Sugar Hill City Council adopted a resolution condemning racism last week on the heels of weeks of protest.
People peacefully protested in Sugar Hill for one night — June 1 — but demonstrations against racism and police violence towards black people have been ongoing in metro Atlanta and across the country since late May. They began in response to the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man fatally shot by white men near Brunswick while on a jog in February; Breonna Taylor, a black woman who was fatally shot by Louisville, Kentucky, police while exercising a no-knock warrant; and George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. In Atlanta, those protests were reinvigorated after the early Saturday morning shooting death of Rayshard Brooks. The 27-year-old Atlanta man was fatally shot by Atlanta police officers after they responded to a call that he was asleep in his car in a Wendy's drive-thru line.
Sugar Hill’s resolution doesn’t mention these people by name, but references “tragic events that have recently occurred across the country.” The resolution recognizes the city’s diversity — its population is about 10% black, 10% Asian and 20% Hispanic and Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — and declares “racism, hate and bigotry have no place in our community.”
“It’s not good enough to be not racist, we must be anti-racist,” said Councilmember Taylor Anderson.
Multiple other governments, including Snellville, Cobb County, Acworth and Kennesaw, have also passed resolutions against racism.