Remember what Nathaniel Smith from the Partnership for Southern Equity highlighted about the way Maynard Jackson got elected?

It was the organizing of all black women in public housing tenements in the city, getting seniors on buses to go vote for Maynard Jackson.

They gave him an opportunity to win.

So it was it was the poor community that voted in numbers because because it's also a numbers game.

But then also you have the Atlanta University Center intellectuals, you know, upper middle class back people voting.

And that is what created what you see today.

The crisis of affordable housing begs the question, what is the cost of the economic and racial shift that is underway? How can the city have an economic mix while also guarding against losing what has made Atlanta so special?

There are many historic black neighborhoods that are being gentrified in the city or have been gentrified.

And on the moral conviction that everyone has equal worth.

And with that, it required us to see everybody as God's child and see everybody as a part of a human family.

And I think that through, you know, Dr. King's vision and others of Kenyan nonviolence, we were able to look at these broader issues and how the bankruptcy of empathy was created a world that was not only harming Black folks, but white folks as well.

Interestingly enough, Nathaniel tells the story of a conversation he had with a civil rights mentor.

I was talking to him about all of the things that I was doing to try to grow and be a leader.

You know, I was actually the national youth spokesperson at SCLC when I was in high school and was a staffer at SCLC, the youngest staffer when I was in college there at Morehouse.

But he told me, he said, all of that is fine and well, but go make some money.

That is why we did what we did so you can go make money.

Nathaniel Smith.

And that is the greatest hypocrisy of the city, that so many great people built such an incredible and wonderful city, and still there are people who are a part of that legacy.

whose parents and grandparents did so much important work, but yet they haven't benefited from the tree that our ancestors planted here in this city.

Nathaniel Smith again.

Everybody would get on everybody's songs.

Everybody would push everybody.

And they kind of pushed everybody up.

That was really the reason why that the hip-hop scene in Atlanta took over the country.

They might have one apprentice now, we want them to have two or three and that is the stuff around the edges, the tools, the car, the tax breaks.

That's absolutely correct and there are no tax breaks.

There are very limited incentives currently for an employer, employer to take on an apprentice.

Now, in my own profession in plumbing it costs around $250,000 to train an apprentice over four years and $50,000 of that is the days that they go to college.

That's a huge impost on a business especially if that apprentice leaves and goes somewhere else in their second year or, or their third year.

So in the first year or two you can't charge, it, it's a massive cost on the business and there is no incentive by the federal government for that business.

Now, we saw after the last federal election, uh, the federal government give away $16 billion in HECS forgiveness for people with HECS debts.

Yeah.

Yeah

... any time that I would see there being people one way at, at the church and then a completely other way in, at, at school, so to speak.

And, [laughs] and so that, that would, that would hurt my heart, and I knew that we needed to be able to have a relationship where there could be accountability with one another.

Um, and I started pretty early on visiting different churches and going to church with, you know, different people.

And I just realized there was something special about the fact that we do things differently, and we have different setups, but we're all serving the same God, and how amazing it would be and how powerful it would be if we were able to do more together.

How much more could we affect our school campuses if we were doing things together? How much more would we be able to affect our city if we started to do things together? And every time I, I would come into contact with, uh, new things about the, the faith.

For example, uh, and I should, I should say new things about the church.

You're gonna have to prove that later.

Let me ask you, from your perspective, are projects like the Beltline good for Atlanta, especially for the average person or people getting left behind because of all this development?

Yeah, I mean, so this is the way I always look at it.

big projects like that, right? I compare them to a scalpel, right? In the hands of a surgeon, a scalpel can heal, right? But in the hands of Jack the Ripper, it can do a lot of damage in community.

And I think that unfortunately, you know, one of the key beliefs of the Partnership for Southern Equity is that public policy is a reflection of the values of people in power, right? And if the people in power don't value poor people, if the people in power value money and taking over the vulnerable and being willing to give and create opportunities for everyone, then the policies are going to reflect that, right? And I think that the challenge with opportunities like the Beltline, especially in the beginning, is that Nobody ever really took the time to ensure on the front end, right, that the policies were in place that protected everyone.

And I think that for the Beltline in particular, it was the most hypocritical, in my opinion, in that you were actually positioning poor folks to subsidize their own displacement, right? Because tags cannot occur in places that are well-to-do, right? Tax increment financing or tax allocation districts can only happen in quote-unquote blighted communities.

So you use the blight designation, right, as a way to create this huge project at the time.

But then...

How do you stay steadfast and strong in your belief? And what advice or what permission would you give to somebody else that feels like they want to make a change? Maybe they're scared to step out because they're scared that people are going to try to tear them down.

So,

yeah.

So he finds me, gives me the old, like, dude, you gotta grow up, you got a son, like, what the hell, man? Like, this is serious stuff.

Like, the how you didn't get in any trouble, I do not know.

He said...

I'm going to take you with me.

We're going to Delray.

It's tough being me sometimes.

Why would that be a- an intimidating place?

There are very high expectations.

There's a line of people out the door and around the block waiting for your job, waiting for that internship.

They're just waiting for you to make a mistake, and everybody was very aware of that fact.

And then also at the time, Hans was very security oriented.

He had, I had been told, had death threats and there had been security concerns.

And so security was super tight getting in and coming out of the main building.

That's Alan Myerson from the last story.