A.M. ATL: In this economy?

Morning, y’all! This weekend I was walking under the gentle sunshine, a cool breeze combing through the trees. I turned to my husband. “Do you think this is it?” I asked, hope in my voice. “No,” he said. He was trying to be gentle. “This is false fall, and we both know it.” A sad tale, indeed. It will get hot again this week, but don’t let that stop you from welcoming spooky season anyway.

Let’s get to it.

LABOR DAY PROTESTS

A Waffle House employee and Union of Southern Service Workers member speaks at a Labor Day rally in Atlanta's Woodruff Park.

More than 1,000 marches, demonstrations and other events took place yesterday across the country as part of a Labor Day community action movement.

• In Atlanta, unions and labor organizations gathered downtown to protest cuts to social services in President Donald Trump’s congressional spending bill.
• Other rallies cropped up in Brunswick, Griffin, Gainesville and other Georgia cities.
• Did you know? Less than 4% of Georgia workers are unionized, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

🔎 READ MORE: Union leader have messages for Georgia workers

• Speaking of labor, about 1.2 million immigrants disappeared from the U.S. labor force between January and July, according to a Pew Research analysis.
• Immigrants make up almost 20% of the U.S. workforce. In industries like farming, fishing and forestry, it’s more than double that proportion.

🔎 READ MORE: Concerns for agriculture as labor numbers wane

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SECOND CHANCES CAN BE GOLDEN

More than 4 million adults in Georgia have some form of criminal history that can make it much harder to find a job. Their underemployment is a strain on both their livelihoods and the state’s economy at large.

• Experts say second-chance hirings and wider education opportunities can help fold people back into the workforce.
• Common Good Atlanta, a group that helps currently and formerly incarcerated people access higher education, recently received a federal Bureau of Justice Assistance grant to promote second-chance hiring.
• Having a job also greatly decreases chances of recidivism (when someone convicted of a crime reoffends).

🔎 READ MORE: How Common Good Atlanta works

CHANGED BY THE STORM

We are the children of the ones who did not die. We are the children of the people who could fly. And we are the children of the ones who persevered.

Those haunting words, sung by children in white, floated through New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward Friday as the city commemorated the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Along with solemn memorials and words from city leaders, the people of New Orleans marched, sang and danced to their own rhythms of grief to honor the nearly 1,400 people killed in the storm.

🔎 READ MORE: Twenty years on, Katrina’s unmistakeable scars still mar New Orleans

MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS

🏛️ Congress is back after their refreshing little August recess, and they’ll have to avoid a looming government shutdown at the end of September. Also on the docket: Spending bill battles, Trump nominee battles and those pesky Epstein files.

🏅 Trump will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

🗳️ Republican Georgia legislators are reconsidering the state’s automatic registration program, which registers voters when they get their driver’s license.

⚕️ Jim O’Neill was named interim director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. O’Neill is a former investor, health regulations critic and deputy to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

BACK-TO-SCHOOL ANXIETIES

School is hard enough without having to worry if students will be traumatized by school violence. Alas, these are strange times.

A year after the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, students and staff are helping each other cope. Still, a year isn’t enough to heal their grief and trauma.

The AJC asked a licensed psychotherapist how to handle anxiety about school violence. The top piece of advice? Open communication. Don’t let your kids’ fears (or yours) fester in secrecy. More here.

NEW INVASIVE BUG ALERT

Why do problematic insects have to look so cool?

I love invasive bug names that sound like insults. It’s a lot easier to dislike them that way, even though they have no concept of how much damage they do simply by existing in the wrong place.

Your newest nemesis is the two-spot cotton leafhopper, also called the cotton jassid.

• Origin: The Indian subcontinent
• Appearance: Tiny, green, with a characteristic black spot on each wing
• Crime: They feast on cotton leaves and other crops like peanuts, eggplant, soybeans and cowpeas.
• Modus operandi: They suck out plant cells through leaves, disrupting photosynthesis.
• Motive: Secret bug stuff, probably

🪲 READ MORE: Georgia leaders warn farmers to protect their crops

NEWS BITES

Who’s hot and who’s not in the SEC right now

In Georgia, UGA won (Marshall), Tech won (Colorado), Kennesaw State lost (Wake Forest), Georgia State lost (Ole Miss). UGA fans also get to enjoy some delicious schadenfreude from tough Texas and Alabama losses.

Atlanta United finally won a game again

An 11-match winless streak is quite enough, thanks.

Biologists are using AC/DC, movie clips to scare wolves away from cattle herds

Also included: The highly uncomfortable fight scene between Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver from the movie “A Marriage Story.” The wolves are probably like, “Man, sounds personal. I’m not sticking around for this.”

The success of AI music creators sparks debate about future of the music industry

I didn’t realize there was such a market for music that sounds like Furbys fighting in a tin can but OK.

ON THIS DATE

Sept. 2, 1885

From the front page of The Atlanta Journal: Attending the laying of the corner stone of the new capitol. On the 8th day of September, 1883, Governor Henry D. McDaniel approved a bill entitled ‘An act to provide for the erection of a State capitol building’ ... [T]he entire cost of the proposed building should not exceed the sum of one million dollars.

The first cornerstone of the Georgia Capitol Building was laid 140 years ago. And, just for kicks, $1 million in 1885 is about $33 million today.

ONE MORE THING

Hope all of my Dragon Con siblings had a lovely weekend! For those that asked, my cosplay was based on an obscure line from “Pride and Prejudice” (2005). Yes, a lot of people got it. That’s why Dragon Con is the best.