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Wilco’s O.K., You’re O.K.

Atlanta Loop 10/10/2019

By Tommy Housworth, contributor

When Wilco visits Atlanta’s Cadence Bank Amphitheater on October 18th, they’ll be bringing 25 years of alt-rock history with them. While ticket holders can expect to hear a generous helping of the songs that earned Jeff Tweedy and company consistent critical praise and a faithful fan base, they’ll also be sharing songs from their just released 11th studio album, Ode to Joy.

Upon first listen, the album, their first since 2016’s folksy Wilco Schmilco, might seem like anything but a musical celebration. The arrangements are deceptively understated, with only strategic hints of the ramshackle experimentation that brought them acclaim in the early 2000’s. Tweedy’s lyrics feel personal and muted, an introvert trying his best to extend a bouquet with one hand while the other guards his heart. Could it be that the band unfairly saddled as the purveyor of “dad rock” has matured into a more sonically shamanistic role?

In The New Yorker , novelist George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo) said that Tweedy once told him that he wants his audiences to know, “You’re O.K. You’re not alone. I’m singing to you, but I also hear you.” In 2019, that may be Wilco’s greatest gift: their collective ability to reassure us in the midst of personal and universal shakiness. On Ode, they do so in true Wilco fashion, digging around in the darkness to offer sparks of light and hints of warmth.

“Bright Leaves” opens Ode to Joy with what may be the slowest steady drum beat Glenn Kotche has ever pounded out, a cadence that portends a hint of dread. Not Thom Yorke/Radiohead angst, certainly, but a sense that something once stable is now askew, especially as Nels Cline adds in a static-laden guitar riff and the vocal mix drops into a reverberating echo. The lyrics feed this narrative, with lines like “I don’t like the way you’re treating me” and “Sometimes I’m just a hole for you to get in”, and yet by the song’s bridge, Tweedy proposes a hint of redemption: “Somehow we’re bright leaves, you and I beneath the old snow, being set free by the winter rain…”

The album tends to work this way, establishing a base level of melancholy or – at best – wistful wishfulness, then each song manages to offer the gentlest of respites, choosing – if not joy – at least the reassuring blanket of contentment. Given this is a band that was made unwitting spokesmen for post-9/11 America with the timing and lyricism of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it’s hard not to view Ode to Joy as a social statement about how disconnected and damaged our citizenry feels, and how finding one another again might be the balm that would begin to make us feel more whole again.

Certainly, songs like “Everyone Hides”, the album’s most radio-friendly tune (if that’s even an aspiration for Wilco), speaks to this, with its nod to our tendency to trade humble authenticity for the grand charades that social media and materialism promote. Meanwhile, “Love is Everywhere (Beware)” reminds us that “beneath the sleeping town, with the riots raining down”, love is still a quiet, driving force in our lives.

Lyrically, though still delivered in an abstract, minimalist pastiche of lines, Tweedy is more direct than he has been in some time. Coming off his confessional solo albums Warm and Warmer, both released in the past year, the shrouded songwriter who claimed to be an “American aquarium drinker” who “assassins down the avenue” is now vulnerable enough to confess on the shuffling singalong “Hold Me Anyway” that ‘I think it’s poetry and magic, something too big to have a name.’ Turns out the iconoclast has a streak of idealist in him.

Fans who rightly loved the Americana bombast of 1995’s Being There and the dissonant explorations of 2004’s Grammy winning A Ghost Is Born might wonder where the band’s bite is, but it’s minor moments of wonder that Wilco currently majors in.

With each listen to their new album, a more of those moments reveal themselves. As we careen toward our uncertain futures – both personal and collective – having a musical friend who can say “You’re O.K. You’re not alone. I’m singing to you, but I also hear you,” can be a reassuring hand on a shaky shoulder. It might even be called an Ode to Joy.

WILCO will perform at Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park on Friday, October 18th. Soccer Mommy opens.

Opinion

Music Midtown: A Midtown Perspective

Atlanta Loop 09/25/2019

By Jeff Slate, contributor

Each year it starts the same. One is driving and approaching 10th Street near Piedmont Park and there it is – the portable electric traffic sign. The message alters a bit from year to year but based on previous encounters it is this year’s inevitable message of inconvenience: “WB (westbound lanes) of 10th street will be closed from 9/6-9/19. Expect Delays.” The initial reaction is pondering for at least a split second – what could possibly require two weeks to prevent tens of thousands of motorists from not driving West on 10th Street for two weeks? It can’t be Christmas but of course, it’s everyone’s favorite contentious festival: Music Midtown.

Music Midtown (MM) began in 1994 on an 8-acre site on the corner of Peachtree and 10th, now home of the lovely white Cherokee marble building known as the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That year music promoters Alex Cooley and Peter Conlon had the idea to make Atlanta one of the big boys in the world of music festivals, a Peach City New Orleans Jazz Festival but much more than Jazz.

Atlanta was booming. The 1996 Olympics were coming. The Falcons had moved into a brand new shiny dome. The midtown skyline was taking shape. Georgia homegrown talent was thriving – R.E.M., the B-52s. The Atlanta Braves were in the early stages of winning fourteen straight division titles.

Within a decade, Music Midtown had grown into a 3-day festival with 11 stages and over 120 acts, one of the largest if not the largest music festival in the U.S. But the music and the good times would not last. Not surprisingly, with such a massive undertaking, there were a myriad of problems. To name a few: massive overhead, weather, and securing the right location. The heat islands of streets and parking lots made things way too humid for attendees. The 42-acre setting by the Atlanta Civic Center, utilized in ’04 and ’05, was hardly compelling.

After the 2005 fest, Music Midtown closed down. But not for long. In 2011 Music Midtown came roaring back with Coldplay and the Black Keys as headliners. It was a one-day event, ticket prices at $55. And most impressively it was back at a new locale – the crown jewel of Atlanta – gorgeous, beautiful Piedmont Park. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Hello to Strawberry Fields and Saturday in the Park.

The Festival returned albeit without the affable and legendary promoter Alex Cooley. He had long parted his business association with Conlon prior to his death in 2015. Peter Conlon was now President of Live Nation Atlanta. He brought the music back.

Wasn’t this great? As boastfully stated on its city Permit Application, Music Midtown is “Atlanta’s premier music festival since 1994 featuring the biggest names in Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop and electronic from around the globe.”

But Music Midtown, shockingly coincidentally, is in Atlanta’s Midtown, a high-density commercial and residential neighborhood. There are beautiful homes in the neighborhood, homes that have been occupied by the same residents for over 50 years or longer, homes whose occupants were there long before the advent of Music Midtown and homes where the owners grew up listening to Frank Sinatra, not Cardi B, one of the headliners of the 2019 Festival.

There are businesses in the neighborhood such as the popular MetroFresh, adjacent to the park, that “uses the finest in-season ingredients, locally grown and organic when possible. People are going to come for delicious healthy food… they’ll come back because they had a great experience.” That’s owner/chef Mitchell Anderson. But many do not visit his health-food restaurant on the Beltline during the Festival. “I get nothing from Music Midtown, ” Anderson says. “My regular customers say ‘I’m not coming to Midtown’. It just makes business a lot harder. Ten days to set-up and one week of break-down. I hate it. Makes me crazy. Also makes me crazy is that it’s a for-profit event. And when it negatively affects other people’s business, I don’t think that’s fair. I understand living in Midtown; you get the good with the bad but this week (MM) in particular drives me crazy.”

Bo Martin, manager of the nearby Midtown Butcher Shoppe is not particularly thrilled either, firmly stating, “It kills our business. It just creates chaos and we don’t reap any of the benefits. The concert-goers just come in non-stop, wanting to use our bathrooms. We start out letting them use them but after a certain point, absolutely not. I see people urinating in public. Drunk people coming into our shop and making a mess. It happens to us and everybody around here. The bathrooms just get overloaded. By late morning (of the concert days) our regular customers just stay at home. They don’t come out. They don’t even try. One of our owners last year had an incident where someone just parallel parked. So he couldn’t come to work. Had to take a taxi. (But) the past two years Music Midtown has been really good about cleaning after themselves. And for some restaurants that do well, as one server aptly described it, ‘We make a lot of money but it’s still a shitshow.’

But not all businesses particularly restaurants or bars share the same feeling of dread. Woody’s Cheese Steaks’ Xavier Edwards says, “I love it. It’s a really cool experience. I’m always excited when we’re doing $500 to $1000 hours. It’s like a stress test. I love testing my limits and really enjoy feeding people. That’s why I’m in the business. We put smiles on people’s faces. You can’t do any better than that. A 12-hour shift feels like a 5-hour shift. Next thing you know it’s time to close. It’s entertaining and I get to feed you. It’s Atlanta at its finest.”

Josh, a bartender at Blake’s on 10th, also finds the festival “great, great for the community, for locally owned business. I don’t how anyone could not like it. Brings more people into the city, this neighborhood, a wide variety of people, a wide variety of music. It’s always safe. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

“A win-win for everyone” is not the most common expression heard by many that call Midtown home. Rather “massive inconvenience,” “public urination,” “trash, parking and road closures and blockades for two weeks” are terms more frequently heard on the streets and sidewalks of Midtown Atlanta. Sexton, a property manager on 10th street, doesn’t hold back, saying, “It’s really an inconvenience now since they don’t give tickets to people who live on 10th like they use to. All the people, the tenants who live here are hampered by the traffic, the noise, and they don’t get anything from it now. I know it brings a lot of money to the city, but at least take care of the people who it’s obstructing…Since I work and stay on the property, I keep people away from vandalizing and urinating. But you can’t have a cop every minute here to catch somebody. They’re urinating all over in the alleyways. During the event I clean up the trash myself. My tenants who have to get to work complain about where they can park, where they can drive, so we have to park off-site. And they use to have two lanes, now only one (on 10th). It’s a huge inconvenience and all we get is a little flyer or little paper (from Live Nation) telling us about all the inconveniences we’re going to have (and) we get nothing from the Festival. We shouldn’t get penalized because we live near the park.”

Rob Brown shares many of Sexton’s sentiments “I loathe it (Music Midtown). I live in this high-rise (Piedmont & 12th). It disrupts our lifestyle for not just two days but for (2) weeks. There’s the destruction it does to the park. People just dump their trash, their cigarettes all over the building. Some throw up and vomit in front of the building and rip the landscape. The (people at the) building are cleaning up, not Music Midtown. We could use more
trash cans (but) I hope they have a great time, everyone is safe, that it doesn’t rain, that the park doesn’t get destroyed. Every year they have gotten better. But there has to be a balance. My taxes bring a lot to this city. I pay a premium amount of taxes to live here (in Midtown).”

Not all residents are unhappy to see Music Midtown roll around each and every year. Many enjoy listening to a “free concert” from their porch. Consider the sentiments of Shannara Rimmey: “Listen, when you live in the city, in Midtown, you get the good with the bad. You live in Midtown. A lot of people can’t even afford to come here or to have a drink in Midtown. I love the Festival. It brings a lot of money into this area. This area wouldn’t be as
valuable if it wasn’t for the bars and the festivals and all that. I have no sympathy (for those that complain). It’s one paid festival out of hundreds of free festivals we have. Two weeks out of 365 days? You can take 14. You’ll live to see another day. Get over it.”

The students at Grady School also welcome the 2-Day Festival, at least the many this reporter talked to. An overwhelming majority attend. A Grady teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, also added, “We handle it pretty well as a school. We got it pretty down pat. We carpool. We want to make sure all our families feel like they know how to navigate.” In addition, the school received a $1000.00 donation from the Midtown Neighborhood
Association for their technology fund.

The President of the Midtown Neighborhood Association (MNA) is Courtney Smith. She is probably not Sexton’s favorite individual. Live Nation used to distribute 200 tickets to those most directly affected by the traffic, the blockades and all the other inconveniences. In other words, those living on 10th Street. Unfortunately the distribution of the complimentary tickets was not without its problems. Some tickets landed in the hands of people not even living in Midtown or tickets were scalped. Live Nation wanted out. Beginning last year the music giant simply gave the 200 free tickets over to the MNA. One less problem for Live Nation but maybe one more for Smith. Those on 10th Street, who previously had received their complimentary tickets, were not pleased when the MNA decided to have a raffle — one that cost $20 to enter. “We wanted to use the tickets to benefit the neighborhood. The ability to win a $20 ticket that’s normally $150 is still a benefit for the residents and also for fundraising so we can have a long-term benefit that lives well beyond Music Midtown,” Smith said. “(But it’s) a gift not quid pro quo for us to then ignore incompatible behavior… We appreciate their (MM) gift but we did vote to oppose their festival this year just like we did last year.”

Smith continues: “The biggest issue is Midtown residents, aka MNA, need to be considered a permanent stakeholder in pre-planning discussions. Music Midtown’s planning starts back in April. We need to weigh in on logistics, lane closures, timing, security, sanitation. We were not included in pre-planning this year.”

One issue that almost all parties agree on, including the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, was the new 2-way bike and scooter lanes in the middle of the 10th Street. In the past there was no access. Daniel Mane, a passionate cyclist and owner of Aurora Coffee in Little Five Points expressed the opinion of many, “This is absolutely perfect, considering the past. You get a wider lane and they (Music Midtown) get to set up their behemoth festival. They’re making a concession of having us drive down in the middle of the lane and as long as I don’t get hit by a forklift, what could be better? There’s more cyclists than ever in Atlanta. I find this safer than the cycle track during a normal day.” The Coalition, in a press release, was also quite pleased: “This outcome sets a new standard for temporary bicycle and pedestrian accommodations during the festival.”

But, as in everything, there are dissenters such as Ilene Brown, who states, “I would be more accepting if it didn’t start so early. Two weeks is just ridiculous. When you put the bike lane in the middle I’m sure it’s uncomfortable for a lot of people. You have massive trucks passing by you. We walk our dog through here and it’s frightening for her because of all the noise.”

Since it restarted at Piedmont Park in 2011, Midtown Music has made enormous improvements regarding the concerns of the residents and the welfare of the park. Even those that despise the festival concede there has been progress in addressing the disruption it causes. In addition to the opening of 10th Street for bicyclists and scooters, porta-potties were placed outside the event at Charles Allen Drive, the Midtown Marta Station and Grady
High School for the first time. Clean-up crews were working day and night before, during and after the event inside and outside the park. The event staffers continued their efforts in being far more courteous and sensitive to the residents than in years past.

But there will always be discontent, understandably, with the two weeks it takes to load-in and load-out. Cliff, from the Tactical Production team, offers an explanation: “Building four huge stages it’s not what like everyone thinks. You have so many stages of this. You got the permit people, the OSHA people, the city liaison, the park people, all the investors. We try our best not to hurt the land. And on the first day, they pump into your head – safety, safety, safety. We’re set up to withstand 50 to 60 mile per hour winds. We got to keep the crowds safe, the public safe and naturally the multi-millionaire superstars safe. We are riggers. That’s what we do. We bring on the heavy machines, laying the foundation…the really very heavy steel or some kind of weighted ballast. We build the pieces on the ground and hanging motors for all the lighting… A lot of stuff goes into it. A lot of people put a lot of work into it. It takes so long because again, you got to be safe.”

So congratulations to Live Nation for creating a world-classic music festival. The weather cooperated despite the sweltering heat. With no rain, no chance of anything like the 2013 deluge which caused great damage to the park and general outrage among park-lovers. There also were no major incidents or criminal activity reported. By all accounts, an impressively run festival.

One can only assume Music Midtown will be back in 2020 along with the same inconveniences imposed on the residents of Midtown. There will be legitimate complaints and valid concerns. Live Nation, in its own interest, will undoubtedly continue to work with the residents to address those concerns. But basic questions remain. Should a multi-national corporation be permitted to utilize a public park, particularly Piedmont, for its own economic enrichment? Music Midtown is the only ticketed-gated event at Piedmont Park. The cost of the permit fee is $400,000. The City of Atlanta may be severely undervaluing itself. Despite using a public park Live Nation does not disclose any financial information regarding the profits it receives from the Festival. The books are closed. Live Nation Atlanta runs a tight ship. Information is not easy — it’s virtually impossible — to obtain. We reached out to them but they did not get back to us.

Live Nation should have returned our calls. They could have claimed bragging rights for previous donations they’ve made toward the upkeep of the park they occupy each September. According to a 2017 column in Saporta Report, Live Nation had made annual donations of $100,000.00 from 2013 through 2015 to the Piedmont Park Conservancy and then gave the same amount to the city’s parks department in 2016. Also, Amy Han Dietrich, the Director of Marketing, Communications and PR for the Piedmont Park Conservancy, informs us the conservancy “received $41,007 from Live Nation in late 2017.”

Next year there will be a new slate of entertainers and again there will be no consensus regarding Music Midtown and its impact on the residents of Midtown. And assuredly some residents will be enormously inconvenienced and some businesses will be negatively impacted. So get ready. As you approach 10th Street near Piedmont Park, with the sun rising in the east, those adorable black rectangle electric traffic messages will majestically appear informing everyone we can’t ride West. EXPECT DELAYS.

Opinion/ Politics

One Man’s Opinion: “Seasoned Hands On The Wheel”

Atlanta Loop 09/20/2019

By Bill Crane, contributor

“While this is only the first part of the Golden Ray and the St. Simons Sound incident, there remains a lot of work to do, threats to the environment, hazards to the people and to the Port of Brunswick continue to be addressed through a unified command,” said U.S. Coast Guard Captain John Reed, Charleston sector Coast Guard commander.

While an ongoing review and investigation unfolds of a fire and the subsequent capsizing of the South Korean automobile transport tanker, the Golden Ray, off the Georgia coast, you can bet millions that the ship’s owner, automobile manufacturer/shipper and insurer were all hoping that there were some very experienced hands at the wheel the night that this massive cargo ship fell over on its side.

The Port of Brunswick is one of the busiest automobile import facilities on the eastern seaboard. The shipping channel into and out of the port is narrow, surrounded on both sides by sand bars as well as St. Simons Island/Brunswick and Jekyll Island. Hard to imagine that the massive craft, with 4,200 vehicles still on board was piloted by a crew of only 24 sailors. The ship’s pilot hails from Brunswick, most of the remaining crew are South Koreans. It may be months before we know how the ship ran aground, if the fire damaged navigation systems, or operator error grounded this massive ship on a sandbar, still causing ongoing environmental and economic injury, though thankfully without any serious injury or loss of life.

Georgia emerged from the depths of the Great Recession with a seasoned team at the helm, Governor Nathan Deal had nearly two decades of legislative and leadership experience in the U.S. Congress and Georgia State Senate, former Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle presided over the State Senate for three terms and 12 years and House Speaker David Ralston joined the body in 2002 and was elected Speaker in 2010. This experienced team led Georgia to become the best place to do business for six years in a row now, as well as record levels of employment, and industry relocations, while conservatively managing the state’s fiscal affairs, resulting in the highest bond ratings possible to service our state’s relatively modest debt. None of these accomplishments occurred easily or by accident and of those three team captains, only Speaker Ralston remains on the current field of play.

Georgia and our U.S. economy may again experience choppy waters in the not too distant future. During the past two sessions of our General Assembly, growth in the Georgia economy allowed for record budgets, including a one-time pay raise of $3,000 heading for the wallets of Georgia educators. Now with a tougher economic climate looming, it may be time to trim those sails a bit. Governor Brian Kemp is requesting state agencies identify and prepare their budgets with a reduction of four percent for the coming fiscal year and six percent for 2021.

The largest component of most every state agency budget is the salaries of its employees, typically consuming 65 percent of each dollar. Lay-offs are generally rare in state government, though furloughs did occur during the prior recession within several state agencies and local school systems. While the state owns most of its real estate, maintaining those structures and paying utility expenses typically consumes another 10-15 percent. You are now at 75 to 80 percent of the available budget dollar, leaving 20 percent to make cuts from…and those dollars are the agency program or mission expenses. A 4 percent cut is actually more like a 20 percent cut to the agency program, followed by the request of deeper cuts the following year. This calls for experienced hands chairing the House Appropriations and Senate budget committees, as well as steering the legislative process and budget differences between the Executive and two legislative chambers to a successful and prudent conclusion. So would you prefer the experienced surgeon, pilot or ship captain, or a newbie in training learning the ropes? A less seasoned legislative branch also enables a more entrenched and less responsive bureaucracy.

Having lived through several prior recessions, especially the DEEP trough of 2006-2010, I understand and appreciate the benefits of having steady, seasoned and senior hands on the wheel. Sensing turbulent economic times ahead, I want Georgia to have captains and a spending Skipper who can help us smoothly sail through the tightest channel and choppiest waters, in part because they have already done this before. Think about it. Prayers for the crew of the Golden Ray and their families.

Opinion/ Politics

Trying to Get Through September 11, 2001 — And The Days Since

Atlanta Loop 09/11/2019

By Darryl Rhoades, contributor

9/11 will always be one of those “where were you” dates. Most everyone has a story or connection from that day. Mine wasn’t any deeper than most. I saw what was happening on TV as I was preparing to leave for Myrtle Beach to do a show and decided to call to see if the club would be open. The thought from the club-owner was that people could probably use a break from the news that day but it was my call. Since I agreed I kept packing and left while listening more than I could take all day on the radio. That night I advised the other two performers on the bill to keep away from the news topic but left it to them. Both thought it a good idea. At the end of my show I simply noted that today was painful for all of us and we hoped this show helped some get thru it even if only for a few minutes.

After the show several came up and shook all of our hands and thanked us and commented that they needed the distraction.

It was the many stories, and even more recent ones, coming from that day that have stayed with me.

(Cascade pools named Reflecting Absence by architect Michael Arad are located on the footprints of the original World Trade Center towers, June 2012.)

My wife was an international flight attendant for Delta getting ready to go on a trip that got cancelled. A flight attendant friend of hers was stranded on layover in Atlanta since the flights were all suspended so she stayed at our house for several days.

The people in Newfoundland, Canada opened up their houses to the many who were stranded coming back over the pond from Europe and unable to fly into the U.S.

The documentary about 9/11 and the firefighters narrated by Robert De Niro should be shown on this day every year along with the names of politicians who remained inactive when it came to funding the treatments from the illnesses those fire fighters incurred from that day.

I never fail to become emotional when they read the names of the victims and see the pain on the faces of friends and families because they are the living victims.

I will forever have disdain for those who made up stories to attack Muslims and further divide this country.

When I see a bumper sticker that reads “9/11 Never Forget,” I agree. I’ll never forget those who talked about supporting the firefighters and then did the opposite. I’ll never forget that a story was made up about hundreds (or was it thousands) of Muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey to celebrate the towers falling. I’ll never forget that this event was used as a political maneuver supported by members from both the Republican and Democratic parties. Most of all I will always remember that innocent people from all different races and religions died that day, leaving behind many who will relive all of this for the rest of their lives.

Opinion/ Politics

One Man’s Opinion: Georgia in the Scope and Sights for Team Blue

Atlanta Loop 09/11/2019

By Bill Crane, contributor

Since then-President Bill Clinton was unable to keep Georgia in his win column for his 1996 re-election campaign, Georgia has been viewed as a reliably red, and safe GOP state. The state’s congressional delegation made the shift to red and right in 1994. The Governor’s office eventually fell in a surprise upset win in 2002 by Sonny Perdue, shortly followed by majority wins in the State Senate and State House. Since the middle of the 2000 decade, the Georgia GOP has controlled or held virtually all levers of power at state and federal government levels.

The 2020 election cycle offers the most realistic potential that Georgia will move to the top of the Democratic Party’s target lists for several reasons in a changing political landscape. The close victory for the Governor’s office by Governor Brian Kemp is being misread by some as placing the Georgia Democratic Party at the cusp of great victories.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the GOP Republicans will be defending 23 seats, including McConnell’s as well as both Georgia’s Senate seats. Senator David Perdue is seeking his second term, and by January of 2020, Governor Kemp will have named another Republican as the Interim Senator to seek the seat in a November Special Election, to replace a retiring Senator Johnny Isakson. Though also held on General Election day, that contest will take all-comers from both parties, and quite possibly result in a run-off contest, the first Tuesday in January of 2021.

As of the September 12 Democratic Presidential candidate debate, the primary field of candidates, following several withdrawals and shifts to other races will essentially be winnowed to 10, versus the more than two dozen a month ago. The focus will stay on what is shaping up to be a consistently top five in polling, fundraising and among party activists – former Vice-President Joe Biden, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigeg. New Jersey Senator Corey Booker cracks this circle in some polls as well.

Back to our U.S. Senate contests, the GOP is defending 23 seats, while Democrats only have 11 incumbent or existing seats in contest. If Democrats win the White House, the party will only need a net pick-up of three seats to take Senate majority, and four seats if Trump wins re-election. Georgia will be the only state in the nation, and for the first time in our state’s history, that both Senate seats will be on the ballot at the same time.

Senator Perdue will have a real campaign and contest, but it is always difficult to oust an incumbent U.S. Senator, and the current three Democratic challengers combined have yet to match Perdue’s fundraising or polling numbers. An essentially ‘open’ seat, with only an interim incumbent of less than a year, is a much easier target. Expect renewed pressure on former State House Minority Leader Stacy Abrams, to consider entering that second Senate seat contest.

The White House race, particularly with Trump as its nominee, will cause the GOP to focus its finances on retaining the White House first, with the Senate a secondary priority. Candidates and the Republican National Senatorial Committee will raise and expend dozens of millions across 34 states, and it will be quite difficult for the RNSC to be a primary funding source for two Georgia Senate contests. Perdue, as a close ally of President Trump, and as an incumbent, will be the priority among the two.

Georgia’s demographic shifts, Trumps fallibility among metro area voters and the two Senate contests will move our state to the top of the target list for Team Blue pick-up. And as Georgia voters have pretty consistently split party votes in recent elections in consistent percentages from the top to the bottom of the ballot, a close or successful U.S. Senate contest for Democrats would have substantial down ballot impact on the Georgia State House and Senate, just as Ms. Abrams candidacy impacted dozens of other state and local races in 2018.

All this adds up to Team Blue moving in campaign staffers, non-aligned 527 PAC endorsements and dollars and a record amount of green into this once reliably red state, starting almost as soon as the ink is dry on Governor Kemp’s interim U.S. Senate appointment in January. Among the biggest guaranteed winners of these contests will Georgia broadcasters who will also likely also see record political spending before the end of 2020. It’s off to the races!

The close victory for the Governor’s office by Governor Brian Kemp is being misread by some as placing the Georgia Democratic Party at the cusp of great victories.

As of the September 12 Democratic Presidential candidate debate, the primary field of candidates, following several withdrawals and shifts to other races, will essentially be winnowed to 10, versus the more than two dozen a month ago. The focus will stay on what is shaping up to be a consistently top five in polling, fundraising and among party activists – former Vice-President Joe Biden, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigeg. New Jersey Senator Corey Booker cracks this circle in some polls as well.

Senator Perdue will have a real campaign and contest, but it is always difficult to oust an incumbent U.S. Senator, and the current three Democratic challengers combined have yet to match Perdue’s fundraising or polling numbers. An essentially :open” seat, with only an interim incumbent of less than a year, is a much easier target. Expect renewed pressure on former State House Minority Leader Stacy Abrams, to consider entering that second Senate seat contest.

Georgia’s demographic shifts, Trumps fallibility among metro area voters and the two Senate contests will move our state to the top of the target list for Team Blue pick-up. And as Georgia voters have pretty consistently split party votes in recent elections in consistent percentages from the top to the bottom of the ballot, a close or successful U.S. Senate contest for Democrats would have substantial down ballot impact on the Georgia State House and Senate, just as Ms. Abrams’ candidacy impacted dozens of other state and local races in 2018.

Politics

Anatomy Of A Homeless Sweep

Atlanta Loop 09/10/2019

By George Chidi, contributor

A small army of social workers, cops and public works people descended under the Bell Street bridge near Grady just before dawn, to have one last conversation with people living there. Please come with us. You can’t stay here.

It is the culmination of three months of daily outreach that began with Intown Collaborative Ministries, an Atlanta nonprofit with expertise in street outreach to people with mental illness. “The answer to chronic homelessness is a Housing First approach and Permanent Supportive Housing, where people transitioning off the streets move into an apartment with wrap-around services,” said Brad Schweers, ICM’s executive director. “Right now case managers work hard to engage often-distrustful clients on the streets and navigate them through the process towards housing. But the line is long and the beds are few.”

Atlanta has a $50 million pool set aside to build supportive housing and offer services. It is going to take time to build the units — a few dozen here, a few hundred there — to dent the 3,200 or so count in homelessness here. Atlanta had a slight uptick in homelessness this year, for the first time since the recession, and the visibility of homelessness has been increasing in ways that have neighborhood groups and business leaders howling.

The answers take time and patience, and patience has been wearing thin. This summer, the city started to become more aggressive about managing encampments, even as it prepares to disburse the first of that $50 million for construction.

“We know the answer,” Schweers said. But there’s currently not enough of the answer. The city has been working to address the deficit, but it takes time to build the stock.”

In one case, outreach teams talked with a man who had been homeless for five years. He will be moving into an apartment Thursday. “Meanwhile we’re putting him up at a hotel for two nights, for $200, until he can move in.

It is, perhaps, one of the great ironies of homelessness work that there is no shortage of people visiting the bridge with food and water, but organizations working long term to build relationships can struggle for spot resources in a moment like this.

(To help, contributions can be made at www.intowncm.org/donate).

A month ago, the city’s homelessness organization Partners for Home, began coordinating Intown’s outreach with HOPE Atlanta, Project Community Connections and other social services agencies, as the countdown to a sweep began. Many mornings at 6 a.m., Ashlee Starr from Partners from Home would work with social services agents, going through cases one by one.

Conditions under the bridge had begun to evoke memories of the Peachtree and Pine shelter in midtown, which had deteriorated into cacophony and disease.

When social services providers (including, in full disclosure, myself when I was with Central Atlanta Progress) shut down the shelter, everyone present was offered housing. Most accepted and remain connected to services. Some refused help. At least four of those who had been offered services at Peachtree and Pine were among those being approached by social services workers over the last month, social workers said.

Homelessness is a complicated problem. “Willingness to accept services is the wrong way to look at this,” Schweers said. “That inaccuracy is intuitive to lots of people. It’s based on the old ‘housing readiness’ model, not Housing First.”

About 60 people had been staying under the bridge Tuesday morning. Case workers took on 69 people who had been there over the last month, according to an after-action report Tuesday. As the police and public works crews approached, 15 agreed to go to shelter. Five received permanently supportive housing on the spot, given the severity of their illnesses and needs. Another 20 were assigned permanently supportive housing, and are briefly in transitional shelter.

The number of people going to housing — an apartment or a care facility — will climb over the next 24 hours as case managers work the system.

No one working to alleviate homelessness in the city views a sweep with particular joy, but the conditions under the bridge had begun to deteriorate. “This was a public health problem for the people on the street and also for the community,” said Jimiyu Evans. Co-CEO of Project Community Connections, Inc., an agency serving people experiencing homelessness since 1998 here in Metro, Atlanta. “As providers, we’re trying to coordinate seamless services that haven’t always been easy to deliver.”

Sweeps like this are sensitive, both politically and practically. The public perception of police breaking up an encampment can draw jeers from the public, regardless of how much messaging and outreach precede it. And social workers know that the appearance of working with police can harm hard-won relationships with people living with mental illness, who may begin to view social workers as an arm of the authorities and dig deeper into resistance to help.

“A dozen of our clients were under this bridge,” said Tracy Woodard, another social service outreach worker, with Intown Collaborative Ministries. “If you’re going to do this, this is how it should work.”

Police on the scene said no arrests had been made. A street cleaning crew from the city sprayed the broad, empty sidewalk down with bleach Tuesday morning. Later, they will put up a barricade to prevent pedestrian access — and public sleeping — similar to one recently erected under the bridge at Edgewood Avenue.

Of the 20 who are being housed immediately, 14 didn’t accept the help until this morning. For many, it didn’t become real until the street sweepers showed up.

And for a few, it wasn’t enough. A handful of people simply moved their belongings one bridge over, to the well-graffitied underpass at Hill Street on the other side of Decatur Street. Homelessness is complicated even under the best circumstances.

Jonathan Wright, 37, has been homeless on again and off again for five years, he said. He uses a wheelchair, and lives with a psychiatric disorder and alcoholism, he said. He is working with Janika Robinson of HOPE Atlanta to find housing, but for the moment the sweep meant a move to a different bridge up the street.

He is on the street with his sister, who has bipolar disorder. And he won’t leave without her. Some people will end up where he is. Others may migrate to Hurt Park near Georgia State, or elsewhere.

“They think everybody who is homeless is on crack,” he said. “I’m sticking with my sister. We don’t separate. It’s us against the world.”

(Photo by Tracy Woodard)

Entertainment

Warren Zevon’s Exit: A Sandwich On The Way Out

Atlanta Loop 09/10/2019

By Tommy Housworth, contributor

“From the President of the United States

To the lowliest rock and roll star

The doctor is in and he’ll see you now

He don’t care who you are

Some get the awful, awful diseases

Some get the knife, some get the gun

Some get to die in their sleep

At the age of a hundred and one”

– “Life’ll Kill Ya,” by Warren Zevon (2000)

It’s been sixteen years since Warren Zevon caught the last train out of town. The respectful thing would be to say that Warren succumbed to cancer, but I think he would have preferred the lawless language that hints at him jumping on the metaphysical 3:10 to Yuma.

As a longtime fan, I was particularly moved by Zevon’s journey during that last year of his life. I even began to see him as a kindred spirit of sorts. Springsteen aspired to something higher than I thought my character worthy, Tom Waits dug too deeply into the underbelly of it all. But Zevon, he seemed to have one foot firmly planted in cynicism, and the other in sentiment. As his dear friend Jackson Browne once said, “Warren was able to mythologize and satirize all at the same time.” That felt like familiar turf to me.

Zevon’s literary-infused lyricism resonated with me, and his inability to break out beyond a certain cult status gave him street cred and gave me hope for my own acquiescence with a certain artistic anonymity. Better, after all, to be admired by the right people (Dylan, Springsteen, REM, Hunter Thompson) than simply a majority of the people.

So, when Warren was diagnosed with terminal cancer – initially only a few weeks to live, so he was told – he got busy. Busy writing, busy recording, and busy planning an appropriate way to say goodbye to those of us who loved him.

His path was the one he’d so often taken: The Late Show with David Letterman. Since Dave’s days on NBC, Warren sat in for Paul, was a frequent guest, and was one of the few musical artists Dave seemed genuinely amped about having on the program. David was an honest-to-God fan of Zevon, and did his best to make sure the audience knew what a treat it was to bear witness to his smart brand of songcraft.

Warren appeared on Dave’s show for the final time on October 30, 2002. He was Dave’s sole guest. Warren performed three songs, including David’s requested favorite, “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” which to my knowledge, is the only song about a revenge-seeking decapitated mercenary in the Congo. It’s definitely the best one on the subject. Point is, Warren was generous. Generous with his time and his music in those final days.

His greatest gift from where I sit wasn’t the touching farewell performance or even his lovely elegy, The Wind, an album recorded after his diagnosis and filled with such royalty as Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakam, Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Tom Petty, Joe Walsh, and Jackson Browne. For me, it was a simple piece of advice that rolled off his tongue with earnest modesty and continues to resonate like the echoed chime of a mindfulness bell.

Dave asked Warren if there was anything he’d learned from the days he’d experienced since his diagnosis, knowing the finite nature of the equation. Warren’s words? “Enjoy every sandwich.”

Now, I’d heard Thich Nhat Hanh persuade practitioners to strive to “be present”. I’d read the teachings of Ram Dass encouraging readers to “Be Here Now.” And I’d certainly spent more than a few moments on a meditation cushion chasing down past demons and future anxieties, all in an effort to steal away a wisp of that rare currency known as the current moment. But “Enjoy Every Sandwich” put it in a new perspective for me. It was armchair Zen, but it was spoken by someone who could likely mark his expiration date on the coming year’s calendar. And, indeed, Warren passed away September 7, 2003, a few months after his twin grandsons were born, and mere days after The Wind was released to a public suddenly very eager to enjoy the final few morsels Warren had so lovingly prepared with his musical companions.

Personally, I continue to wolf down sandwiches with a thoughtlessness that embarrasses me. I need to get back to work, so I eat quickly. I like to multi-task, so I scroll through the news while I have lunch. I’m talking too much to my lunch companion to be truly aware of what shrinks away on the plate in front of me. Enjoying the actual sandwich seems to be the least of my aspirations.

A few years ago, when I had the pleasure of spending a week at Magnolia Grove – Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhist monastery in Mississippi – we ate every meal in silence. At least an hour was blocked out for each meal. Occasionally, during the meal, a mindfulness bell would ring and we would stop chewing, set our utensils down, and just sit and listen. When the bell was done, we’d resume eating. I’ve never tasted food the way I did at Magnolia Grove. It was simple, homemade food – soups, rice, vegetables – all prepared with love and attention. To eat it with love and attention was something that should have been transformational. And it was…for awhile. Then, life in the suburbs got busy again. Facebook feeds nibbled at my attention. Time became something to pay attention to, much more so than the flavor, the goodness, of a warm, toasted tomato sandwich.

But Warren’s words continue to tug at me. They are a mantra, a gift scribbled on the paper inside every fortune cookie, an urging to not wait for a diagnosis or a detour to appreciate what is in front of me, right here, today.

So here’s to the BLT, the PBJ, and the pimento cheese spread. Here’s to the brimming avocado peeking out from underneath a fresh cut of lettuce, and the chicken salad that oozes beyond the confines of the crust onto your fingertips. Here’s to the Dagwood and the Caprese, the Club, the Melt, and the Gyro. Hummus on pita, falafel, Po’ Boys and Muffalettas. The Hero, the Cuban, and Grilled Cheese on Sourdough. Vegan, gluten-free, or meat lovers’ delight.

Here’s to the vegetable soup my brother-in-law makes that tingles with commingled flavors that took hours, if not days, to lovingly conjure. Here’s to the fried chicken my mom used to cook, chicken she’ll never feel well enough to cook again, and how that tasted and the childhood memories enveloped inside each bite. Here’s to thousands of peanut butter sandwiches we parents have assembled through sleep-flecked eyes every morning for school years that creep by until they are too quickly behind us.

Enjoy Every Sandwich, indeed.

Thanks, Warren. You served up so much more than memorable music. For me, you issued a challenge as to how to live my life. Just wanted you to know, I’m still working on it.

Crime and Public Safety/ Opinion/ Politics

The Hole: Lurid Splendor

Atlanta Loop 09/09/2019

By George Chidi, contributor

Atlanta’s city jail is a ghost town. Next door, the street in front of Garnett Station is alive.

Most of Atlanta is not dangerous. It’s hard to say that about Garnett at night, where someone can get shot while the cops are still there with the yellow tape up interviewing people about someone getting shot across the street. That’s a true story.

Last time I was there at night, I saw someone who haunts me. Aurelia was in her wheelchair, her addiction and madness in full horror show, rolling up and down the middle of Peachtree Street with her one leg. She was stopping cars in front of Magic City and the Greyhound Station to ask people for money. No one on the street bothered to intervene. Most people just drove around her. Every once in a while, one would roll a window down. Or up.

I had her arrested, once. I almost never do that. But she was really annoying people at a courthouse auction that day and when I asked her to stop, she ran me over with her chair. I suppose I took it personally.

Almost no one wants to throw panhandlers in jail. Jail is expensive. Jail makes bad problems worse. And unless you plan to keep them there at a cost to taxpayers of $30,000 a year, jail doesn’t actually deter the kind of people who panhandle hard enough to get arrested for it.

Jail sucks. But I needed to see what happens when someone tries to get a prosecutor to pay attention, and maybe get Aurelia into treatment somewhere.

I came to court at her arraignment a week or so later, only to discover that she had decided not to leave her cell that day.

“I didn’t know you get to do that,” I said in wonder. She did, of course. It was her 50th arrest.

If I’d known, I would have brought pie.

The next day she was released on time served. I found that out a week later when I saw her panhandling on the street again, despite the prosecutor’s promises to let me know. She had been offered all kinds of addiction treatment. She is in the top ten on the city’s list to get people who are homeless and mentally ill off the street. But she has to want to go, and she’s too far gone to get to yes. Why bother when you can eat the time?

I support bail reform. Because, plainly, jail wasn’t going to get her to go.

The whole catch-and-release thing leads to the creation of a permanent criminal underclass. But jailing people because they’re too poor to bond out is a moral catastrophe. A system where people with money don’t have to live by the same rules in court is not a democracy.

I’m a board member of the Pre-Arrest Diversion Initiative, which has been one of the loudest voices in the city calling for bail reform. It’s also the organization everyone involved in criminal justice reform points to as Atlanta’s answer to the carceral state.

With great ceremony and quotations of King, the city stopped requiring indigent defendants to post bond for minor crimes last February. The Atlanta City Detention Center is emptying. The city wants to sell the jail outright. The jail’s operating costs – more than $30 million a year – can be spent on other things. Yay. Go us. We rock.

But … let us examine the consequences of our newfound moral virtue for a moment.

If you were panhandled on the street at DragonCon, raise your hand.

Panhandling has been rising over the last year in Atlanta, as has the lurid splendor of our street life. One possible reason: jail has become a less attractive option for police when people commit quality-of-life crimes … because of bail reform.

The homelessness count rose this year, for the first time in about a decade. The count increased by about 150 people, which is almost exactly the number of additional people the jail held on any given night before bail reform.

The system is rotten and we all know it. As we unravel it, pulling on one string here, other parts give way. The people who advocated for bail reform – including me – made a point of telling the city council that, yes, it’s a good thing to end cash bond for petty crimes … but that the city needed to have enough social services support to accommodate a community without its most irritating members stewing in a cell for a few days a month. We needed to match the moral commitment of bail reform with more housing, and more drug treatment and more mental health support.

That didn’t happen.

Jail sucks. It does not, however, suck hard enough to keep people who probably need strong psychiatric drugs and a safe place to sleep from acting like public nuisances. Before the city ended cash bail, at least 30 percent of the city jail population had a serious and persistent psychiatric disorder. There are about five times as many people with a mental illness in jail than there are in a mental hospital in Georgia. Jail was how a lot of people were getting their psychiatric treatment. And now … they’re not. At least, not at Atlanta’s city jail.

Arrests for petty crimes still happen. Only instead of city charges, the arrests are booked as state charges, with more serious consequences. People are instead being crowded into the Fulton County jail. The Rice Street lockup is filled to bursting. It’s edging toward the conditions that led to federal oversight a decade ago. The ankle monitoring companies must be making a fortune.

In a sense, the city isn’t different from Aurelia. It expected something – a $30 million windfall for closing the jail – for nothing. The money that jail represents is coming out of the quality of life of the people of Atlanta, every time they try to walk a few blocks unmolested downtown.

The city has three choices. It can accept the status quo now, with the entire idea of decriminalization backfiring with state charges replacing city charges, turning Rice Street into a warehouse for mental illness. It can kill bail reform, as is being floated quietly in discussion. Or it can take some greater portion of the $30 million it will save from closing the city jail and use it to accommodate the increased social services burden.

The budget for the Pre-Arrest Diversion program is about $2 million a year, much of which comes from the county.

It should be $10 million.

Opinion

Editorial: Today is a sad day for Atlanta and its schools

Atlanta Loop 09/09/2019

Meria Carstarphen speaks with reporters during a Q&A on May 13, 2014. File Photo by Dan Whisenhunt

This post has been updated.

By Jeff Cochran, publisher of Atlanta Loop and Dan Whisenhunt, publisher of Decaturish

Vanessa McCray, reporting today in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, writes that the Atlanta Public School Board will not extend the contract of Superintendent Meria Carstarphen. In a meeting behind closed doors this morning it was determined there weren’t enough votes to keep Carstarphen past June 30, 2020, when her current contract expires.

School boards love to talk about the children being their priority. Concern for the children is foremost, so they say. Then the members of the APS Board should think how hundreds of children in the Atlanta schools will perceive their latest move.

Aren’t children told they’ll be rewarded in life if they work hard, follow the rules and make a difference? They certainly aren’t told you can do all these things and still be shown the door in a bruising display of public humiliation.

Carstarphen hasn’t done everything perfectly. She’s ruffled some feathers. Not everyone likes her style. But she’s led an amazing turnaround job for APS. The cheating scandal under a previous superintendent, Beverly Hall, shook the system to its core and made it a national joke. Carstarphen was undaunted by the challenge. She went to work on putting the scandal behind us.

Above all else, Carstarphen showed she cared about the students. She showed that every single day. She showed it again in her statement about the board’s decision to end its relationship with her.

“I’ve said many times: I love Atlanta … I believe in Atlanta,” she said, according to the AJC. “I believe in you, and I believe our team will continue to get the job done for children. Despite progress and gains, this work is not done.”

But despite Carstarphen’s passion and energy, the School Board ultimately concluded it didn’t believe in her.

The School Board, which knew that its decision would alienate many, did what any courageous group of public officials would do. They hired a PR firm to manage its talking points and avoided saying where individual board members stood on the matter of renewing her contract.

The board issued a joint statement saying it informed Carstarphen in July that the votes weren’t there to give her an extension, a fact they hid from the public until the board’s silence about her contract led to curiosity and questions. In the statement, the board said it didn’t want the news to disrupt the start of the school year.

Because making this decision a few weeks into the school year won’t be a distraction at all.

To be fair, board members eventually did clarify their positions on her contract after the meeting in follow up interviews with the AJC.

But the board’s initial joint statement was vague about the reasons Carstarphen no longer enjoyed the same level of support she did a few years ago. One part of the letter may be a clue that this wasn’t really about the students and test scores but about disagreements between Carstarphen and certain board members.

“It’s critical the APS superintendent work in a spirit of continuous collaboration with the Board and our community to address obstacles that keep students from reaching their full potential,” the board’s statement says.

Carstarphen appeared to allude to these disagreements, taking time in her own statement to talk about collaboration.

“I’ve always been committed to working diligently and collaboratively to achieve the District’s goals and our mission to prepare every student for college and career,” she said. “I feel we are well on that path.”

So what were these disagreements about?

A few people have tried to pin the superintendent’s departure on the expanded use of charter schools in the district. While there are many who disagree with the idea that charter schools are the solution to failing public schools, the idea that the possibility of more charter schools and the privatization of education created this wedge between Carstarphen and the board seems flimsy at best.

John Lewis and Andrew Young, who have spoken up for workers and schools all their public lives, supported Carstarphen. Apparently the charter schools issue didn’t worry them.

Maureen Downey of the AJC wrote that she heard from other critics who said Atlanta Schools weren’t improving quickly enough and that some teachers complained she was too demanding.

Which, frankly, sounds like someone talking out of both sides of their mouths.

“We want schools to improve quickly. Just don’t be too demanding about it, OK?”

Add all these things up and they don’t amount to much of a reason to run off a superintendent who was succeeding at the job she was asked to do.

She ranks in a small handful of Georgia public officials who will leave things better than she found them. As with the cheating scandal, her dismissal is another embarrassment for public education in Atlanta.

On the bright side, there will soon be an opening for a superintendent in DeKalb County Schools. Carstarphen would be a great candidate for that job, assuming she is interested and not burned out by the Sisyphean task of dramatically overhauling a public school system while keeping everyone happy.

One thing Carstarphen said in her statement sticks with us.

“I love Atlanta … I believe in Atlanta,” she said.

Her faith in Atlanta is touching. We believe in Atlanta, too. We do not, however, believe this School Board has made a decision that’s in the best interest of this school system or its students.

We sincerely hope the School Board proves us wrong.