(APN) ATLANTA — City of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is reaching out to business owners in unincorporated south Fulton County to discuss with them the time-sensitive possibility of annexing into the City of Atlanta, Atlanta Progressive News has learned. Reed mailed a letter en masse to business owners in unincorporated south Fulton on April 01, 2016, a copy of […]
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With additional reporting by Gloria Tatum, Senior News Writer. (APN) ATLANTA — HB 514, a voter referendum for a new City of South Fulton, in Fulton County, passed the Georgia Legislature this year, making a last-minute come back after many years of failed attempts to get the legislation through the Senate. http://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/Display/20152016/HB/514 City of Atlanta Mayor Kasim […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — Doris Benit, 88, an activist and Grandmother for Peace, of Kennesaw, Georgia, passed away on, Wednesday, March 16, 2016, after spending time in hospice care in connection with heart issues. Benit focused not only on peace, in her opposition to U.S. invasions and occupations around the world; but on economic justice issues like health care and […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — The Atlanta City Council’s Public Safety/Legal Administration Committee (PS/LA) discussed and then voted unanimously to confirm the changes on an ordinance granting new powers to the Atlanta Citizens Review Board (A CRB) at its meeting on Tuesday, March 15, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. Supporting the measure were Councilmembers C.T. Martin (District 10), Ivory Lee Young Jr. […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — The Atlanta City Council’s Public Safety/Legal Administration Committee (PS/LA) was set to discuss and possibly vote on an ordinance granting new powers to the Atlanta Citizens Review Board at its meeting on Tuesday, February 23, 2016. However, numerous citizens who planned to attend and speak learned that the PS/LA Committee Chairman Ivory Young (District 3) decided […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — Transit funding just got a boon, as SB 330, sponsored by State Sen. Brandon Beach (R – Alpharetta) passed out of the Senate Transportation Committee on Wednesday, February 18, 2016, by a vote of eight to three. The committee had to move rooms twice in order to accommodate the large crowd, and heard testimony from various […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — Reforming the Atlanta Citizen Review Board (ACRB), which investigates civilian complaints against police, is finally up for discussion at Atlanta City Hall. Atlanta City Councilman Ivory Lee Young Jr. (District 3) introduced proposed reforms toward the end of the council meeting on February 15, 2015. Atlanta Progressive News reported that Samuel Lee Reid, director of […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — Teachers, students, parents, and community members packed the Atlanta Public School Board of Education (APS BOE) meeting on Monday, February 01, 2016 to voice opposition to Superintendent Meria Carstarphen’s recently announced school turnaround strategy. The strategy aims to improve schools that Gov. Nathan Deal has deemed “failing,” so that they would not be subject to state […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — The Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA) opened its wait list for rental vouchers to new applicants statewide, and the results have been overwhelming. Within the first 24 hours, the agency has received approximately 47,000 applications, according to Jana Wiggins, a DCA spokesperson. That is more than three times the number of households that currently […]
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UPDATE 1: Title and article updated with new total numbers (see below for full editorial comment). (APN) ATLANTA — The Atlanta Board of Education has conceded to recouping tens of millions dollars less than the original 162 million dollars promised to the Atlanta Public School system (APS) for its participation in the Beltline Tax Allocation District (TAD). In […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — Atlanta’s boundaries are growing, as more unincorporated neighborhoods in DeKalb and Fulton Counties are successfully annexing into the City of Atlanta, opting to use the petition method provided for by Georgia law, instead of seeking voter referenda. Most recently, the City of Atlanta annexed the community of South Oaks, a small residential area in south Fulton, […]
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(APN) DECATUR — On Thursday, January 21, 2016, after eight hours of hearing evidence, a criminal grand jury indicted DeKalb County police officer Robert Olsen on six counts for the murder of Anthony Hill. The charges include two counts of felony murder, one count of aggravated assault, one count of making a false statement, and two counts of violation […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — On Saturday, December 05, 2015, the Campaign to End the New Jim Crow hosted a program at the Little 5 Points Community Center called, “Georgia Gulag: It’s Up to Us to Stop It.” In Georgia, there are eighty prisons, 22 youth detention facilities, five immigrant detention facilities, and 193 jails, plus probation centers. “Mass incarceration […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — Earlier this year, two Atlanta activists, Ben Howard and Ron Shakir, were banned from participating in the public meetings of Atlanta’s Neighborhood Planning Unit R (NPU-R), a move that appears to have violated Georgia’s Open Meetings Act. http://atlantaprogressivenews.com/2015/07/15/atlantas-npu-r-illegally-bans-members-from-open-meetings/ Ricardo Jacobs, the Chair of NPU-R, initiated the ban because, he claimed, Howard and Shakir repeatedly disrupted […]
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(APN) ATLANTA — City of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed held a press conference Monday, November 23, 2015 at Atlanta City Hall to announce that the City is launching Solar Atlanta, its first solar energy program. The program will allow solar panels to be installed on the roofs of 28 municipal buildings in Atlanta. This is the first program of […]
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