Students at Morehouse College and the larger Atlanta University Center are speaking out against the city’s public safety training center, as videos of a contentious forum with Mayor Andre Dickens continue to trickle out.
A new press release issued over the weekend decried the forum, which was held Feb. 7 and purportedly allowed time for just one student to speak.
“Many questions were left unanswered and students departed the event feeling disappointed in the condescending manner of communication from the Mayor,” the press release said. “It appeared that the purpose of the Mayor and his staff was not to converse with the community about public concerns, but instead to propagate the need for an Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.”
Groups of students at the country’s longest-standing consortium of historically Black colleges and universities have called on the city to stop the controversial project, which involves building a $90-million police and fire training facility on forested land in southwestern DeKalb County. They’ve also called on Morehouse president David A. Thomas to denounce the development.
More than 50 Morehouse faculty members have signed a petition as well, saying the facility derisively dubbed “cop city” will “result in more death and destruction at the hands of the police.”
A full video recording of last week’s forum involving Dickens does not appear to have been made, but snippets have surfaced.
One video shared by Kamau Franklin of Community Movement Builders, which has been active in anti-training center protests, appeared to show the mayor responding to being called a “sellout.”
“I aint never been a sellout,” he says. “You ... got the wrong resume that you’re looking at. I know we like to yell and shout out things just to be heard. And you’ve been heard. You’ve been heard. But guess what? You picked the wrong resume to pull on a race card. You pulled the wrong one. My deck is stacke with all that.”
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