ATLANTA RALLY: Anti-crime group keeps going

Now nearly eight weeks old, Atlantans Together Against Crime stands at a crossroads familiar to all budding movements.

Many advocacy groups lose steam at this point, but ATAC is growing. Late Monday afternoon, about 100 people gathered on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Joseph Lowery Boulevard in southwest Atlanta to protest rising crime in their neighborhoods.

This was the group’s first rally outside the city’s more gentrified communities, where it was born.

“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.”