DEL.ICIO.USAtlanta anti-crime activists see movement growing
NBC Nightly News profiles group
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, February 23, 2009
Now nearly eight weeks old, Atlantans Together Against Crime stands at a crossroads familiar to all budding movements. Many advocacy groups tend to lose steam at this point, but ATAC is growing.
Late Monday afternoon about 100 people gathered on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. and Joseph Lowery boulevards on Atlanta’s west side to protest rising crime in their neighborhoods.
Louie Favorite/lfavorite@ajc.com
The grass-roots anti-crime rallies have the attention and participation of city leaders like Atlanta City Councilman C.T. Martin.
This was the group’s first rally outside the city’s more gentrified communities, where it was formed after the shooting death of bar worker John Henderson, 27, who was killed during a robbery at Standard Food & Spirits on Memorial Drive in the Grant Park area.
“Crime is affecting every corner of the city and from the beginning we’ve wanted our organization to reflect that,” said Rob Downs, one of ATAC’s founders. “This is about all Atlantans.”
ATAC is quickly emerging as a force in local politics. Several Atlanta City Council members attended Monday’s rally, along with at least two announced mayoral candidates.
“This is a movement,” said District 3 councilman Ivory Young. “No jurisdiction is immune to the challenges we’re facing. People are getting mad and they’re demanding accountability.”
It’s all a bit overwhelming to Little Five Points resident Kyle Keyser, one of the ATAC founders. Three months ago he was a video producer with a documentary about singer P.J. Harvey to his credit. Since then he’s lost his job, been robbed at gunpoint and become the public face of Atlantans fed up with rising crime.
“It’s absolutely catching on,” he said. ATAC now has 8,000 Facebook members and was recently the subject of an NBC Nightly News profile. “We have the attention of the city now.”
Bill Cannon, president of the Booker T. Washington Community Association, said he’s been impressed by ATAC’s ability to attract attention to a problem shared by the city’s neighborhoods.
“It’s a good thing, seeing black and white come together like this,” Cannon said. “For us to be able to come together so overtly and publicly like this, they have to pay attention.
“Neighborhoods are the real first responders, and today they’re responding.”
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