Keisha Lance Bottoms was not my choice but she will be my Mayor…
Congratulations Mayor-elect Bottoms, you were not my choice for mayor and you’re still the corrupt fraud that I said you were days ago. However, unlike the corporate shills who are now occupying the Democratic Party; I know that holding you to your word and working with you to demand change is the only way that the poor and mostly black people of Atlanta will win.
I won’t throw temper tantrums and go home angered that my choice didn’t win. I won’t sit back and cast aspersions of how statistically impossible it is that Keisha could win by basically the same number of votes that her mentor Kasim Reed beat Mary Norwood in 2009. I won’t blame Russia on this loss or refuse to attend events where Ms. Bottoms will be attending. I won’t press our elected council-members to refuse to meet with our new mayor. I won’t demand that one of our older black council-members spend a year with salacious taunts & self aggrandizing speeches attacking Ms. Bottoms, that in the end only elevates that council member and the democratic party. I won’t sit back and watch as the democratic party meets with Ms. Bottoms to garner agendas for everyone except African America’s poor. I won’t sit back and watch as civil rights leaders and the democratic party weaponize our struggle in order to further white supremacy with Ms. Bottoms. I won’t spend the next year asking why Ms. Bottoms supported Kasim Reeds criminalization of Atlanta’s homeless by making it a crime to feed them, or closing their shelters.
I won’t spend the next year looking for ways to destroy Ms. Bottoms, or questioning how she was able to go years without paying her water bill, while sanctioning shutting off the water for black and poor seniors living in senior highrises across the city. I also won’t spend the next year questioning how she went years without paying said water bill, HOA’s and taxes; yet was able to buy a $1.1M home in Martha’s Vineyard. I also won’t spend the next year attacking her successful husband, and how he cowers in her presence and fades into the shadows, or his frumpy clothing style, or their four adorable adopted children who are used as campaign props and excuses when needed and who are being raised by nannies and everyone but them.
I won’t spend the next year attacking Ms. Bottoms on the major ethical problem she had by accepting a job from Mayor Reed (while a city council member) as executive director of Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority, which maintained public facilities including Philips Arena, Zoo Atlanta and the Olympic cauldron, or how Bottoms helped broker the $30 million sale of Turner Field and surrounding parking lots to Georgia State University and private development group Carter (a clear conflict of interest). I won’t bring up the poor blacks who were forced out of all of those areas for all of these corporate buyouts to occur. I won’t spend the next year demanding special prosecutors to open investigations into her role in the current corruption at city hall. I won’t spend the next year angered and questioning how Kasim, Keisha and Liberals have sanctioned the gentrification of black spaces all across America or how low it is for black leaders to now replace poor blacks with dogs and lavish dog parks & restaurants, (as is the case in Atlanta’s Old 4th Ward) while not one area of affordable housing for blacks who were displaced, was created along the gentrified spaces of Atlanta’s newly built beltline.
It would be easy for me to do all of those things because her election does not hurt my success or where I live. Unlike many African Americans who continue to vote out of fear and emotion and who continue their own oppression; I live in Atlanta’s Buckhead area only 5mins from the ritzy Buckhead Shops and a few minutes from Lenox Mall and Phipps Plaza. I could easily take the stance that faux black leaders like Maxine Waters & John Lewis have taken, because like them; I won’t be negatively affected.
However, what I will do is work with city leaders and other activists to push for affordable housing for African America’s poor who have been forced out of their communities to build lavish dog parks for gentrified spaces, brought to you by liberal democratic party leaders. I will be pushing for community policing, with police officers who live in the neighborhoods they serve. I will be fighting to clean up drug infested areas of Atlanta where rich white kids are allowed by police at the behest of black elected officials, to drive down from the northern suburbs to purchase heroine for their drug addictions without any issue or arrests. I will also work to push for fair property tax, bring back decent schools, grocery stores and jobs that have forced many into the shadows of homelessness. No, Keisha Lance Bottoms was not my choice but she will be my mayor.
NOTE: Any African American claiming to be a Progressive but supported Ms. Bottoms leading up to her election is NOT a Progressive but a Liberal in Progressive clothing.
From Russia With Love,
Charlie Peach
