#Metro Atlanta Chamber

[threadatl]

The windshield perspective on Atlanta has to change

A new promotional short from Metro Atlanta Chamber titled “Metro Atlanta is Built for Business” (on You Tube under that title) has no mention of MARTA, and not a single frame of a MARTA bus or train within its montage of the many benefits that the region can tout.

There are plenty of shots of highway traffic though. Why? It's weird, and a little concerning.

Yes, it's just a promo video. But does this represent the way Metro Atlanta's leaders see our future -- as a car-centric one?

If so, that needs to change. There is no sustainable, successful way for us to grow our population and economy without shifting our transportation habits and making transit a priority.

This omission of MARTA is coming from a chamber of commerce whose current chair runs a major auto parts business. Are the two things related? Maybe, maybe not.

Either way, it appears that some folks in metro leadership have a vision for Atlanta that’s skewed by an automobile perspective on the city, and a point of view that's situated firmly behind a car windshield. It’s up to the rest of us to let them know that there’s a brighter future if we reduce our reliance on cars.

[wutbju]

James D. (Jim) Edwards, Jr., former top executive with Arthur Andersen & Co. and influential Atlanta civic leader, died July 15, 2023, in Tallahassee, Florida. He was 79.

A loving husband and father, Jim is survived by his beloved wife of 55 years, Sharon Bordelon Edwards, son David Lee Edwards of Charlotte, NC, sister Carolyn Edwards Smith (Larry) of Greenville, SC, two grandchildren, Mary Zipporah Edwards of Charlotte, NC, and David Basile Edwards of Washington, DC, nephew, Ryan Smith of Greenville, SC, and nieces Nicole Ferris of Jupiter, FL, and Erin Adams of Tallahassee, FL.

Jim was the son of Dr. James D. Edwards and Elizabeth Reynolds Edwards, and was born in Cleveland, TN, on November 4, 1943, and raised in Greenville, SC. He graduated first in his senior class from Bob Jones Academy, where he was elected senior class president and president of the student body. He graduated with a degree in Accounting, with honors, from Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC.

Jim spent his entire professional career with the public accounting firm Arthur Andersen & Co. He was hired as a staff accountant in 1964 and began a stellar rise that would lead to the No. 3 position in an organization with more than 85,000 employees operating in 84 countries. Before he reached the age of 30, he was admitted to partnership in 1973, making him the youngest ever to achieve this level. In 1979, he became the Managing Partner of the Atlanta office and ushered in an era of unprecedented growth. During his tenure, the office prospered and expanded from less than 400 to more than 900 professional employees. Arthur Andersen, as the largest such firm in Atlanta, grew to nearly twice the size of their closest competitors, and were auditors of over 40% of the top 50 public companies in Georgia. In 1987, when he was 44 years old, Jim became responsible for managing North American operations comprising 85 offices and 20,000 employees, and was elevated to Arthur Andersen's Executive Committee. In 1989, he became Managing Partner for North and South America. Until his retirement in 2002, he served as Managing Partner for Global Markets.

Jim was generous in devoting time and resources to numerous civic and charitable organizations in the city he loved - Atlanta, Georgia. His service included terms as Board member or Chairman of numerous nonprofit organizations, including Central Atlanta Progress, Metropolitan United Way, Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Metro Atlanta Salvation Army, Atlanta Junior Achievement, National Junior Achievement, Woodruff Arts Center, and the Cousins Family Foundation.

At the conclusion of his career with Arthur Andersen, Jim served on the Board of Directors of various publicly traded companies, including IMS Health, Inc., Crawford & Company, Cousins Properties, Inc., Huron Consulting Group, and Transcend Services, Inc.

Jim enjoyed competing in tennis and was the perennial champion of the Atlanta Country Club members' tournament. Golf was another favorite pastime, with annual trips to Scotland to play the old courses, and frequent rounds played with his wife at their home courses on Spring Island, SC, and Placida, FL. When he turned 50, he celebrated by making a coast-to-coast motorcycle trip from the Statue of Liberty in New York City to the Santa Monica pier in California. In later years, he enjoyed hiking in Colorado and spent many summer months there.

Jim was a man of rare qualities, capabilities, and interests. His life exemplified success achieved through dedication, integrity, and hard work. His professional accomplishments, outstanding character and sterling personal conduct inspired and impressed his employees, peers, business associates, and virtually everyone who came to know him. He made immense and lasting contributions to his employer, community, family and those who were fortunate to be his friend. In his passing, the world lost a true leader and a man of accomplishments; one who lived a principled life, faithfully followed Christ, and rejoiced in helping others.

A memorial service will be held at the Saint Mark United Methodist Church of Atlanta at 11:00 a.m. on Monday, July 24, 2023. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made, in memory of James D. Edwards, to Mayo Clinic for Alzheimer's Research, Mayo Clinic Florida, 4500 San Pablo Road, Jacksonville, Florida 32224.

[rpnewspaperblog]

Metro Atlanta Chamber fighting for legalized sports betting in Georgia – WSB-TV Channel 2

ATLANTA — A group says it will continue fighting to make sports betting legal in Georgia. It’s been a battle for years, and even though lawmakers struck it down for the year, supporters say they are not giving up. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Channel 2′s Veronica Griffin was live on WSB Tonight at 11 p.m. near Mercedes Benz Stadium and State Farm Arena. Legal sports…

[nathanmonjko]

Ambassador Briefing: South Africa as Atlanta's Gateway to African Opportunity

Hosted by the South African Chamber USA, Global Atlanta, and Metro Atlanta Chamber, join the Ambassador of South Africa for a business roundtable.

[becausewecareatlanta]

What an amazing day giving back at the “ Keep Stockbridge Beautiful” 5th Annual Stockbridge Councilman Elton Alexander MLK Jr. Community Service Project on Hudson Bridge Rd at I-75. We loved on our city planting shrubs, putting down weed block fabric, spreading mulch, and collecting litter in a one mile radius cleaning up the gateway to our city and county. We literally swept around the front door to our community today. This was no photo ops here we put in 2 hour plus working and impacting the village in near freezing temperatures! I want to thank all the volunteers, Stockbridge Public Works, and our Executive Assistant Rosalyn Rawls and Zenovia Pearson. A special thank you to the Henry County Coalition Committee, Vulcan Materials, and Henry County (GA) Alumnae Chapter, Delta Sigma Theta, Inc. for going all out for progress! WSB-TV 11Alive FOX 5 Atlanta Visit Henry County, GA Henry County Chamber of Commerce City of Stockbridge Government Metro Atlanta Chamber Keep America Beautiful Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area Tom Jones-WSB Atlanta News First 1380 WAOK The Voice of the Community Majic 107.5 97.5 V-103 The People's Station Monica Kaufman Pearson Karyn Greer Atlanta Regional Commission Georgia Municipal Association Congressman David Scott Reverend Raphael Warnock Jon Ossoff Sylvain Funeral Home and Cremation Services Boba Lubu Tea Carlotta Harrell ChooseATL Bernice King Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport #Stockbridgega #henrycountyga #Stockbridge #keepstockbridgebeautiful #keepamericabeautiful #communitycleanup #mlkjrserviceday #mlkcommunityserviceproject #people2people #givingback #givingbacktothecommunity #givingbacktothecommunity #givingback #givingback #alltheglorytogod #alltheglorytojesus (at Stockbridge, Georgia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnasaCXAkh3/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[saportareport]

Atlanta’s Universities Lead the Nation in Diversity and Degrees Awarded

Atlanta’s Universities Lead the Nation in Diversity and Degrees Awarded

Metro Atlanta is producing and retaining the world’s best creative, tech and executive talent. This workforce pipeline begins with education, and metro Atlanta is also home to some of the best universities and technical colleges in the nation. The region has more than 290,000 students enrolled in 64 colleges and universities, and the city has solidified its reputation as the #2 metro area for…

[addisonsportsc-blog]

Addison Sports Clinic, located inside Medici Medical Arts, incorporates unique treatment practices such as Active Release Technique (A.R.T.), and Spinal Decompression to treat injuries without surgery. The 20,000 sq ft facility also offers hard-to-find medical equipment that increases recovery from sports injuries such as hyperbaric chambers, cryo-therapy, and one of the only Class 4 Cold Lasers in Metro Atlanta. For more information please call on this number: 678-809-5773

[blackkudos]

Lena Horne

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned over 70 years, appearing in film, television, and theater. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of 16 and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood.

Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963 and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than 300 performances on Broadway. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000. Horne died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 2010, at the age of 92.

Early life

Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She was reportedly descended from the John C. Calhoun family, and both sides of her family were through a mixture of African, Native American, and European descent and belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated people. Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne Jr. (1893–1970), a numbers kingpin in the gambling trade, left the family when she was three and moved to an upper-middle-class African American community in the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1894–1976), was a granddaughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron; she was an actress with a black theatre troupe and traveled extensively. Edna's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Horne was raised mainly by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne.

When Horne was five, she was sent to live in Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929, she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now part of Fort Valley State University) in Fort Valley, Georgia, who later served as an adviser to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From Fort Valley, southwest of Macon, Horne briefly moved to Atlanta with her mother; they returned to New York when Horne was 12 years old. She then attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn that has since become Boys and Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved to her father's home in Pittsburgh, staying in the city's Little Harlem for almost five years and learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine, among others.

Career

Road to Hollywood

In the fall of 1933, Horne joined the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City. In the spring of 1934, she had a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade starring Adelaide Hall, who took Lena under her wing. Horne made her first screen appearance as a dancer in the musical short Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935). A few years later, Horne joined Noble Sissle's Orchestra, with which she toured and with whom she made her first records, issued by Decca. After she separated from her first husband, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940–41, but disliked the travel and left the band to work at the Cafe Society in New York. She replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's popular jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. The show's resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, recorded with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Victor. Horne left the show after only six months when she was hired by former Cafe Trocadero (Los Angeles) manager Felix Young to perform in a Cotton Club-style revue on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood.

Horne already had two low-budget movies to her credit: a 1938 musical feature called The Duke is Tops (later reissued with Horne's name above the title as The Bronze Venus); and a 1941 two-reel short subject, Boogie Woogie Dream, featuring pianists Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons. Horne's songs from Boogie Woogie Dream were later released individually as soundies. Horne made her Hollywood nightclub debut at Felix Young's Little Troc on the Sunset Strip in January 1942. A few weeks later, she was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In November 1944, she was featured in an episode of the popular radio series Suspense, as a fictional nightclub singer, with a large speaking role along with her singing. In 1945 and 1946, she sang with Billy Eckstine's Orchestra.

She made her debut at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Panama Hattie (1942) and performed the title song of Stormy Weather based loosely on the life of Adelaide Hall, (1943), at 20th Century Fox, while on loan from MGM. She appeared in a number of MGM musicals, most notably Cabin in the Sky (1943), but was never featured in a leading role because of her race and the fact that her films had to be re-edited for showing in cities where theaters would not show films with black performers. As a result, most of Horne's film appearances were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline. A notable exception was the all-black musical Cabin in the Sky, although one number from that film was cut before release because it was considered too suggestive by the censors: Horne singing "Ain't It the Truth" while taking a bubble bath. This scene and song are featured in the film That's Entertainment! III (1994) which also featured commentary from Horne on why the scene was deleted prior to the film's release. Lena Horne was the first African-American elected to serve on the Screen Actors Guild board of directors.

In Ziegfeld Follies (1946), she performed "Love" by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Horne lobbied for the role of Julie LaVerne in MGM's 1951 version of Show Boat (having already played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Roll By, 1946) but lost the part to Ava Gardner, a personal friend in real life. Horne claimed this was due to the Production Code's ban on interracial relationships in films, but MGM sources state she was never considered for the role in the first place. In the documentary That's Entertainment! III, Horne stated that MGM executives required Gardner to practice her singing using Horne's recordings, which offended both actresses. Ultimately, Gardner's voice was overdubbed by actress Annette Warren (Smith) for the theatrical release.

Changes of direction

By the mid-1950s, Horne was disenchanted with Hollywood and increasingly focused on her nightclub career. She made only two major appearances for MGM during the 1950s: Duchess of Idaho (which was also Eleanor Powell's final film); and the 1956 musical Meet Me in Las Vegas. She was blacklisted during the 1950s for her affiliations in the 1940s with communist-backed groups. She would subsequently disavow communism. She returned to the screen three more times, playing chanteuse Claire Quintana in the 1969 film Death of a Gunfighter, Glinda in The Wiz (1978), which was directed by her then son-in-law Sidney Lumet, and co-hosting the MGM retrospective That's Entertainment! III (1994), in which she was candid about her unkind treatment by the studio.

After leaving Hollywood, Horne established herself as one of the premier nightclub performers of the post-war era. She headlined at clubs and hotels throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. In 1957, a live album entitled, Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria, became the biggest-selling record by a female artist in the history of the RCA Victor label at that time. In 1958, Horne became the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Musical" (for her part in the "Calypso" musical Jamaica) which, at Lena's request featured her longtime friend Adelaide Hall.

From the late 1950s through to the 1960s, Horne was a staple of TV variety shows, appearing multiple times on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, and The Bell Telephone Hour. Other programs she appeared on included The Judy Garland Show, The Hollywood Palace, and The Andy Williams Show. Besides two television specials for the BBC (later syndicated in the U.S.), Horne starred in her own U.S. television special in 1969, Monsanto Night Presents Lena Horne. During this decade, the artist Pete Hawley painted her portrait for RCA Victor, capturing the mood of her performance style.

In 1970, she co-starred with Harry Belafonte in the hour-long Harry & Lena special for ABC; in 1973, she co-starred with Tony Bennett in Tony and Lena. Horne and Bennett subsequently toured the U.S. and U.K. in a show together. In the 1976 program America Salutes Richard Rodgers, she sang a lengthy medley of Rodgers songs with Peggy Lee and Vic Damone. Horne also made several appearances on The Flip Wilson Show. Additionally, Horne played herself on television programs such as The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Sanford and Son in the 1970s, as well as a 1985 performance on The Cosby Show and a 1993 appearance on A Different World. In the summer of 1980, Horne, 63 years old and intent on retiring from show business, embarked on a two-month series of benefit concerts sponsored by the sorority Delta Sigma Theta. These concerts were represented as Horne's farewell tour, yet her retirement lasted less than a year.

On April 13, 1980, Horne, Luciano Pavarotti, and host Gene Kelly were all scheduled to appear at a Gala performance at the Metropolitan Opera House to salute the NY City Center's Joffrey Ballet Company. However, Pavarotti's plane was diverted over the Atlantic and he was unable to appear. James Nederlander was an invited Honored Guest and noted that only three people at the sold-out Metropolitan Opera House asked for their money back. He asked to be introduced to Lena following her performance. In May 1981, The Nederlander Organization, Michael Frazier, and Fred Walker went on to book Horne for a four-week engagement at the newly named Nederlander Theatre on West 41st Street in New York City. The show was an instant success and was extended to a full year run, garnering Horne a special Tony award, and two Grammy Awards for the cast recording of her show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. The 333-performance Broadway run closed on Horne's 65th birthday, June 30, 1982. Later that same week, she performed the entire show again to record it for television broadcast and home video release. Horne began a tour a few days later at Tanglewood (Massachusetts) during the weekend of July 4, 1982. The Lady and Her Music toured 41 cities in the U.S. and Canada until June 17, 1984. It played in London for a month in August and ended its run in Stockholm, Sweden, September 14, 1984. In 1981, she received a Special Tony Award for the show, which also played to acclaim at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1984. Despite the show's considerable success (Horne still holds the record for the longest-running solo performance in Broadway history), she did not capitalize on the renewed interest in her career by undertaking many new musical projects. A proposed 1983 joint recording project between Horne and Frank Sinatra (to be produced by Quincy Jones) was ultimately abandoned, and her sole studio recording of the decade was 1988's The Men in My Life, featuring duets with Sammy Davis Jr. and Joe Williams. In 1989, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1995, a "live" album capturing Horne's Supper Club performance was released (subsequently winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album). In 1998, Horne released another studio album, entitled Being Myself. Thereafter, Horne retired from performing and largely retreated from public view, though she did return to the recording studio in 2000 to contribute vocal tracks on Simon Rattle's Classic Ellington album.

Civil rights activism

Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights Movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society and worked with Paul Robeson. During World War II, when entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform "for segregated audiences or for groups in which German POWs were seated in front of black servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she staged her show for a mixed audience of black U.S. soldiers and white German POWs. Seeing the black soldiers had been forced to sit in the back seats, she walked off the stage to the first row where the black troops were seated and performed with the Germans behind her. After quitting the USO in 1945 because of the organization's policy of segregating audiences, Horne financed tours of military camps herself.

She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend before Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House two days before he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington and spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, and the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws. Tom Lehrer mentions her in his song "National Brotherhood Week" in the line "Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her and to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a violent attack on civil rights marchers in 1965. In 1983, the NAACP awarded her the Spingarn Medal.

Horne was a registered Democrat and on November 20, 1963, she, along with Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman John Bailey, Carol Lawrence, Richard Adler, Sidney Salomon, Vice-Chairwoman of the DNC Margaret B. Price, and Secretary of the DNC Dorothy Vredenburgh Bush, visited John F. Kennedy at The White House, two days prior to his assassination.

Personal life

Horne married Louis Jordan Jones, a political operative, in January 1937 in Pittsburgh. On December 21, 1937, their daughter, Gail (later known as Gail Lumet Buckley, a writer) was born. They had a son, Edwin Jones (February 7, 1940 – September 12, 1970) who died of kidney disease. Horne and Jones separated in 1940 and divorced in 1944. Horne's second marriage was to Lennie Hayton, who was music director and one of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM, in December 1947 in Paris. They separated in the early 1960s, but never divorced; he died in 1971. In her as-told-to autobiography Lena by Richard Schickel, Horne recounts the enormous pressures she and her husband faced as an interracial couple. She later admitted in an interview in Ebony (May 1980) that she had married Hayton to advance her career and cross the "color-line" in show business.

Horne had affairs with Artie Shaw, Orson Welles, Vincente Minnelli, and the boxer Joe Louis.

Horne also had a long and close relationship with Billy Strayhorn, whom she said she would have married if he had been heterosexual. He was also an important professional mentor to her. Screenwriter Jenny Lumet, known for her award-winning screenplay Rachel Getting Married, is Horne's granddaughter, the daughter of filmmaker Sidney Lumet and Horne's daughter Gail. Her other grandchildren include Gail's other daughter, Amy Lumet, and her son's four children, Thomas, William, Samadhi, and Lena. Her great-grandchildren include Jake Cannavale.

From 1946 to 1962, Horne resided in a St. Albans, Queens, New York, enclave of prosperous African Americans, where she counted among her neighbors Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and other jazz luminaries.

Death

Horne died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 2010. Her funeral took place at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue in New York. Thousands gathered and attendees included Leontyne Price, Dionne Warwick, Liza Minnelli, Jessye Norman, Chita Rivera, Cicely Tyson, Diahann Carroll, Leslie Uggams, Lauren Bacall, Robert Osborne, Audra McDonald, and Vanessa Williams. Her remains were cremated.

Legacy

In 2003, ABC announced that Janet Jackson would star as Horne in a television biographical film. In the weeks following Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" debacle during the 2004 Super Bowl, however, Variety reported that Horne had demanded Jackson be dropped from the project. "ABC executives resisted Horne's demand", according to the Associated Press report, "but Jackson representatives told the trade newspaper that she left willingly after Horne and her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, asked that she not take part." Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys during a 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she might possibly consider producing the biopic herself, casting Keys as Horne.

In January 2005, Blue Note Records, her label for more than a decade, announced that "the finishing touches have been put on a collection of rare and unreleased recordings by the legendary Horne made during her time on Blue Note." Remixed by her longtime producer Rodney Jones, the recordings featured Horne with a remarkably secure voice for a woman of her years, and include versions of such signature songs as "Something to Live For", "Chelsea Bridge", and "Stormy Weather". The album, originally titled Soul but renamed Seasons of a Life, was released on January 24, 2006. In 2007, Horne was portrayed by Leslie Uggams as the older Lena and Nikki Crawford as the younger Lena in the stage musical Stormy Weather staged at the Pasadena Playhouse in California (January to March 2009). In 2011, Horne was also portrayed by actress Ryan Jillian in a one-woman show titled Notes from A Horne staged at the Susan Batson studio in New York City, from November 2011 to February 2012. The 83rd Academy Awards presented a tribute to Horne by actress Halle Berry at the ceremony held February 27, 2011.

In 2018, a forever stamp depicting Horne began to be issued; this made Horne the 41st honoree in the Black Heritage stamp series.

[gunrunnerhell]

Empowerment

Dana R. Mitchell, a 47-year-old minister at Destiny World Church outside of Atlanta, poses with a King James version of the minister's manual and a 9mm handgun. She's among the ranks of the nation's black women who own a firearm. Mitchell said she had been in a household with firearms. "I wasn't a stranger to them but I always had that fear." That changed after she was invited her to the range with some other women, she kept seeing news reports of violence and a friend had her purse stolen while pumping gas. "I woke up one day watching TV and I said, you have to get over this," she said. She's now more aware of her surroundings and is learning how to prepare herself in case she becomes a potential victim. "I don't want this sweet face to fool you." 

Alicia Kelley poses for a portrait in Decatur, Ga., while checking the chamber on her handgun. Kelley is a 36-year-old banker who lives in Buford, Ga. She's among the ranks of the nation's black women who own firearms. "I fell in love with shooting at the range," she says. When she and her husband bought a home, they decided to buy a firearm for protection. "As times have changed, it's good to have home protection," she said of violence and the tension in today's unpredictable political climate. "It's so unpredictable. People used to hide behind the computer but now they're coming out. You don't know who you're going to run into. Nowadays people are acting before they're thinking." 

Corelle Owens poses for a portrait in Decatur, Ga., while holding a Glock in 40 S&W. Owens is a 45-year-old resident of Mableton, Ga., and flight attendant. She's among the ranks of the nation's black women who are learning how to use a firearm, deciding to go to the range and learn how to shoot after her car, phone, tablet, and wallet were stolen in March. She's thinking of purchasing a revolver, considering it an ideal firearm for home protection. Thieves, she said, "they're armed too so what are you going to do if you don't have a gun?" She's intent on perfecting her skills and learning as much as she can on the safest ways to handle a firearm. "I work in a job where safety is paramount and I want to do it the right way." 

Daphne Jordan poses with her Walther PK380 handgun in Decatur, Ga. She's among the ranks of the nation's black women who own a firearm. Jordan, a 44-year-old clinical field specialist at a biotech firm, said she hadn't grown up around firearms. "It was somewhat viewed as taboo, as bad," she said. In high school, she joined the ROTC rifle team and was one of its best shooters. But once she graduated, she forgot about it and didn't pick it up again until years later. In 2015, she came home to discover she had been burglarized. "I just felt violated." She decided to learn how to shoot again and how to protect herself. But she didn't want to do it alone. So she became a certified firearms instructor and began teaching other women at the range. She enjoys the camaraderie and helping to empower other women. "It's not second nature, and that's something I'm changing," she said. 

Dr. Janella Thomas-Burse, a 53-year-old gynecologist, poses with her SCCY 9mm handgun. She's among the ranks of the nation's black women who own a firearm. She only recently purchased a firearm, deciding to get one for self-protection. "It just seemed like it was a no-no and so dangerous," she said of owning one. "I like it but I don't get that adrenaline rush like a lot of folks. I'm still working with the comfort level." 

Laura Manning poses with her Springfield Armory handgun in Decatur, Ga. Manning, a 50-year-old payroll specialist in Atlanta, is among the ranks of the nation's black women who own a firearm. An empty nester who is the mother of three children, she said she decided she needed to take responsibility for her own safety. "What's going to happen if something goes bump in the night? I need to protect myself," she said.

Lois Woods, an investigator with a career in law enforcement, poses for a portrait in Decatur, Ga., holding her Glock firearm. Woods is a firearms instructor and among the ranks of the nation's black women who own a firearm. She decided to become an instructor after going through the academy and encountering an instructor whose approach did more to instill fear than inspire her to be a good shooter. She now teaches at a range in metro Atlanta. It used to be rare to see a black woman at the range, she said. "When they come in and I'm walking out and they see my shirt, they look at me with amazement," Woods said. Self-protection is the overwhelming reason she hears most women cite for learning how to shoot. "The fear of being a victim outweighs everything else," Woods says. (AP Photo/Lisa Marie Pane) 

Markysha Clarke poses for a portrait in Decatur, Ga., with her Taurus PT111 handgun. Clarke, a 40-year-old marketing specialist for a bank. Clarke is among the ranks of the nation's black women who own a firearm. She started taking classes but each time, "the nervous jitters" would creep in. Then about a month ago, she decided to buy a firearm for protection. She worries about remaining safe should she ever be stopped by a police officer. "As a black person in America, this is a major problem," she said. "You hope and pray you're following all the rules and that officer stopping you is following all the rules and doesn't have an agenda." 

Stayce Robinson poses for a portrait in Decatur, Ga., with her AR-15. Robinson, 49, from Douglasville, Ga., is an entrepreneur and tax analyst for a software company. She also is among the ranks of the nation's black women who own a firearm. Robinson grew up around firearms because her grandparents were business owners and had them for protection. She got her first firearm at 18. "I've never been scared of guns. I respect their power," she said. "It actually got me dates." Her first gun was a .380 caliber pistol. She's also owned a revolver, a .38 caliber and a 9mm. Her gun collection kept getting bigger, she said. This past Christmas, her husband bought her an AR-15. "It's the best gift ever," she said. She worries about the violence in the world, from home invasions to politically-inspired violence. "If I'm placed in the position to have to use a gun, I won't hesitate."

[threadatl]

What's in it for all the “Greenlight the Gulch” supporters?

"Greenlight the Gulch" is ramping up its ad campaign in preparation for the Atlanta City Council vote next week. That Council meeting could provide a 'yes' vote on the major incentives package that developer CIM Group is waiting for.

Mayor Bottoms has been a vocal proponent of passing this incentives package quickly -- regardless of the fact that public engagement on it has been basically nonexistent, regardless of the lack of public streets and room for passenger rail in the agreement, and regardless of the fact that the head of Atlanta schools is against the deal because of the way the tax-increment financing robs revenue from schools and other public services.

And we know that Central Atlanta Progress (CAP) is a supporter, having funded a series of Greenlight the Gulch mailers and robocalls. The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce is also a vocal supporter. But why? What's in it for all of them?

How Central Atlanta Progress benefits: new income for themselves, though schools get nothing for 30 years

CAP is probably one of the only organizations (besides the actual developer) that financially benefits from the Gulch deal. CIM Group will still have to pay  real estate tax allocated for CAP & the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District (ADID) during their 30 years of not having to pay any other taxes, such as those property taxes that would benefit schools and more.

So for 30 years, public schools get nothing from the Gulch development, while CAP's ADID arm gets tax revenue.

And since CIM's proposing privatized streets, there will be minimal increased costs to ADID for providing their usual Downtown street services. CIM will clean its own sidewalks and empty its own trash cans.

Public streets should be something the City demands here regardless of incentives. Instead, the Greenlight campaign wants us to ignore public-street issue altogether, as well as the issue of leaving room in the Gulch for a passenger-rail line and platform.

How the Metro Chamber and Mayor Bottoms benefit: they get to crow about ‘jobs’

As for the Metro Chamber, it benefits from the deal too. Not monetarily, but the Chamber wants Atlanta to continue to be seen as pro-business and pro-development. They want the numbers on "Annual Net Job Creation" to go up even higher, since creating these reports on jobs/employment growth and publicizing the results seems to be a major part of what they do. 

As soon as CIM deal included mention of the word "jobs," the Chamber got on board -- it's a magic word that seems to justify any level of public incentive for some people. It's likely that this is part of the reasoning behind Mayor Bottoms' support too, though she probably is also excited that part of her commitment to affordable housing can be fulfilled with the agreement for a certain number of affordable units here.**(see note at the bottom of the post)

Do not wast the opportunity to do something genuinely good here

With the Gulch project, the City of Atlanta has an opportunity to develop a large portion of the city center in a way that benefits surrounding neighborhoods equitably, while addressing a transit-oriented future, and providing tax revenue for city services.

How much of that are we accomplishing? Not much, if the Greenlight campaign gets its way with City Council next week.

Those ‘Greenlight’ ads are getting expensive

Whoever's behind the social media ads has upped their spending recently, you may have noticed. Some of their ads now have over $500 or even $1000 in spending. And they've made videos so the production costs have also gone up over existing renderings and stock images. You can see info on the ads here.

This ad-spending really is getting expensive for whoever's behind it. And it's unclear who that is. One of the video ads ends with a disclaimer that it was paid for by "Greenlight the Gulch, 225 Peachtree Street NE, 30303." That's Peachtree Center. It doesn't include a suite number so we don't know which tenant is behind it. But it's not CAP's address. It's a mystery, which is sadly appropriate for a deal that has been opaque and exclusionary, in its details, in too many ways.

There's still time to make a difference. Let your City Councilmembers know your concerns.

EDIT

Former Invest Atlanta board member Julian Bene tweeted this in repose to the post:

“One error in threadatl article. This ripoff does nothing to meet affordable housing goals.  For $2Bn we should see 18,000 units for 15 yrs. We get only 200 for 3 - count 'em - 3 yrs. It's as much of a shell game as the rest of the Gulch deal.”

Good point! Only 200 units of affordable housing does sound weak for the Gulch development when you think of it this way.

[96thdayofrage]

Lawsuits claim Georgia's redistricting maps ignore Black population growth

A proposed map of Georgia's 180 state House districts sits outside the chamber before lawmakers approved it on a mostly-party line vote.

It did not take long after the proverbial ink to dry before lawsuits were filed against Georgia's new political redistricting maps covering the state House, state Senate and U.S. House district boundaries.

Gov. Brian Kemp quietly signed the new maps into law Thursday, Dec. 30, 2021, after a special legislative session that ended in November, codifying Republican dominance in a state that has seen a rapid political and demographic shift toward Democrats.

Despite flipping both U.S. Senate seats in January and electing President Joe Biden last November, Georgia's congressional delegation will actually gain a GOP-favored seat under the new law. And while the state legislative maps cede more seats to Democrats in metro Atlanta, Republicans will still have a comfortable majority in both chambers.

While statewide elections have essentially been a competitive 50-50 split in the last four years, the new districts approved for state and federal lawmakers are not as competitive, possibly leading to more races being decided in lower-turnout primaries and the potential for more extreme candidates to take office.

Georgia's current U.S. House delegation has eight Republicans and six Democrats, but a dramatic overhaul to the 6th and 7th districts in Atlanta's northern suburbs will likely result in nine Republicans after the 2022 midterm elections.

The new congressional map takes the 6th District, represented by Democrat Lucy McBath, and turns it into a conservative stronghold by moving the seat northward to include Cherokee, Forsyth and Dawson County voters. In turn, the 7th District represented by Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux shrunk its footprint to just part of Gwinnett County and Johns Creek, creating a safely Democratic district.

A lawsuit filed by five Georgia voters from Cobb and Douglas counties says the area's Black population growth over the last decade is significant enough to have a congressional district based there. The two counties are currently split between five different districts.

"Rather than draw this additional congressional district to allow Georgians of color the opportunity to elect their preferred candidates, the General Assembly instead chose to 'pack' some Black voters in the Atlanta metropolitan area and 'crack' other Black voters among rural-reaching, predominantly white districts," the filing reads.

Data shows, on average, a Republican congressman from Georgia would win with 61% of the vote in their district while a Democratic representative would need to capture 72% of the vote, meaning districts with Democratic U.S. House members have Democrats more heavily packed into them than Republicans are in Republican districts.

The latest Census data shows Georgia's Black population has grown nearly 16% in the last decade and makes up a third of Georgia's 10.7 million people, while the share of white residents has declined and the state is on track to be majority nonwhite in the near future.

The state Senate map moves two rural Republican districts into Democrat-heavy metro Atlanta areas while shifting the boundaries of Democratic Sen. Michelle Au's Johns Creek-based district to become conservative-leaning and majority white. An analysis from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project finds only one of the 56 new districts is competitive.

In the state House, Republican mapmakers utilized several retirements in more rural communities to jettison several seats of their majority and create Democratic-leaning seats in Cobb, Fulton, Gwinnett and Rockdale counties as well as a new seat in conservative-leaning Forsyth County.

The ACLU of Georgia filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the Sixth District African Methodist Episcopal Church and several Georgia voters arguing those maps violate the Voting Rights Act by diluting the strength of Black Georgians.

"The southern Atlanta metro region has seen explosive growth in the Black population over the last decade, and yet the new districts fail to allow those new Black voters to elect candidates of their choice," Sean J. Young, legal director of the ACLU of Georgia, said in an interview.  "For example, Senate districts 16 and 17 in the south Atlanta metro region only have about 25-35% Black voters, when several of the counties in those districts' Black population have grown by well over 30-40%. So politicians cannot just try to freeze Black political power as if it were still 2010."

Georgia as a whole has grown by more than 1 million people in the last decade, almost exclusively by adding nonwhite residents in the metro Atlanta area, and political power has shifted away from rural, white Republicans. The legal challenges say that reality is not reflective of the political maps that, barring the success of any lawsuits, will govern the state for the next decade.

A third suit filed by the Georgia NAACP, Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda and GALEO is the most extensive, naming dozens of districts across the three maps that they say violate the Voting Rights Act as well as the U.S. Constitution.

"Had the chosen map drawers and the Georgia General Assembly drawn districts that accurately reflect Georgia's increasingly diverse population without the improper consideration of race, opportunities for people of color to elect candidates of their choice would have necessarily increased," the filing reads.

All of the lawsuits ask the federal courts to compel the legislature to draw new maps that better reflect Georgia's demographics. The NAACP challenge wants a panel of three federal judges to take further steps and require Georgia to preclear its voting changes with the federal government, a status that the state and other jurisdictions with a history of racist voting changes had under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 until the U.S. Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision.

While these cases can take time to untangle, preparations are already underway at the local level for elections officials to sort voters into their new districts in time for the May primary elections — though the association of local elections officials has asked lawmakers to delay the primary a month to provide more time to complete the redistricting process.

[becausewecareatlanta]

The AMP Trail, or the Arabia Mountain Path Trail is our Atlanta BeltLine and Silver Comet Trail here in Henry County! The AMP is located at Panola Mountain State Park 2620 Hwy 155N Stockbridge. Introducing the new Henry County Greenway! Our trail connects to the AMP Trail network that now stretches 35 plus miles in length out to Conyers or Lithonia as well as west to Atlanta. Eventually it will connect to the Atlanta Beltline in the next decade! To get these photos you have to walk it so I earned it and enjoyed the beauty of great progress! Currently the Henry county trail ends in the woods but phase two will connect it to Fairview Rd and Village Park after the Henry County school board approved the necessary easement at Austin Rd Middle. Phase 3 could connect from Village Park Ellenwood down East Atlanta Rd to the new Stockbridge Amphitheater! Details on the AMP Trail: https://bwcatlantasouth.com/post/618382833748213760/henry-county-arabia-mountain-path-trail-the #amptrail #panolamountaintrail #AtlantaBeltline #SouthRiverTrail #SilverCometTrail #HenryCountyga #Stockbridgega #McDonoughga #PathFoundation #EdMcBrayer #MichelleObamaTrail #Atlanta #AtlantaSouth #GeorgiaTrails #atlantatrails PATH Foundation Atlanta Regional Commission Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport Delta Air Lines Trilith Studios Tyler Perry Dan T. Cathy Metro Atlanta Chamber FOX 5 Atlanta WSB-TV Wendy Corona Monica Kaufman Pearson 11Alive CBS46 Frank Ski KISS 104.1 Juandolyn Stokes Justin Farmer Tom Hayes Tom Jones-WSB Anderson Cooper (at Panola Mountain State Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CbvG5iwrgzh/?utm_medium=tumblr

[saportareport]

ATLeaders Talks Impact of Inclusive Transportation in Metro Atlanta

ATLeaders Talks Impact of Inclusive Transportation in Metro Atlanta

By Cara Thomas, Brand Communications, Metro Atlanta Chamber

As the metro region continues to grow exponentially, necessary conversations surrounding Atlanta’s transit and its future are taking place. The recent ATLeaders Council meeting tackled this topic with a discussion around some of the alternative methods of transportation that the region offers.

The panel of guests featured experts from…

[patriotsnet]

Who Is Winning Democrats Or Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/who-is-winning-democrats-or-republicans/

Who Is Winning Democrats Or Republicans

Democrats Lose Senate Seat In Alabama

Spending bill: A win for Democrats or the GOP?

Democratic Senator Doug Jones has lost his race in Alabama, CBS News projects. Jones’ loss is expected, but it means the Democrats need another seat to take back control of the Senate. Democrats have picked up one seat so far, in Colorado.;

Many consider Jones’ tenure as a senator from ruby-red Alabama to be a fluke. He won the seat in a 2017 special election to fill the vacancy left by Jeff Sessions, who became Mr. Trump’s first attorney general. Jones narrowly defeated Republican candidate Roy Moore, who faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct with underage girls. This year, Jones was less fortunate with his opponent. He was defeated by Tommy Tuberville, the well-known, beloved former coach of the Auburn University football team.;

Meanwhile, CBS News projects Republican Senator John Cornyn won his reelection race in Texas, defeating Democrat MJ Hegar.

Quiz: Let Us Predict Whether Youre A Democrat Or A Republican

Tell us a few details about you and well guess which political party you belong to. It shouldnt be that simple, right? Were all complex people with a multiplicity of identities and values. But the reality is that in America today, how you answer a handful of questions is very likely to determine how you vote.

This quiz, based on recent surveys with more than 140,000 responses, presents a series of yes-or-no questions to predict whether someone is more likely to identify as a Democrat or a Republican. It captures divisions that should make you worried about the future of American democracy.

We wont collect your answers.

The first question is the most important: Its about race. Asking whether someone is black, Hispanic or Asian cleaves the electorate into two groups. Those who answer yes lean Democratic; the others are split roughly evenly between the parties. Among those who are not black, Hispanic or Asian , the second most important question is whether the person considers religion important. If they answer yes, they are probably Republican.

Its not just race and religion, though. Party allegiances are now also tied to education, gender and age. Americans have sorted themselves more completely and rigidly than any time in recent history.

How demographics predict party affiliation

The group most likely to be Democrats are black women older than about 30.

Meeting in the Middle

Reliable Republicans

Cal Cunningham Concedes North Carolina Senate Race

Democrat Cal Cunningham conceded in the;North Carolina;Senate race on Tuesday, saying in a statement that he had called Republican incumbent Senator Thom Tillis to congratulate him on his victory.

“I just called Senator Tillis to congratulate him on winning re-election;to a second term in the U.S. Senate and wished him and his family the best in their continued service in the months and years ahead,” Cunningham said. “The voters have spoken and I respect their decision.”

CBS News projects that Tillis has won the race, after Cunningham’s concession. Tillis led Cunningham by nearly 100,000 votes as of Tuesday. The presidential race in North Carolina is still too close to call, although President Trump is currently in the lead. The full results of the election in North Carolina are unlikely to be known until later this week, as the deadline in the state to receive absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day is November 12.

Read Also: Did Trump Say That Republicans Are The Dumbest Group Of Voters

Joe Biden The Current Vp

Biden, for the most part, has been content to let his boss hog the limelight. He has made his fair share of effort staying under the public spotlight. His approval ratings have waned in public as well as in Democrat circles as well, owing to his diminished role in the Vice President role.

Compared to the invisible Dick Cheney, Joe Bidens mark on US politics is muted.

Reality Check 1: Biden Cant Be Fdr

Theres no question that Biden is swinging for the fences. Beyond the emerging bipartisan infrastructure bill, he has proposed a far-reaching series of programs that would collectively move the United States several steps closer to the kind of social democracy prevalent in most industrialized nations: free community college, big support for childcare and homebound seniors, a sharp increase in Medicaid, more people eligible for Medicare, a reinvigorated labor movement. It is why 100 days into the administration, NPR was asking a commonly heard question: Can Biden Join FDR and LBJ In The Democratic Party’s Pantheon?

But the FDR and LBJ examples show conclusively why visions of a transformational Biden agenda are so hard to turn into reality. In 1933, FDR had won a huge popular and electoral landslide, after which he had a three-to-one Democratic majority in the House and a 59-vote majority in the Senate. Similarly, LBJ in 1964 had won a massive popular and electoral vote landslide, along with a Senate with 69 Democrats and a House with 295. Last November, on the other hand, only 42,000 votes in three key states kept Trump from winning re-election. Democrats losses in the House whittled their margin down to mid-single digits. The Senate is 50-50.

You May Like: How Many Seats Do Republicans Hold In The Senate

Pelosi Says American People Have Made Their Choice Clear In Voting For Biden

;In a letter to her Democratic colleagues in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed confidence that Biden would be elected president, even though several states have yet to be called.

“The American people have made their choice clear at the ballot box, and are sending Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House,” Pelosi said.

She also praised House Democrats for keeping their majority, saying that the House will “now have the opportunity to deliver extraordinary progress.” However, she only obliquely referenced the heavy losses by several freshmen Democrats who had flipped red seats.

“Though it was a challenging election, all of our candidates both Frontline and Red to Blue made us proud,” Pelosi said.

Georgia Election Official Says Ossoff Is On Pace To Win Avoid Runoff

A top Georgia election official said Democrat Jon Ossoff, who leads Republican;David Perdue, is on pace to win by a great enough margin to avoid a recount as the state looks to finish counting most outstanding absentee ballots by 1 p.m. EST Wednesday.

Gabriel Sterling, Georgias voting system implementation manager, said more than 60,470 absentee ballots remain uncounted, mostly in Democratic-leaning counties in the metro Atlanta area.

It makes it look like Jon Ossoff will likely have a margin outside of the half a percent to avoid a recount, Sterling said. And obviously, Rev.;Warnock is ahead of him right now. So, if Ossoff avoids that recount so does Rev. Warnock.

Under Georgia law, a recount can be requseted by a campaign;when an election is decided by less than 0.5 percentage points.

Ossoff leads;Perdue by 17,567 votes in a race the Associated Press says is still too early to call. Ossoff’s current lead is 0.4 percentage points. Raphael Warnock, who leads Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler by more than 54,729 votes, is the projected winner in his race. He leads Loeffler by 1.24 percentage points.

Sterling said the Georgia secretary of states office requested all counties get their ballots tallied by 1 p.m., and he believes most will be able to do so. The bulk of uncounted absentee ballots are those that arrived on Election Day, he said.

;Joey Garrison

Read Also: Why Are No Other Republicans Running For President

Iowa And Montana Senate Races Toss

With polls closing at 10 p.m. ET, CBS News estimates the closely-watched Iowa and Montana Senate races are both toss-ups. If the Democratic candidates defeated the Republican incumbents, it would bring Democrats closer to gaining the majority in the Senate.

In Iowa, Republican Senator Joni Ernst is being challenged by Democrat Theresa Greenfield in an unexpectedly close race. Mr. Trump won Iowa by 10 percentage points in 2016, raising concerns among Republicans about the tightness of a race Ernst was initially expected to win. Greenfield has raised far more than Ernst $28.7 million in the third quarter and she could end up outspending Ernst by more than $25 million by Election Day. ;

In Montana, first-term Republican Senator Steve Daines faces a challenge from the two-term governor of his state, Steve Bullock. Like Hickenlooper, Bullock briefly ran for president before ending his bid and entering the Senate race in March 2020. Bullock won reelection in Montana as a Democrat in 2016 even as Donald Trump won the state by about 20 points.

Meanwhile, the South Carolina Senate race has gone from a “toss-up” to “likely Republican.”

Jon Ossoff Wins In Georgia Ensuring Democrats Will Control The Senate

Winning U.S. Senate an essential piece of presidential election

Democrats took control of the Senate on Wednesday with a pair of historic victories in Georgias runoff elections, assuring slim majorities in both chambers of Congress for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and delivering an emphatic, final rebuke to President Trump in his last days in office.

The Rev. Raphael Warnock defeated Senator Kelly Loeffler, becoming the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from the South. And Jon Ossoff, the 33-year-old head of a video production company who has never held public office, defeated David Perdue, who recently completed his first full term as senator.

Both Democrats now lead their defeated Republican opponents by margins that are larger than the threshold required to trigger a recount under Georgia law.

The Democrats twin victories will reshape the balance of power in Washington. Though they will have the thinnest of advantages in the House and Senate, where Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will break 50-50 ties, Democrats will control the committees and the legislation and nominations brought to the floor. That advantage will pave the way for at least some elements of Mr. Bidens agenda.

The political fallout of Mr. Trumps tenure is now clear: His single term in the White House will conclude with Republicans having lost the presidency, the House and the Senate on his watch.

Read Also: Which 12 Republicans Voted Against Trump

Georgia Senate Runoffs: The Final Battles For Control Of The Us Senate

The results of Georgias January 5 Senate races will help define Bidens presidency.

On January 5, control of the US Senate will be decided in two Georgia runoff elections. If Democrats win both races, both parties will have 50 senators each, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaker in any party-line votes.

If just one of the two Republican incumbents can hold onto their seats, however, the GOP will keep control of the Senate.

In the first race, Republican Sen. David Perdue is facing off against Jon Ossoff, perhapsbest known for his failed attempt to flip Georgias Sixth Congressional District in 2017 . In the second race, Rev. Raphael Warnock is challenging Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler. Warnock is the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, renowned as the place where Martin Luther King Jr. preached in the 1960s.

Its difficult to predict how runoffs and special elections will go. But though Republicans are favored, the races could be tight, as Voxs Ella Nilsen reported:

ButPerdue and Loeffler have struggled to clearly articulate the stakes of losing the Senate to Georgians as President Donald Trump has continued to falsely insist that he won the presidential race. Its hard to tell your supporters that youre the only thing standing between them and radical socialism if you cant admit that Trump lost.

Follow along below for Voxs election coverage, including breaking news updates, analysis, explainers, and more.

Georgia’s First Black Senator

A pastor who spent the past 15 years leading the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, Raphael Warnock, defeated Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler, US media predicted.

With the win, Warnock has become the first Black senator in his state’s history.

He acknowledged his improbable victory in a message to supporters early Wednesday, citing his family’s experience with poverty.

“The other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton picked her youngest son to be a United States senator,” he said, referring to his mother.

“Tonight, we proved with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible.”

Loeffler refused to concede in a brief message to supporters shortly after midnight.

“We’ve got some work to do here. This is a game of inches. We’re going to win this election,” the 50-year-old former businesswoman insisted, despite having no path to victory.

Also Check: How Many Registered Republicans Are In The United States

Poking That Dog With A Stick

This is not a situation open to easy reform; nor would all want to reform it. Parties try to become strong, and remain strong, for perfectly understandable political reasons. Strong parties can be a boon, though the balance of benefit to risk is better in a system designed with them in mind. And American society is divided in ways it was not before; its partisan politics are in part a cause of thatbut in part, too, a consequence of it.

An electoral system that has its thumb on the scales, though, is harder to defend. And measures to redress that electoral bias through greater proportionality in the voting system might also help with the broader issues of political division. Systems with elements of proportional representation, such as that sought by reformers of the electoral college or House districts, not only provide bulwarks against charges of illegitimacy. They also have a tendency towards consensus of the sort the founders wanted. There is a reason why, when choosing their own constitutions, no other country has for long survived with a replica of the American modeland why when guiding the design of constitutions for others, as they did in post-war Germany and Japan, Americans have always suggested solutions quite unlike the one under which they live.

Dig deeper

Which Party Is The Party Of The 1 Percent

First, both parties receive substantial support. Much of it comes from registered voters who make $100K+ annually. However, Democrats actually come out ahead when it comes to fundraising for campaigns. In many cases, Democrats have been able to raise twice as much in private political contributions. But what about outside of politicians? Does that mean Democrats are the wealthier party? Which American families are wealthier? Republicans or Democrats?

Honestly, it is probably Republicans. When it comes down to it, the richest families in America tend to donate to Republican candidates. Forbes reported out of the 50 richest families in the United States, 28 donate to Republican candidates. Another seven donate to Democrats. Additionally, 15 of the richest families in the U.S. donate to both parties.

Also Check: Can Republicans Vote In California Democratic Primary

Black Voters And Faith Leaders Rejoice At Warnocks Historic Win: I Think It Speaks Volumes

ATLANTA Michael Simmons, 63, has not missed voting in a major election since 1976. The most important for him was 2008, when he cast a ballot for President Barack Obama. But his votes in Novembers general election and the Senate runoffs on Tuesday were ranked closely behind.

The Rev. Raphael Warnocks success in the Senate runoffs sent a jolt of jubilation through much of Georgias African-American community, as they saw a Black man taking an office that had been held by segregationists when he was born. There was also a level of pride in having an emissary of the Black church serve in the highest levels of government.

I never would have thunk put that down, thunk! Id see this happen, said Mr. Simmons, a manager at a nonprofit organization in downtown Atlanta. Personally, I dont expect the world to change because we have a Black man in the Senate, but we can see progress.

The office of the nonprofit where Mr. Simmons works is just a few blocks from Ebenezer Baptist Church, the renowned congregation that Mr. Warnock leads. Mr. Simmons often saw Mr. Warnock walking around the neighborhood.

The win carried enormous significance for him: This was a place where for many years we got the short end of the stick, Mr. Simmons, who grew up in Alabama and moved to Atlanta after college, said.

Is Virginia A Democratic Or Republican State

4.3/5VirginiaRepublicanstateRepublicanVirginiastateDemocratic

Of the state’s eleven seats in the House of Representatives, Democrats hold seven and Republicans hold four. The state is widely considered blue-leaning, a trend which moves parallel with the growth of the Washington D.C. and Richmond suburbs.

Furthermore, is Virginia a swing state? Election analytics website FiveThirtyEight identifies the states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin as “perennial” swing states that have regularly seen close contests over the last few presidential campaigns.

Besides, what political party is Virginia?

Virginia recognizes only two political parties: Democrats and Republicans.

Was Virginia always a democratic state?

Since the 2012 Virginia elections, Virginia has always voted for the Democratic statewide candidate. Since the 1851 Virginia gubernational election, the first gubernatorial election in Virginia in which the governor was elected by direct popular vote, 34 Virginia Governors have been Democrats.

Don’t Miss: Are Republicans More Racist Than Democrats

Key Races That Could Determine The Senate Majority

To take the majority, Democrats would have to net three seats, should Biden win the presidency, or four seats, if Mr. Trump wins reelection, because it’s the vice president who breaks ties in the Senate. The current balance of the Republican-controlled Senate is 53 to 47.

Here is a rundown of the key Senate races in this year’s election:

Doug Collins Concedes To Kelly Loeffler In Georgia Senate Race

Who is Winning US Election 2020 | Full 360 Analysis | Analysts, Democrats, Republicans on NewsX

Republican Congressman Doug Collins has conceded to Senator Kelly Loeffler, who has advanced to a runoff election in the Georgia Senate race along with Democrat Raphael Warnock. The runoff election will be held in early January.

I just called and congratulated her on making the runoff. She has my support and endorsement. I look forward to all Republicans coming together. Raphael Warnock would be a disaster for Georgia and America.

Doug Collins

Read Also: Will Any Republicans Vote For Impeachment

[blackkudos]

Lena Horne

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American jazz and pop music singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned over 70 years appearing in film, television, and theater. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of 16 and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the 1943 films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Because of the Red Scare and her political activism, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.

Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963 and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000. Horne died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 2010, at the age of 92.

Early life

Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Reportedly descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her family were a mixture of African-American, Native American, and European American descent, and belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated people. Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1893–1970), a numbers kingpin in the gambling trade, left the family when she was three and moved to an upper-middle-class black community in the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1894–1976), was a granddaughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron; she was an actress with a black theatre troupe and traveled extensively. Edna's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne.

When Horne was five, she was sent to live in Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929, she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now part of Fort Valley State University) in Fort Valley, Georgia, who later served as an adviser to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From Fort Valley, southwest of Macon, Horne briefly moved to Atlanta with her mother; they returned to New York when Horne was 12 years old. She then attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn that has since become Boys and Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved in with her father in Pittsburgh, staying in the city's Little Harlem for almost five years and learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine, among others.

Career

Road to Hollywood

In the fall of 1933, Horne joined the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City. In the spring of 1934, she had a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade starring Adelaide Hall, who took Lena under her wing. A few years later, Horne joined Noble Sissle's Orchestra, with which she toured and with whom she made her first records, issued by Decca. After she separated from her first husband, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940–41, but disliked the travel and left the band to work at the Cafe Society in New York. She replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's popular jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. The show's resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, recorded with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Victor. Horne left the show after only six months when she was hired by former Cafe Trocadero (Los Angeles) manager Felix Young to perform in a Cotton Club-style revue on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, and was replaced by actress Betty Keene of the Keene sisters.

Horne already had two low-budget movies to her credit: a 1938 musical feature called The Duke is Tops (later reissued with Horne's name above the title as The Bronze Venus); and a 1941 two-reel short subject, Boogie Woogie Dream, featuring pianists Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons. Horne's songs from Boogie Woogie Dream were later released individually as soundies. Horne made her Hollywood nightclub debut at Felix Young's Little Troc on the Sunset Strip in January 1942. A few weeks later, she was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In November 1944, she was featured in an episode of the popular radio series Suspense, as a fictional nightclub singer, with a large speaking role along with her singing. In 1945 and 1946, she sang with Billy Eckstine's Orchestra.

She made her debut at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Panama Hattie (1942) and performed the title song of Stormy Weather based loosely on the life of Adelaide Hall, (1943), which she made at 20th Century Fox, on loan from MGM. She appeared in a number of MGM musicals, most notably Cabin in the Sky (1943), but was never featured in a leading role because of her race and the fact that her films had to be re-edited for showing in cities where theaters would not show films with black performers. As a result, most of Horne's film appearances were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline. A notable exception was the all-black musical Cabin in the Sky, although one number from that film was cut before release because it was considered too suggestive by the censors: Horne singing "Ain't It the Truth" while taking a bubble bath. This scene and song are featured in the film That's Entertainment! III (1994) which also featured commentary from Horne on why the scene was deleted prior to the film's release. Lena Horne was the first African-American elected to serve on the Screen Actors Guild board of directors.

In Ziegfeld Follies (1946), she performed "Love" by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Horne lobbied for the role of Julie LaVerne in MGM's 1951 version of Show Boat (having already played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Roll By) but lost the part to Ava Gardner, a personal friend in real life. Horne claimed this was due to the Production Code's ban on interracial relationships in films, but MGM sources state she was never considered for the role in the first place. In the documentary That's Entertainment! III, Horne stated that MGM executives required Gardner to practice her singing using Horne's recordings, which offended both actresses. Ultimately, Gardner's voice was overdubbed by actress Annette Warren (Smith) for the theatrical release.

Changes of direction

By the mid-1950s, Horne was disenchanted with Hollywood and increasingly focused on her nightclub career. She only made two major appearances for MGM during the 1950s: Duchess of Idaho (which was also Eleanor Powell's final film); and the 1956 musical Meet Me in Las Vegas. She was blacklisted during the 1950s for her affiliations in the 1940s with communist-backed groups. She would subsequently disavow communism. She returned to the screen three more times, playing chanteuse Claire Quintana in the 1969 film Death of a Gunfighter, Glinda in The Wiz (1978), which was directed by her then son-in-law Sidney Lumet, and co-hosting the MGM retrospective That's Entertainment! III (1994), in which she was candid about her unkind treatment by the studio.

After leaving Hollywood, Horne established herself as one of the premier nightclub performers of the post-war era. She headlined at clubs and hotels throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. In 1957, a live album entitled, Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria, became the biggest-selling record by a female artist in the history of the RCA Victor label at that time. In 1958, Horne became the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Musical" (for her part in the "Calypso" musical Jamaica) which, at Lena's request featured her longtime friend Adelaide Hall.

From the late 1950s through to the 1960s, Horne was a staple of TV variety shows, appearing multiple times on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, and The Bell Telephone Hour. Other programs she appeared on included The Judy Garland Show, The Hollywood Palace, and The Andy Williams Show. Besides two television specials for the BBC (later syndicated in the U.S.), Horne starred in her own U.S. television special in 1969, Monsanto Night Presents Lena Horne. During this decade, the artist Pete Hawley painted her portrait for RCA Victor, capturing the mood of her performance style.

In 1970, she co-starred with Harry Belafonte in the hour-long Harry & Lena special for ABC; in 1973, she co-starred with Tony Bennett in Tony and Lena. Horne and Bennett subsequently toured the U.S. and U.K. in a show together. In the 1976 program America Salutes Richard Rodgers, she sang a lengthy medley of Rodgers songs with Peggy Lee and Vic Damone. Horne also made several appearances on The Flip Wilson Show. Additionally, Horne played herself on television programs such as The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Sanford and Son in the 1970s, as well as a 1985 performance on The Cosby Show and a 1993 appearance on A Different World. In the summer of 1980, Horne, 63 years old and intent on retiring from show business, embarked on a two-month series of benefit concerts sponsored by the sorority Delta Sigma Theta. These concerts were represented as Horne's farewell tour, yet her retirement lasted less than a year.

On April 13, 1980, Horne, Luciano Pavarotti, and host Gene Kelly were all scheduled to appear at a Gala performance at the Metropolitan Opera House to salute the NY City Center's Joffrey Ballet Company. However, Pavarotti's plane was diverted over the Atlantic and he was unable to appear. James Nederlander was an invited Honored Guest and noted that only three people at the sold-out Metropolitan Opera House asked for their money back. He asked to be introduced to Lena following her performance. In May 1981, The Nederlander Organization, Michael Frazier, and Fred Walker went on to book Horne for a four-week engagement at the newly named Nederlander Theatre (formerly the Trafalgar, the Billy Rose, and the National) on West 41st Street in New York City. The show was an instant success and was extended to a full year run, garnering Horne a special Tony award, and two Grammy Awards for the cast recording of her show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. The 333-performance Broadway run closed on Horne's 65th birthday, June 30, 1982. Later that same week, the entire show was performed again and videotaped for television broadcast and home video release. The tour began a few days later at Tanglewood (Massachusetts) during the weekend of July 4, 1982. The Lady and Her Music toured 41 cities in the U.S. and Canada until June 17, 1984. It played in London for a month in August and ended its run in Stockholm, Sweden, September 14, 1984. In 1981, she received a Special Tony Award for her one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which also played to acclaim at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1984. Despite the show's considerable success (Horne still holds the record for the longest-running solo performance in Broadway history), she did not capitalize on the renewed interest in her career by undertaking many new musical projects. A proposed 1983 joint recording project between Horne and Frank Sinatra (to be produced by Quincy Jones) was ultimately abandoned, and her sole studio recording of the decade was 1988's The Men in My Life, featuring duets with Sammy Davis Jr. and Joe Williams. In 1989, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

The 1990s found Horne considerably more active in the recording studio. Following her 1993 performance at a tribute to the musical legacy of her good friend Billy Strayhorn (Duke Ellington's longtime collaborator), she decided to record an album composed largely of Strayhorn's and Ellington's songs the following year, We'll Be Together Again. To coincide with the release of the album, Horne made what would be her final concert performances at New York's Supper Club and Carnegie Hall. That same year, Horne also lent her vocals to a recording of "Embraceable You" on Sinatra's Duets II album. Though the album was largely derided by critics, the Sinatra-Horne pairing was generally regarded as its highlight. In 1995, a "live" album capturing her Supper Club performance was released (subsequently winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album). In 1998, Horne released another studio album, entitled Being Myself. Thereafter, Horne essentially retired from performing and largely retreated from public view, though she did return to the recording studio in 2000 to contribute vocal tracks on Simon Rattle's Classic Ellington album.

Civil rights activism

Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights Movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society and worked with Paul Robeson. During World War II, when entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform "for segregated audiences or for groups in which German POWs were seated in front of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound up putting on a show for a mixed audience of black U.S. soldiers and white German POWs. Seeing the black soldiers had been forced to sit in the back seats, she walked off the stage to the first row where the black troops were seated and performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend before Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House two days before he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington and spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, and the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws. Tom Lehrer mentions her in his song "National Brotherhood Week" in the line "Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her and to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a violent attack on civil rights marchers in 1965. In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.

Personal life

Horne married Louis Jordan Jones in January 1937 in Pittsburgh. On December 21, 1937, their daughter, Gail (later known as Gail Lumet Buckley, a writer) was born there. They had a son, Edwin Jones (February 7, 1940 – September 12, 1970) who died of kidney disease. Horne and Jones separated in 1940 and divorced in 1944. Horne's second marriage was to Lennie Hayton, who was Music Director and one of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM, in December 1947 in Paris. They separated in the early 1960s, but never divorced; he died in 1971. In her as-told-to autobiography Lena by Richard Schickel, Horne recounts the enormous pressures she and her husband faced as an interracial couple. She later admitted in an interview in Ebony (May 1980), she had married Hayton to advance her career and cross the "color-line" in show business.

Horne also had a long and close relationship with Billy Strayhorn, whom she said she would have married if he had been heterosexual. He was also an important professional mentor to her. Screenwriter Jenny Lumet, known for her award-winning screenplay Rachel Getting Married, is Horne's granddaughter, the daughter of filmmaker Sidney Lumet and Horne's daughter Gail. Her other grandchildren include Gail's other daughter, Amy Lumet, and her son's four children, Thomas, William, Samadhi, and Lena. Her great-grandchildren include the actor Jake Cannavale.

Death

Horne died on May 9, 2010, and was cremated in New York City The funeral took place at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue in New York. Thousands gathered and attendees included Leontyne Price, Dionne Warwick, Liza Minnelli, Jessye Norman, Chita Rivera, Cicely Tyson, Diahann Carroll, Leslie Uggams, Lauren Bacall, Robert Osborne, Audra McDonald, and Vanessa Williams.

Legacy

In 2003, ABC announced that Janet Jackson would star as Horne in a television biographical film. In the weeks following Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" debacle during the 2004 Super Bowl, however, Variety reported that Horne had demanded Jackson be dropped from the project. "ABC executives resisted Horne's demand", according to the Associated Press report, "but Jackson representatives told the trade newspaper that she left willingly after Horne and her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, asked that she not take part." Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys during a 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she might possibly consider producing the biopic herself, casting Keys as Horne.

In January 2005, Blue Note Records, her label for more than a decade, announced that "the finishing touches have been put on a collection of rare and unreleased recordings by the legendary Horne made during her time on Blue Note." Remixed by her longtime producer Rodney Jones, the recordings featured Horne in remarkably secure voice for a woman of her years, and include versions of such signature songs as "Something to Live For", "Chelsea Bridge", and "Stormy Weather". The album, originally titled Soul but renamed Seasons of a Life, was released on January 24, 2006. In 2007, Horne was portrayed by Leslie Uggams as the older Lena and Nikki Crawford as the younger Lena in the stage musical Stormy Weather staged at the Pasadena Playhouse in California (January to March 2009). In 2011, Horne was also portrayed by actress Ryan Jillian in a one-woman show titled Notes from A Horne staged at the Susan Batson studio in New York City, from November 2011 to February 2012. The 83rd Academy Awards presented a tribute to Horne by actress Halle Berry at the ceremony held February 27, 2011.

Wikipedia

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Long Drives, Air Travel, Exhausting Waits: What Abortion Requires in the South

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Just a quick walk through the parking lot of Choices-Memphis Center for Reproductive Health in this legendary music mecca speaks volumes about access to abortion in the American South. Parked alongside the polished SUVs and weathered sedans with Tennessee license plates are cars from Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida and, on many days, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

Choices is one of two abortion clinics in the Memphis metro area, with a population of 1.3 million. While that might seem a surprisingly limited number of options for women seeking a commonplace medical procedure, it represents a wealth of access compared with Mississippi, which has one abortion clinic for the entire state of 3 million people.

A tsunami of restrictive abortion regulations enacted by Republican-led legislatures and governors across the South have sent women who want or need an early end to a pregnancy fleeing in all directions, making long drives or plane trips across state lines to find safe, professional services. For many women, that also requires taking time off work, arranging child care and finding transportation and lodging, sharply increasing the anxiety, expense and logistical complications of what is often a profoundly difficult moment in a woman’s life.

“Especially for women coming from long distances, child care is the biggest thing,” said Sue Burbano, a patient educator and financial assistance coordinator at Choices. “They’re coming all the way from Oxford, Mississippi, or Jackson. This is a three-day ordeal. I can just see how exhausted they are.”

The long drives and wait times could soon spread to other states, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares this fall to consider a Mississippi ban on nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no allowances for cases of rape or incest. Under a law enacted in 2018 by the Republican-led legislature, a woman could obtain a legal abortion only if the pregnancy threatens her life or would cause an “irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”

Mississippi’s ban was promptly challenged by abortion rights activists and put on hold as a series of lower courts have deemed it unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision. That 1973 ruling, in concert with subsequent federal case law, forbids states from banning abortions before “fetal viability,” the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, or about 24 weeks into pregnancy.

Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi and several other states have since passed laws that would ban abortions after six weeks. That legislation is also on hold pending legal review.

Groups opposed to abortion rights have cheered the court’s decision to hear the Mississippi case, believing the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett gives the court’s conservative bloc enough votes to overturn Roe, or at least vastly expand the authority of individual states to restrict abortion.

But, for supporters of reproductive rights, anything but a firm rejection of the Mississippi ban raises the specter of an even larger expanse of abortion service deserts. Abortion could quickly become illegal in 21 states — including nearly the entire South, the Dakotas and other stretches of the Midwest — should the court rescind the principle that a woman’s right to privacy protects pregnancy decisions.

“If we end up with any kind of decision that goes back to being a states’ rights issue, the entire South is in a very bad way,” said Jennifer Pepper, executive director of Choices in Memphis.

The decades-long strategy by conservative white evangelical Christians to chip away at abortion access state by state has flourished in the South, where hard-right Republicans hold a decisive advantage in state legislatures and nearly all executive chambers.

Though details vary by state, the rules governing abortion providers tend to hit similar notes. Among them are requirements that women seeking abortions, even via an abortion pill, submit to invasive vaginal ultrasounds; mandatory waiting periods of 48 hours between the initial consultation with a provider and the abortion; and complex rules for licensing physicians and technicians and disposing of fetal remains. Some states insist that abortion providers require women to listen to a fetal heartbeat; other providers have been unable to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals.

“Everything is hard down here,” said Pepper.

The rules also have made some doctors reluctant to perform the procedure. While obstetricians and gynecologists in California, New York, Illinois and elsewhere routinely perform abortions at their medical offices — the same practices where they care for women through pregnancy and delivery — their peers in many Southern states who perform more than a small number of abortions a year must register their practices as abortion clinics. None has done so.

Texas offers an example of how targeted legislation can disrupt a patient’s search for medical care. In 2012, 762 Texans went out of state for abortions, according to researchers at the University of Texas-Austin. Two years later, after then-Gov. Rick Perry signed into law the nation’s most restrictive abortion bill, shuttering about half the state’s abortion facilities, 1,673 women left Texas to seek services. In 2016, 1,800 did so.

Similarly, in March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an order prohibiting all abortions unless the woman’s life was in danger, deeming the procedure “not medically necessary.” The month before the order, about 150 Texans went out of state to seek abortion services. In March and April, with the order in effect, nearly 950 women sought care outside Texas.

There can also be an unsettling stigma in some parts of the South.

Vikki Brown, 33, who works in education in New Orleans, said she initially tried to end her pregnancy in Louisiana, calling her gynecologist for advice, and was told by a receptionist that she was “disgusted” by the request.

She sought out the lone abortion clinic operating in New Orleans but found it besieged with both protesters and patients. “I knew but didn’t understand how difficult it was to get care,” said Brown, who moved to Louisiana in 2010 from New York City. “The clinic was absolutely full. People were sitting on the floor. It was swamped.” It took her six hours to get an ultrasound, which cost $150, she said.

A friend in Washington, D.C., counseled Brown that “it didn’t have to be like that” and the pair researched clinics in the nation’s capital. She flew to Washington, where she was able to get an abortion the same day and for less than it would have cost her in New Orleans, even including airfare.

“No protesters, no waiting period,” she said. “It was a wildly different experience.”

Atlanta, a Southern transportation hub, has also become a key piece in the frayed quilt of abortion care in the region.

Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, said the clinic regularly sees patients from other states, including Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and the Carolinas.

These visits often involve long drives or flights, but rarely overnight stays because the state-mandated 24-hour waiting period can begin with a phone consultation rather than an in-person visit. Georgia has many of the same laws other states employ to make clinical operations more burdensome — requirements to cremate fetal remains, for instance, and that abortion providers adhere to the onerous building standards set for outpatient surgical centers — but its urban clinics so far have weathered the strategies.

Jackson said staffers at her clinic are aware of its role as a refuge. “We’ve had patients who were able to get a ride from Alabama, but they weren’t able to get a ride home,” she said. “We had to help them find a ride home. It is so much simpler to go 3 or 4 miles from your home and sleep in your bed at night. That is a luxury that so many of our patients can’t enjoy.”

Many women embarking on a search for a safe abortion are also confronting serious expenses. State Medicaid programs in the South do not pay for abortions, and many private insurers refuse to cover the procedure. In addition, the longer a woman’s abortion is delayed, the more expensive the procedure becomes.

Becca Turchanik, a 32-year-old account manager for a robotics company in Nashville, Tennessee, drove four hours to Atlanta for her abortion in 2019. “We got an appointment in Georgia because that was the only place that had appointments,” she said.

Turchanik said her employer’s health insurance would not cover abortion, and the cost of gas, food, medications and the procedure itself totaled $1,100. Her solution? Take on debt. “I took out a Speedy Cash loan,” she said.

Turchanik had a contraceptive implant when she learned she was six weeks pregnant. She said she was in an unhealthy relationship with a man she discovered to be dishonest, and she decided to end her pregnancy.

“I wish I had a child, but I’m glad it wasn’t his child,” she said. “I have accomplished so much since my abortion. I’m going to make my life better.”

But the emotions of the ordeal have stayed with her. She’s angry that she had to call around from state to state in a panic, and that she was unable to have her abortion close to home, with friends to comfort her.

Others turn to nonprofit groups for financial and logistical support for bus and plane tickets, hotels, child care and medical bills, including the National Abortion Federation, which operates a hotline to help women find providers. Last year, the federation received 100,000 calls from women seeking information, said its president, the Very Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale.

Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, an abortion fund based in Atlanta, has trained over 130 volunteers who pick women up at bus stations, host them at their homes and provide child care. A study published this year in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health examined 10,000 cases of women seeking assistance from ARC-Southeast: 81% were Black, 77% were uninsured or publicly insured, 77% had at least one child, and 58% identified as Christian.

“It’s amazing to see the scope of the people we work with,” said Oriaku Njoku, ARC-Southeast’s co-founder. “The post-Roe reality that y’all are afraid of is the lived reality for folks today in the South.”

A Texas law targets precisely this kind of help, allowing such organizations or individuals to be sued by anyone in the state for helping a woman get an abortion. It could go into effect Sept. 1, though abortion rights advocates are suing to stop the new law.

Despite the controversy surrounding abortion, Choices makes no effort to hide its mission. The modern lime-green building announces itself to its Memphis neighborhood, and the waiting room is artfully decorated, offering services beyond abortion, including delivery of babies and midwifery.

Like other clinics in the South, Choices has to abide by state laws that many abortion supporters find onerous and intrusive, including performing transvaginal ultrasounds and showing the women seeking abortions images from those ultrasounds.

Nonetheless, the clinic is booked full most days with patients from almost all of the eight states that touch Tennessee, a slender handsaw-shaped state that stretches across much of the Deep South. And Katy Deaton, a nurse at the facility, said few women change their minds.

“They’ve put a lot of thought into this hard decision already,” she said. “I don’t think it changes the fact that they’re getting an abortion. But it definitely makes their life harder.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Long Drives, Air Travel, Exhausting Waits: What Abortion Requires in the South published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/