In the end, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center was built.

Cop City, it is really tough.

Dr. Bernard Fraga from Emory's Reimagining Democracy Lab.

To think about in terms of democracy, because at the same time, it shows the success in some ways, and the potential opportunities in terms of democracy, where people organized, right? Um, and were...

You know, there was a resistance against something that state certainly, but also city leaders wanted.

City leaders heard that voice.

But also the challenges, because at the end of the day, while there was more discussion and perhaps more engagement than there would've been absent a kind of more vibrant democracy like we have in Atlanta, it wasn't enough to block it.

N- not fully, at least.

political scientist and author.

When I'm thinking about how I got interested in democracy, I think a lot about growing up.

My family on my Mexican-American side has been here for over 110 years, right? My family was not able to achieve the American dream despite being part of a pre-even World War I kind of wave of migrants and all the stories that we hear about the American dream and nation of immigrants.

You know, we're talking about people coming around that time, but because they were Mexican, they were excluded.

and they were excluded in a place that historically, of course, was part of Mexico.

Bernard, would you add anything to that in terms of the source of that hope?

Yeah, I think there's two components to the hope.

One of them is this idea that there are visible in the street names, in the highway names, in the giant John Lewis mural that everyone sees when they're on the way to the airport or on the way into the city.