Fresh Loaf

After leaving Mary Norwood’s campaign party at the Varsity, CL dropped by Noni’s on Edgewood Avenue around 12:15 a.m. to speak with mayoral candidate Kyle Keyser.

The filmmaker and community activist, whose grassroots campaign tapped social media to reach voters and raise funds, received less than one percent of the votes in yesterday’s election. (For a second yesterday Fox 5 said he had it wrapped up, which Keyser thought was amusing.)

We asked him how he felt now that the election’s over.

A large part of a runoff is actually convincing voters to return to the polls. And Keyser’s proven he can rally people around a cause. No word yet if he plans to endorse Mary Norwood or Kasim Reed. His nod of approval wouldn’t be a deciding factor, but it surely wouldn’t hurt.

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Nearly three weeks after the controversial police raid on local gay bar the Eagle, a protest or two, a press conference, and calls for resignations and outrage throughout the gay and straight communities alike, the Atlanta Police Department and the Atlanta community are going to church.

The forum came together as a result of a collaboration between openly gay mayoral candidate Kyle Keyser and LGBT community liaison Officer Dani Lee Harris, with help from Atlanta City Council Post 1 at-large candidate Adam Brackman.  The forum, which is free and open to the public, starts at at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 5,  at Virginia-Highland Church. It’s co-sponsored by grassroots group Atlantans Together Against Crime, of which Keyser is a founder.

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Last Wednesday, anti-crime advocate Kyle Keyser made the Atlanta mayoral race — which has seen its fair share of drama the last few weeks — much more interesting when he announced his candidacy.

One problem: Keyser didn’t have the $4,425 to get his name on the ballot. Another problem: the Little Five Points resident had only 48 hours to raise the cash. Either that or gather 2,300 signatures in the same amount of time.

So Keyser, the co-founder of the 10,000-member strong Atlantans Together Against Crime and who’s well-known among the city’s more social, younger crowd, asked for help from friends and strangers via Twitter, Facebook and DailyKos. It paid off. Here are the numbers.

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Jonathan Redding

Two days after the shooting death of Standard bartender John Henderson, one of the teen suspects in that crime was also involved in an attempted home invasion, Atlanta police say — but he and his fellow perps picked the wrong home to invade.

The owners of the Southwest Atlanta home opened fire with an AK-47 and a gun battle ensued in which 17-year-old Jonathan Redding was wounded in the shoulder and his 9mm Smith & Wesson was shot from his hand.

It’s Redding’s handgun, as well as blood he left at the scene of the second robbery, that eventually led police to link him to Henderson’s Jan. 7 murder, as well as the Dec. 21 armed mugging of another Standard bartender, Robin McMillan.

Police arrested Redding in Mechanicsville on April 10 after a DNA match made him a suspect in the home invasion, but they had to wait for ballistic tests to confirm that his Smith & Wesson had also been fired in the Standard the night of Henderson’s killing.

Redding remained in custody, but wasn’t charged with murder until Thursday, when McMillan ID’d the teen as one of the men who’d robbed him at gunpoint, says Lt. Keith Meadows, who heads Atlanta’s homicide division.

“We needed to show that Redding was in possession of the firearm before, during and after the killing in order to remove reasonable doubt” of his involvement, Meadows explains.
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Grayson Daughters spoke with Atlanta Police Union President Scott Kreher at the most recent Atlantans Together Against Crime rally in Midtown. Topics included how the organization will endorse a candidate in the Atlanta mayor’s race, what role the community plays in fighting crime, and what’s needed to end police furloughs. 

In March, the Atlanta City Council unanimously passed a resolution urging Mayor Shirley Franklin to introduce a budget that ended police and firefighter furloughs. Last week, the mayor granted its request. Council is expected to vote on the budget in June.

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Mayor Shirley Franklin is expected to deliver a proposed 2010 budget to Council members tomorrow that includes a 3-mill tax increase. The tax hike is designed to end the police and fire department furloughs and cover an anticipated $40 million shortfall for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. The budget needs to be approved by the Council by the end of June.

I haven’t heard back from the mayor’s spokespeople, but this all seems quite credible. I’ve also been told that Franklin is confident that she can get the eight Council votes needed to pass her budget — a turnaround from last year, when the Council rejected her call for a much smaller tax increase and unanimously approved a budget that actually included a microscopic property tax cut.

Does she really have the votes? Well, earlier today my colleague Thomas Wheatley was interviewing Councilwoman Anne Fauver about her decision not to run for re-election. He asked if she had any regrets.

Answered Fauver: “Had I been better educated by the administration about the financial state of the city, I would’ve voted for a small tax increase last year to help cover the pending budget shortfall and the impact of changes in the pension system. I was not fully educated and I would’ve gone along with a small tax increase if I had known all there was to know.”

Young Thomas then asked if there was any chance she might get to revisit that decision this year.

Said Fauver: “There is.”

The public-safety furloughs have taken a huge political toll on the denizens of City Hall over the last year. Groups like Atlantans Together Against Crime, which yesterday held a rally attended by the top three candidates for mayor, have put a great deal of pressure on the Council to find a way to return cops and firefighters to work.

In other words, the opposition to a tax increase is certainly weakening. It remains to be seen if it’s weakened enough to give Franklin the eight votes she needs.

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The killing of John Henderson sparked Atlanta resident awareness about crime.

Kyle Keyser is a founder of Atlantans Together Against Crime, a grassroots citizen group that raises awareness about the city’s growing crime problem. In an open letter to Mayor Shirley Franklin and City Council that Keyser asked CL to publish, he says the community is fully engaged, but residents’ trust in their elected officials is slipping. On Feb. 23 from 5 to 7 p.m., ATAC will hold its second monthly rally at the corner of Martin Luther King and Joseph E. Lowery Boulevards.

An Open Letter to the Mayor and Council of Atlanta:

Lately, it seems, when you can’t fight crime with police officers you fight it with numbers.

“Things are better today,” you insist, and you reach back over the years to compare crime rates. Never mind the property crime increase here or another senseless murder there. You act as if this is all in our heads, perhaps being exacerbated by neighbors – and neighborhoods – too quick to react.

Madam Mayor & Council members – with all due respect – stop patronizing us. We are not children who are scared of the dark for no other reason than its darkness. Criminals are lurking in our streets and perpetrating horrible crimes on all sides of Atlanta. Maybe they are not killing or assaulting us as much as they did in your comparison years but they are breaking into our homes and our cars, they are robbing us of hard-earned possessions, and they are stealing our privacy, our peace, and our sense of safety with alarming frequency.

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Earlier this month, John Henderson was killed during an early-morning robbery at The Standard Food and Spirits on Memorial Drive. Today and tonight, more than 60 Atlanta restaurants are participating in a “dine-out” benefit to raise funds for the reward that would lead to the arrest of individuals involved in his slaying.

For a full list of participating restuarants — and a map their locations — check out Atlantans Together Against Crime’s website.

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Nearly 175 people gathered in Little Five Points last night to rally and raise awareness about the city’s  crime problem. Atlantans Together Against Crime, a grassroots citizen group, organized the event. The group plans to stage rallies in different Atlanta neighborhoods on the last Monday of every month.

Grayson of Mostly Media has video of last night’s event.

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