Comments from participants at the recent Georgia Forward forum in Midtown:
Central Atlanta Progress President A.J. Robinson: "The concept of Georgia Forward was really created out of a discussion … that centered around the following idea, that no one really is having a conversation around Georgia in a systematic way looking at what our community could be 10, 15, 20 years out."
“What a wonderful opportunity it would be if we could figure it out.”
Founding Executive Director Amir Farokhi: "What is it that makes us a community where people want to live."
“How do we grow the people and the environment that will make our state thrive in the next 30 to 40 years.”
Jamil Zainaldin, president of the Georgia Humanities Council: "On the one hand, civic dreams can't really die. They can also help us take the measure of the present in our long journey of learning how to get (along) together."
Augusta Mayor Deke Copenhaver: "I don't believe in two Georgias. I think so much of that is manufactured by politicians. I do not believe that we're going to solve the state's problems through negative political rhetoric."
“The state has a vested interest in the success of people across the state and that includes the people in cities. Most people live in cities.”
“Whether people can move around Atlanta matters as much to the state of Georgia as it does to individual communities in Atlanta.”
Katharine Wilkinson, senior strategist at idea consultancy BrightHouse: "What is it that is uniquely Georgia's … and what can Georgia give the world?"
Rebecca Rice, Georgia Family Connection Partnership: "Georgia's civic health is not strong. I don't think there's any way of disagreeing with that statement." (Some of our gaps are) "really small." "That said, the entire nation is really suffering a bit of a crisis of civic confidence at this moment."
Anita Brown-Graham, director, Institute for Emerging Issues, N.C. State University: If the dream of … states like North Carolina and Georgia — which seek to really both in their own way be the face of the New South — for this to become a reality, we have a lot of cracks and a lot of fault lines that must be fixed."
