i just mentioned um he was he's an affordable housing advocate and he

was part of uh dickens 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 $7 million in the affordable housing budget before the budget was passed in June.

Cool, cool, cool. remember back in 2019 and 2021 everyone is was in agreement that the uh jail was going to close yeah the the the ac they were going to convert it to the other to that other thing it was going to be a center for diversion and equity it was it was going to be great and and by this point it actually had a name the john lewis center Diversion and Equity. Great. But in June of 2022, 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 and Atlanta were in talks to rent 700 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 ACLU report that came out later in the year that found 45% of the overall jail population in Fulton County is unindicted. Yeah, they're just holding people that actually have not been indicted for any 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 remain 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. Humanitarian. Because we always know adding more prison beds really reduces the problem. Uh-huh. Uh, so the temporary solution that we're talking about is a four-year agreement. Uh, and Fulton County is

paying the city of Atlanta $50 per bed per night. So when the full 700 beds are taking, Atlanta will be making $12.7 million a year. Remember when we had to release all those people from prison and jail in 2020 due to overcrowding and then violent crime dropped? Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. So the $12.7 million sounds like a lot of money, but before the lease went into effect, ACDC's average population was under 50 individuals per night. The city's Department of Corrections budget is $16.1 million a year. So the city is still going to lose money running this jail, even with Fulton County paying for their detainees to stay there. for their detainees to stay there. Then on April 14th of this year,

the news came out that LaShawn Thompson died in Rice Street Jail, having been neglected and ignored by Fulton 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 2022, 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 $2,500 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 alive today. Yeah, it's just blocking up poor people. Yeah. So this is the sort of thing that Dickens and counsel have enabled with this new jail lease. Before we get into Dickensinson Cop City in 2023, we need to talk briefly about some more American Rescue Plan Act chicanery Dickinson Council pulled off this year. At the end of January,

Atlanta announced that it was returning $10 million in ARPA funds earmarked for rental assistance that the city never used. Why don't you just use it for rental assistance? So this naturally upset a lot of people. Public comment was quite feisty that day. Atlanta is

of course increasingly pricing out its legacy residents, as we just talked about, and $10 million 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 $500,000 in ARPA funds to the Atlanta Police Foundation to provide additional police and first responder housing.

So really reinforcing the city is 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 18th. I think it's probably a good place to start. Sure. The killing of Tortugita 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 Tortugita was killed. that tortugita was killed not surprising uh he never accepts any level of responsibility for tort's death insisting instead that that responsibility lies with georgia state patrol or decap county he refuses to acknowledge the fact that the city's insistence on trying to build cop city both ensured tort and the officer's presence in the woods and apd's involvement in the raid like yeah uh so this moment also kind of changed how dickens uh approaches cop city before he was relatively quiet uh but he begins this like full court media press after january 18th and we don't know the exact details but it does seem like dekalb county atlanta officials and apf came to an agreement in in january uh to 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 AUC, and we didn't talk about which ones those were earlier, it's Morehouse, Spelman, Clark 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 disdain the rest of the night. One student called him out for his lack of prior acknowledgement of Tort's death, and

Dickens, as usual, sidestepped responsibility, again saying that it was unfortunate Tort 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 tirade after a student called him a sellout. This we do have audio for. I know we like to yell and shout out things just to be heard. You've been heard. You've been heard. But guess what?

You picked the wrong resume to pull on a race car. Whatever Dickens was hoping to accomplish that night, he failed. Several memes and audio remixes of Dickens' performance went viral in the Atlanta Twittersphere 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 Dr. Han

good doctor memes that just reminded me of the I am a surgeon meme. So great job. Great job. Yeah, great work. So Dickens has, of course, continued to try or to build or manufacture support for Copsity over the next two months. In March, he was visiting the neighborhoods around Copsity to hear feedback from residents.

And he, of course, started in the wealthier neighborhoods. And he only went to the less affluent neighborhood, which Copsity 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 out.

He's done several interviews now on Cop City with both the AJC and WABE, a local public radio station. The AJC 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, he said this, but a member of his cabinet had already confirmed that APF, to APF, City was willing to pay $ two million dollars at that point.

And of course, we've now learned that that number is sixty seven million dollars. Do you follow the city of Atlanta's Twitter account? No, I don't want to see that shit. But I know they have turned it into just a cop city propaganda. have turned it into just a cop city propaganda it's a non-stop propaganda channel um which is like really fun to watch because every cop city uh post is like bombarded with negative replies and quote tweets i i've seen these posts i know i know i have talked about how they launched their own website trying to combat all of the stop cop city websites and yeah they've really accelerated their propaganda the past few months and yeah just turned the actual city of atlanta account into a cop city propaganda uh like platform which is funny because they off they also often advocate

and say like this isn't the city of atlanta's project this is the apfs project which they'll often like use that use that refrain and yet we have the city of atlanta account being turned into a into a megaphone to promote 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 uh nor 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 um so So meanwhile, Dickens is, of course, like dogged by opposition to cop city at every turn. On April 13th, 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 11th, Dickens had hired a new senior policy advisor named Karen Rogers. 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 18th, DeKalb County Medical Examiner released the autopsy on Tort's death. And that same day, just before the article came out that the autopsy was released, Dickens held a press conference on

the steps of City Hall. He was surrounded by a group of nearly 100 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 AJC 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 against cop city uh and a growing number of state representatives have started to speak out you know as that happened and as the uh rest of the solidarity fund but dickens is of course unmoved and preparing for this fight to last a while um then of course there was the city council vote uh on june 5th and there had been some work done behind the scenes to try to get this sent back to committee. Apparently Dickens had like peeled off, uh, city key called the maybe votes into his

office, uh, early that morning and peeled off the votes to ensure that that cop city continued on. Uh, we should, I wrote this of course, like two months ago at this point so yeah a couple quick highlights again the affordable housing um uh 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 it was supposed to go to two percent he kept it at 1.5%. But he did announce a public-private partnership to offer $100 million in affordable housing bonds. Really?

Yes. So we love our public-private partnership, Atlanta Way, to get things done. Yeah, that seems like the way... That's what I'm excited about for the extra $30 million bond to APF. That'll certainly get paid back in a reasonable time period. In a completely reasonable time period.

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 of this. This is down out of the goodness of their heart. 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 2025. And of course, Dickens has to move the needle. There were some calls for a recall campaign around Dickens, especially amongst the movement. I personally don't think that it would have any chance of succeeding. There's kind of a perception that he's

doing okay, and when you have somebody that was probed by the FBI for corruption just a few years ago, your standards of what a good mayor is kind of changes. People seem to be putting lots of dedicated efforts in terms of electoral sign-up kind of changes. People seem to be putting lots of their dedicated, some of their dedicated

efforts in terms of like electoral sign up stuff is being put towards the referendum which got approved a few days ago to continue. They need to collect like what 75,000 signatures from people who were residents of Atlanta and registered to vote in 2021. Yes. Which seems like a pretty high bar.

That's a lot of signatures. It's a lot of signatures and It's a lot of signatures. And because the organizers say this municipal clerk was like playing games and withholding approving the signature. So they don't have approving the referendum. And so they don't have the full like 60 days. It's now like two weeks. No, it's 57 days. So I think it's like they have to have them by August 15th.

Which is a lot of signatures. And August 15th is around when construction was supposed to start for Cop City. So, yeah. And then for other mayoral candidates, I've heard rumor that friend of the show, ontologically evil Mary Norwood, may be interested in trying to run again. So this is like her her kind of move is she does, uh, she runs for mayor. All right.

Well, first she does a term of city council and then she runs for mayor and then she doesn't get the mayoral spot. So she takes a, you know, four years off. She comes back, runs for city council,

runs for mayor, takes four years off. So we, we, we're now in her, you know, mayor, uh,

her city council term. And if she's going to do this for a third time, then she will run for mayor in 2025. 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 is, um, so Atlanta's demographics are changing. We're no longer a majority black city. Um, the population, uh, is down to like 48%, um, 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 like i said the only way to accurately describe her is just ontologically evil like she is she she is just that bad um she's like she, she is just that bad. Um, she's like, she's, she, yeah, it's not great.

Would not be fun, but she, she, 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 to not to cancel the project, even just to move it somewhere else, he's refused every step of the way.

Um, and yeah, we'll, we'll see how that does them in the next election cycle. Yeah. I'm really interested to see uh how he plays the referendum i'm i'm i'm interested to see if the referendum will even be a threat at all because if it's if it's if it fails to get a significant portion 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 uh 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 um i definitely i don't know what what things are like but there's still some days left so yeah if if you, 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 things you would like to plug Matt from the Atlantic 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 atlpress press collective.com. Uh, we also do a lot on Twitter. Uh, our handle is at Atlanta underscore press and our Instagram,

uh, 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 solidarity fund website. Still, I believe it's, I believe it's still the, the national bail fund Fund website still. I believe it's still the National

Bail Fund one, right? I believe it is still the National Bail Fund, probably until that court case is settled. Got it. So yeah, make sure you go to the right site for the ActBlue National 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 no comment that's the joke that I made before I'm going to keep making it until he's no longer mayor unless someone else runs

for we could do Norwood Dickens Bottoms now I'm not even going to bother joking about that because that'd be so, that'd be so bad. Don't put it into the universe. Exactly.

That doesn't need to matter. I don't need to do that. Anyway. Yeah. See you on the other side. Stay safe. Stay dangerous during the week of action.

Ta-ta. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.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 coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening.

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