WASHINGTON – “We’re Better Than This.”
That was the message that Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms delivered on May 29, 2020, as cities across the country shook with protest and unrest over the murder of George Floyd. As a black woman who runs the most progressive city in the South—Atlanta was famously “too busy to hate” in the 1960s—Bottoms couldn’t forget who she was, nor what her constituents needed.
In the day’s comments, she embraced the tension in unusually candid terms. “I wear this every day and I pray for my children every day,” she said of the racism that Floyd’s murder had put on such a grotesque display. But, she added, “when Dr. King was killed, we didn’t do this to our city.”
A year later, with the coronavirus pandemic seemingly easing and Donald Trump no longer fueling racial divisions in the White House or on Twitter, Bottoms surprised Atlanta and the Democratic establishment by announcing that she would not seek a second term. “Just because you can do it doesn’t always mean you should,” she said at the time.
Her next job would be in Washington, where Bottoms, now 52, was appointed senior White House adviser on external affairs earlier this year. Once considered a potential running mate of Joe Biden, she now joins a government of former mayors, including Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Ind.), Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh (Boston), and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge (Warrensville Heights, a Cleveland suburb).
Speaking to Yahoo News earlier this month, Bottoms reflected on how far American cities have come since 2020 — and how much further they have to go. “We know recovery takes time,” she said, advocating patience that is hard to make in a country restless after two years of restrictions, lockdowns and shortages. “The American city really reflects where we are as a country.”
Tourists have returned, as a quick overview of the crowds in New York City’s Times Square or Washington’s National Mall attests. Office workers do not. Some restaurants are thriving. Others don’t, with 159,000 dining options across the country in 2020 alone. This includes famous spots like the Plum Tree Inn, a mainstay in Los Angeles’ Chinatown district, and Philadelphia’s iconic City Tavern, not to mention casual downtown eateries that couldn’t compete with corporate chains or deftly refocus. on delivery-first flavors .
“People are eager to get out there and get back to some sort of normalcy,” Bottoms said. This is undeniably true, but inflation has increased the price of many social experiences, making a stay in 2022 potentially just as pricey as travel. The once-innocent pastime of enjoying a baseball game, for example, will cost an average of $204 in 2022 for a family of four — and probably a lot more in big markets like Boston or Chicago. Cities had become unaffordable long before the pandemic, but the pandemic, with all its associated economic problems, has given that unaffordability a great relief.
Then there’s the fear of crime, which ties in closely with the lingering fear of the coronavirus to breed the feeling – exaggerated, but rooted in reality – that lawlessness is now permeating. The most recent report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association shows that murder and rape in major U.S. cities fell in the first six months of 2022 compared to 2021 — although the frequency of both remains well above 2019 levels. Both robberies and aggravated assault showed a strong increase in 2022 compared to 2021.
Unlike some other Democratic leaders, the politically astute Bottoms did not join the calls to “downgrade the police force,” instead arguing that Atlanta was doing all the work that criminal justice activists have demanded. She remains cautious in how she talks about crime, as does President Biden, who is caught between his own long-standing support for law enforcement and a democratic base demanding reforms that moderates would likely oppose.
“We know that communities want safe interactions with the police. And we know that the police generally want to have safe interactions with communities; everyone wants to go home safely at the end of the day,” the former mayor told Yahoo News. Most officers, she argued, “want to be guards, not warriors, in the communities.”
Biden has signed an executive order restricting the flow of surplus military equipment to federal police. But the militarization of the police — pioneered in Los Angeles by controversial chiefs William Parker and Daryl Gates — has always been a local issue, one that Congress should address.
Bottoms notes that the president has called for a ban on assault weapons. While such a move would be symbolically important, military-style guns are a small part of the weapons used to commit crime in the United States.
The day he tested positive for the coronavirus, Biden would travel to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to promote a “Safer America” plan that would save $37 billion of the president’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. years on hiring police officers, increasing funding to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and supporting criminal justice reform programs that have shown promise. If the plan satisfies neither progressives nor conservatives, it has the fingerprints of a government that favors a deliberate and stealthy approach to advancing policy goals, which it has recently done with some regularity.
For the most part, violent crime affects poor people of color, especially young black men. But those are rarely the crimes that get attention in the press. The most high-profile Atlanta murder in recent memory is that of Katie Janness, a white woman who was fatally stabbed while walking her dog in Piedmont Park. Fearing crime, the Buckhead neighborhood — a bastion of white wealth that forms a gateway to Atlanta’s coveted northern suburbs — has sought to secede from the city, in an effort that echoes mid-century efforts to prevent school integration through all-white suburban school districts.
Fall 2022 will be a test of how resilient cities are. And that resilience depends on factors that are partly beyond the control of mayors, governors and even the president. A new variant of the coronavirus could disrupt education. A spike in gas prices could frustrate return-to-office plans, which in turn would put new pressure on inner-city small businesses, while leaving streets and public transit systems empty.
But for now, Bottoms is hopeful. “We’ve reached the other side,” she told Yahoo News. “And we’re still standing.”
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