Latest / The Baller Alert Show / Episode 322 "Mayor Andre Dickens"

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Episode 322 "Mayor Andre Dickens" · The Baller Alert Show

0:08
Speaker 1: Word with me here.
0:09
Speaker 2: You know, BT know how it goes, shout out oct
0:11
Speaker 2: no real color what we see whole game?
0:13
Speaker 3: Wait the baller blot something.
0:15
Speaker 2: Oh you can't stand on their own sole see I
0:16
Speaker 2: already know you can't bold with me because up with
0:19
Speaker 2: the squad of me, they get a little They called me.
0:24
Speaker 4: Love Love Baller Alert.
0:29
Speaker 2: Welcome to the ball Up Show podcasts everywhere you get
0:31
Speaker 2: your podcast.
0:32
Speaker 4: Please to t to like, subscribe and share our YouTube
0:34
Speaker 4: page at baller alert TV. One tip of revoultd TV.
0:37
Speaker 5: I go by the name of Ferrari siblings o ce T.
0:39
Speaker 4: With that, you have the mayor, mister Andre Thickens of
0:41
Speaker 4: the building.
0:44
Speaker 5: What's up, sir, Hey, what's up?
0:46
Speaker 2: Man?
0:46
Speaker 3: I'm glad to be here.
0:47
Speaker 4: This is a complete honor man.
0:48
Speaker 6: Yeah, honors are all mine to be here on baller Alert.
0:50
Speaker 6: This is this is what's up.
0:51
Speaker 5: And we're missing BT because he's the one who actually
0:54
Speaker 5: put this all together.
0:56
Speaker 3: Yeah that's it. Yeah god.
0:58
Speaker 5: Yeah, So you know, welcome to the All Alert Show.
1:01
Speaker 1: And just for everybody who doesn't know we're unfamiliar, can
1:04
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about yourself.
1:05
Speaker 5: I know you're from Atlanta, but what part of.
1:06
Speaker 3: Atlanta, Atlanta.
1:08
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm born and raised in Atlanta in Adamsville. That's
1:11
Speaker 6: the West Adamsville, right, that's right, is a couple of
1:14
Speaker 6: years younger than me. And me and him, you know,
1:16
Speaker 6: grew up in the same general area, man, like west
1:19
Speaker 6: side of Atlanta. And I still live in coll Your Heights,
1:21
Speaker 6: which is not far from like really where he lived,
1:23
Speaker 6: like really close.
1:24
Speaker 4: You still live there?
1:25
Speaker 6: Yeah, I lived about two neighborhoods from the neighborhood I
1:28
Speaker 6: was born in.
1:29
Speaker 3: Wow.
1:29
Speaker 6: So I've been all over the city and I come
1:31
Speaker 6: back to my roots on the west side. So yeah, man,
1:34
Speaker 6: I'm from Atlanta. I went to May's High School, Benjamin
1:38
Speaker 6: and Elijah May. I went to Atlanta Public schools the
1:40
Speaker 6: whole way. My mama went to Atlanta Public schools. My
1:43
Speaker 6: all my aunts and family. I'm like a fourth or
1:45
Speaker 6: fifth generation Atlanta and so we like deep in this thing.
1:49
Speaker 6: And you know, I went to Georgia Tech for college
1:52
Speaker 6: as an engineer, a chemical engineering major, graduated and you know,
1:56
Speaker 6: did engineering things, ran businesses, and then went to Georgia
2:00
Speaker 6: State to get a master's in public administration later in life,
2:03
Speaker 6: and then ran for office.
2:05
Speaker 3: Is that what it was?
2:06
Speaker 4: The public administration part that took you to.
2:09
Speaker 6: Well, really, when I was sixteen years old, I said
2:11
Speaker 6: I wanted to be mayor of Atlanta. So since I
2:13
Speaker 6: was sixteen, I've been talking about this job.
2:15
Speaker 5: Why did you say that at sixteen?
2:17
Speaker 6: So a little bit before that, I met Ambassador Andrew
2:19
Speaker 6: Young when he was mayor, and I was like, wow,
2:22
Speaker 6: this is the dude that you see in the school.
2:25
Speaker 6: So and when you walk in the school building, you
2:27
Speaker 6: would see the president, the governor, and the mayor. Those
2:30
Speaker 6: were the pictures that were on the wall, and there
2:32
Speaker 6: was two white dudes and one black dude. All of
2:33
Speaker 6: them had on suits, and I was like, that black
2:35
Speaker 6: dude is important. He don't own a suit. And then
2:37
Speaker 6: after school programs I see him. And then at the
2:40
Speaker 6: Parks and Recreation you walk in the building. It's the
2:42
Speaker 6: same three people, the mayor, the governor, and the president
2:46
Speaker 6: and they were two white dudes and one black dude.
2:48
Speaker 6: And I was like, I resonated with him.
2:49
Speaker 3: What is he?
2:50
Speaker 6: He's always on TV talking about things he's doing. And
2:52
Speaker 6: so I said, man, Atlanta's great. I want to be
2:54
Speaker 6: the mayor of Atlanta. I want to be him. That
2:56
Speaker 6: was literally how it started. I didn't know what a
2:58
Speaker 6: city council was. I didn't know what a commisson was.
3:00
Speaker 6: I didn't know what none of these things were. I
3:02
Speaker 6: just knew that the individual that was big enough to
3:05
Speaker 6: be up there on pictures with the governor and the
3:07
Speaker 6: president and that was always talking positive, like I'm about
3:11
Speaker 6: to do this in the city. He was always, you know,
3:13
Speaker 6: in my line of sight that somebody I might want
3:16
Speaker 6: to be. And I knew that Atlanta was special, even
3:18
Speaker 6: though back then it was not like what it is now.
3:21
Speaker 6: But I knew Atlanta was special. And I you know,
3:24
Speaker 6: I mean, I was born and raised here, so I
3:26
Speaker 6: knew Doctor King, I knew of Benjamin Benjamin Elijah Mains
3:29
Speaker 6: Correta Scott, et cetera, et cetera.
3:31
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
3:31
Speaker 6: And I was like, this ain't no place like this.
3:34
Speaker 6: So way back then I said I want to be married.
3:36
Speaker 6: So I kept moving my life towards that, even though
3:39
Speaker 6: I had to make money because I didn't know nobody
3:42
Speaker 6: in my life that was a mayor or in politics
3:45
Speaker 6: and stuff. So I was the first in my family
3:48
Speaker 6: to go to college. And when I went to college,
3:50
Speaker 6: I was like, let me do something that's going to
3:52
Speaker 6: you know, work out for me financially. So I went
3:54
Speaker 6: down this path of engineering and business, but I never
3:58
Speaker 6: lost sight of, you know, what I wanted ultimately be.
4:00
Speaker 6: So I was doing neighborhood you know, president vice president stuff,
4:04
Speaker 6: and community leader and nonprofits and church stuff, always serving,
4:08
Speaker 6: and then eventually I just ran for city counciling one.
4:11
Speaker 1: Was there a particular person in your life that was
4:15
Speaker 1: guiding you to you know, through all that. You know,
4:19
Speaker 1: like you said, you never lost sight of that. You
4:21
Speaker 1: went to college the first out of your family. You know,
4:23
Speaker 1: who was inspiring you this whole time?
4:25
Speaker 6: I would say my mom, even though she didn't go
4:27
Speaker 6: to college, she would have wanted to. She would have
4:31
Speaker 6: wanted to go to Spelman. She always sees Spelman as
4:33
Speaker 6: you know, being from here. Why she well, she had
4:36
Speaker 6: my sister, my sister in high school or just as
4:40
Speaker 6: she was graduating high school, and so that disrupted certain
4:43
Speaker 6: plans that she had. But she was like, Andre, no
4:47
Speaker 6: matter what, You're going to succeed. I had a cheerleader
4:50
Speaker 6: from the day hours born. My mom and my older sister.
4:53
Speaker 6: These two I could move mountains. I mean, nothing was
4:56
Speaker 6: ever impossible for them through you know, for me through them.
5:01
Speaker 6: I always felt supported, and she put me in so
5:04
Speaker 6: many after school programs. Now, back in the day, stuff
5:06
Speaker 6: was five dollars, thirty five dollars for a whole summer
5:09
Speaker 6: or whatever.
5:10
Speaker 3: It was cheap.
5:11
Speaker 6: Now, you know, I thank god my daughter's nineteen now
5:14
Speaker 6: because them five hundred dollars summer bills and three hundred
5:17
Speaker 6: dollars programs. You know, back then, my mama she scrounged
5:20
Speaker 6: up thirty five dollars. Put me in baseball, put me
5:22
Speaker 6: in karate, put me in whatever. So she would hand
5:25
Speaker 6: me off to qualify people after school, and then they
5:29
Speaker 6: would instruct me even further, be like, hey, are you
5:31
Speaker 6: interested in business? I was in a youth business program
5:35
Speaker 6: at eight years old, and.
5:36
Speaker 4: That probably was rare at that particular timeframe too.
5:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was rare. It was rare to have all
5:41
Speaker 3: that knowledge.
5:42
Speaker 6: Like I was young enough knowing what a profit and
5:44
Speaker 6: loss was, what a revenue and sales and all those things.
5:48
Speaker 6: Had a bank account at eight years old, even though
5:50
Speaker 6: you know, I lived in Adamsville. But my mom put
5:53
Speaker 6: me in programs that were like, you are going to succeed.
5:57
Speaker 6: And I remember when I went to Maids because May's
6:00
Speaker 6: had fancy kids, right, Mais was preachers kids, pat you know,
6:03
Speaker 6: all kinds of political kids and you know, business owners.
6:07
Speaker 6: This has been amazing. Way back to Maize was brand
6:09
Speaker 6: new when I started going. I was maybe like the
6:11
Speaker 6: ninth or tenth class out of Maze because Maize was
6:13
Speaker 6: the elite, brand new school for all the fancy Cascade kids. Well,
6:17
Speaker 6: I tested into Mays. My mom was like that new
6:20
Speaker 6: school needs some more kids. So I was able to
6:22
Speaker 6: get enough grades to go from middle school.
6:25
Speaker 5: And was there mixed race kids there or No?
6:27
Speaker 3: It was all black, elite.
6:28
Speaker 6: This is Atlanta, so it was Atlanta. This was probably
6:31
Speaker 6: the whole time at May's. Out of four years, I
6:33
Speaker 6: might have been around one or two non black kids
6:36
Speaker 6: in any class I was in at most, but they
6:39
Speaker 6: were elite. They were kids that are, you know, very
6:41
Speaker 6: prosperous parents and so they had I remember my first
6:45
Speaker 6: friday of being in school, my class made through a
6:49
Speaker 6: pool party.
6:49
Speaker 3: I was like, what rec center we going to?
6:51
Speaker 6: He was like, nah, in my backyard, man, And we
6:53
Speaker 6: went to a pool at this dude's backyard. I had
6:55
Speaker 6: not seen that. Now it sounds like crazy, but that's
6:58
Speaker 6: back then. And well, my mom when I went to
7:01
Speaker 6: that pool party. My mom said, you know, just because
7:03
Speaker 6: they got more money than you, dad, they won't always
7:06
Speaker 6: have more impact than you are more classing.
7:08
Speaker 4: So you're bringing up mom, Yeah, where's that? Where was that?
7:13
Speaker 3: Yeah? I grew up without a father in my household,
7:16
Speaker 3: so you know that was.
7:18
Speaker 5: And you were the only boy in the house.
7:19
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was the only boy in the house. But
7:21
Speaker 6: I had a neighborhood full of boys. We had like
7:23
Speaker 6: thirty or forty boys in this neighborhood. So I walk
7:26
Speaker 6: out the door and it was a game of football
7:28
Speaker 6: going on, game of baseball, basketball.
7:30
Speaker 3: I here, basketball, what you need? I got what I needed.
7:33
Speaker 4: Mean, I know you had to ask mom, yes eventually.
7:36
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then the church had lots of you know, deacons,
7:39
Speaker 6: and then baseball you know, and basketball coaches. I have
7:43
Speaker 6: an uncle that was crazy, you know. He would come
7:46
Speaker 6: around all.
7:46
Speaker 3: The time and he'd.
7:48
Speaker 6: Shoot like, you know, one hour worth of game to you,
7:50
Speaker 6: that'll last year, whole month. You know, don't take no wood, Nichols,
7:53
Speaker 6: or put your knuckles up it. Somebody hit you hit
7:56
Speaker 6: them back.
7:56
Speaker 3: You know.
7:56
Speaker 6: I'd be like, all right, that's that's enough skills for
7:59
Speaker 6: the week, for a month, you know, but I was
8:04
Speaker 6: blessed to be honest man that my mother like, she didn't.
8:09
Speaker 6: She didn't let lack be her mode of operanda. She
8:15
Speaker 6: didn't go around saying, I don't have so my kid
8:18
Speaker 6: won't be able to be what he wants to be.
8:20
Speaker 6: She would find the resources.
8:22
Speaker 4: Nobody you wantn't you want?
8:23
Speaker 2: You're not from a side of town where you can
8:25
Speaker 2: kind of be. Uh, you gotta be smart, you gotta
8:29
Speaker 2: be tough. Yeah, to be from that side of town
8:31
Speaker 2: as well. So how did you maneuver through all of this?
8:34
Speaker 2: Did were there any fight?
8:35
Speaker 4: Did mister Andre into some fights sometime back in the day.
8:39
Speaker 6: Luckily mister Andre Dickens has not been in the fights,
8:42
Speaker 6: but dre.
8:43
Speaker 3: Young and growing up?
8:45
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, th We had so many fights over
8:48
Speaker 6: stuff like basketball fights in the middle of the game,
8:52
Speaker 6: or just you know, you know, neighborhood versus neighborhood fights.
8:55
Speaker 6: Luckily this was before people were shooting and stabbing and
8:58
Speaker 6: stuff like that. The most was, you know, you just
9:01
Speaker 6: got beat up and you come home with a bloody lift. No, man,
9:05
Speaker 6: I ain't never get beat up. I might have you know,
9:07
Speaker 6: somebody I might have lost on the scorecard. It once
9:09
Speaker 6: or twice, but not not not no KOs in my
9:13
Speaker 6: You know, I got long arms and I can run
9:14
Speaker 6: real fast, but he gets on you know, I know
9:17
Speaker 6: I know where to go, but I mean I probably have.
9:20
Speaker 6: I used to grow up. We would fight in an
9:22
Speaker 6: instant and then people would break it up. But that
9:25
Speaker 6: was just boys. It was a neighborhood full of boys
9:27
Speaker 6: and we were outside all the time, so it was
9:29
Speaker 6: just hot.
9:29
Speaker 3: And I like today. I like today.
9:31
Speaker 6: You know, you might be fighting over a Sega game
9:33
Speaker 6: or Nintendo or whatever they play in PlayStation.
9:35
Speaker 5: They fighting online? Now?
9:36
Speaker 3: Are they fighting online now? Yeah?
9:38
Speaker 6: And then and then that's you know, that is why
9:42
Speaker 6: I'm so heavily involved now in trying to support our
9:45
Speaker 6: youth and trying to you know, bring down violence in
9:48
Speaker 6: those things. Because I had a rich childhood, even though
9:51
Speaker 6: I wasn't rich, right, I have a full gamut.
9:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just came up with that. I might use
9:56
Speaker 3: that again, y'all record, but it was valuable.
10:01
Speaker 6: It was very rich, and I had individuals that you know,
10:04
Speaker 6: would steer me the right way, you know. But growing
10:07
Speaker 6: up in Adamsville. I'll give you an example, so you know,
10:10
Speaker 6: crack was around back then. I saw somebody smoke crack.
10:13
Speaker 6: When I was like, appreciate you saying this, Yeah.
10:15
Speaker 3: I saw it. I was like, what are you doing?
10:18
Speaker 6: And he got high right in front of us and
10:19
Speaker 6: started acting crazy, and I'm like, this is interesting, you know,
10:22
Speaker 6: like why would you do this? And I never dealt
10:26
Speaker 6: with it, never stayed away from it, even though Dylan
10:28
Speaker 6: might have been around, and you know, people doing drugs
10:31
Speaker 6: or selling drugs and stuff like that. It never interested
10:34
Speaker 6: me because I witnessed it firsthand. I'm like, okay, I'm
10:36
Speaker 6: not doing that. And my mother was like, don't you
10:38
Speaker 6: ever touch it? And so, like I had other things
10:41
Speaker 6: to do. I was going to school, I was going
10:43
Speaker 6: to baseball, basketball, football, or programs that were you know,
10:47
Speaker 6: very fun for me. And this lady would drive me around.
10:50
Speaker 6: My mom would get off work and drive me to
10:52
Speaker 6: wherever I needed to go. So parental support was crucial
10:55
Speaker 6: for me. But there was an example when my bike
11:01
Speaker 6: got stolen. So me and my best friend Chris, we
11:04
Speaker 6: ride our bikes up to McDonald's with our grass cutting money.
11:08
Speaker 6: You know, he cut grass, you get five ten dollars.
11:11
Speaker 6: You go up to McDonald's with it, knowing full well
11:14
Speaker 6: that we're not supposed to leave our bikes like unchained
11:18
Speaker 6: or whatever. But we were like just going in for
11:20
Speaker 6: a minute. Get this McDonald.
11:23
Speaker 3: Five minutes later, gone, bike's gone.
11:26
Speaker 4: Both of them are just you.
11:27
Speaker 6: Just mine because because I was this is also don't
11:30
Speaker 6: leave your bike to be the last bike. Because we
11:32
Speaker 6: just leaned them up against the store. I should have
11:35
Speaker 6: been the bike up against the store. His bike would
11:37
Speaker 6: have got stolen and his mama would have been the
11:38
Speaker 6: one man. But no, I had to He had to
11:41
Speaker 6: ride me back on his seat and handlehbars and all
11:43
Speaker 6: that to get back home, wait on my mama to
11:46
Speaker 6: get all work.
11:47
Speaker 3: Man. When my mom got our work, I had.
11:48
Speaker 6: To tell her that my bike was stolen and this
11:51
Speaker 6: is a bike she paid for two Christmases before.
11:55
Speaker 3: Man, she went knocking.
11:57
Speaker 6: We went knocking on doors near that McDonald and I
12:01
Speaker 6: am no lie. We like come outside, everybody, everybody out
12:05
Speaker 6: who got Dre's bike?
12:07
Speaker 3: And she lined to.
12:07
Speaker 6: People with my husband's police officer, he gonna come up in.
12:10
Speaker 6: She's doing whatever she can for that's the situation. Still
12:13
Speaker 6: didn't get my bike. But I didn't learned she was.
12:15
Speaker 3: I learned right there a line pushing She ain't she
12:21
Speaker 3: ain't scared of nobody.
12:22
Speaker 7: We'll be right back with more of The Baller Alert Show.
12:28
Speaker 7: You're listening to a special edition of The Baller Alert Show.
12:31
Speaker 6: Hey, what's up, y'all? This is Mayor Andre Dickens. You
12:34
Speaker 6: are now tuned in to the Baller Alert Show.
12:36
Speaker 3: Yeah.
12:36
Speaker 6: So I knew one day I was gonna run for mayor.
12:38
Speaker 6: So I was city council member. And then eight years
12:41
Speaker 6: of that, I was like, okay, I want to be mayor.
12:43
Speaker 6: But Keisha lance Botams was the mayor. I'm a friend
12:45
Speaker 6: of her hers, and I thought she was gonna run
12:47
Speaker 6: for her second term. Well, she decided she wasn't gonna
12:50
Speaker 6: run for a second term. She said, I'm gonna, you know,
12:52
Speaker 6: you know, go do some other things. And so that
12:55
Speaker 6: night when she you know, when the word kind of
12:57
Speaker 6: whisper came out, I was like, yo, I'm running. So
13:00
Speaker 6: I called my daughter, who was I mean, I was
13:02
Speaker 6: out at dinner. Now on my way home. I called
13:04
Speaker 6: my daughter like, yo, let me talk to you about
13:05
Speaker 6: to do a thing. I'm gonna make sure I got
13:08
Speaker 6: your support. And then she was like, yeah, okay, let's
13:10
Speaker 6: do it. And then you know, I called my team,
13:12
Speaker 6: which was my city council team, cause I was running
13:14
Speaker 6: for city council again, running for.
13:16
Speaker 3: My third term.
13:17
Speaker 6: We were you know, we we we stopped that and
13:20
Speaker 6: immediately turned towards mayor. And I knew that there was
13:24
Speaker 6: two people already in the race that was running against
13:26
Speaker 6: Mayor Bottoms, and I was like, okay, but I'm running
13:28
Speaker 6: against them. I can beat them. And then I knew
13:31
Speaker 6: other people were gonna get in. Folks start whispering about
13:33
Speaker 6: certain other folks were gonna get in. I was like,
13:34
Speaker 6: I ain't scared of that, and so and eventually it
13:37
Speaker 6: was fourteen of us in the race, and I won
13:40
Speaker 6: by sixty four percent of the vote.
13:42
Speaker 3: But it was not easy. MM.
13:44
Speaker 6: So you gotta you know, you think you're a city
13:46
Speaker 6: council people, and people know you. Man ain't nothing like
13:49
Speaker 6: the name recognition of the mayor.
13:51
Speaker 3: Okay, you know, you.
13:52
Speaker 6: Gotta get the whole city support to be pumped up
13:54
Speaker 6: about what you're gonna do. People say the mayor name
13:57
Speaker 6: all the time. They think, do something for me. This
14:00
Speaker 6: is what you've done for others helped me out. So
14:03
Speaker 6: no matter if city council, you might can rattle off
14:05
Speaker 6: one or two of them names. But you don't know
14:07
Speaker 6: them until you know, like the mayor's like for real,
14:09
Speaker 6: everybody's like okay. So I had to get my name up.
14:11
Speaker 6: I had to come up, you know, with my slogans,
14:13
Speaker 6: my ideas, get my team together, and then you have
14:16
Speaker 6: to go to all these debates. We went to forty
14:18
Speaker 6: two different forums and debates. It was just NonStop, and
14:22
Speaker 6: you got to raise a bunch of money and you
14:24
Speaker 6: got to ask a bunch of people for their support.
14:26
Speaker 6: You got to build a team, you got to get volunteers.
14:28
Speaker 6: I had to quit my job because my job, you
14:31
Speaker 6: can't do all that at the same time.
14:33
Speaker 5: So I quit my judge, you had a job when
14:34
Speaker 5: you was counseling.
14:35
Speaker 6: Yeah, as a council person, you can have it with
14:37
Speaker 6: your job. I was the chief development officer for tech Bridge,
14:40
Speaker 6: a technology company, so I had a job that was
14:45
Speaker 6: degree to work STEM career. I was making money, but
14:47
Speaker 6: I had to stop that. Took a leave of absence
14:49
Speaker 6: and I said, you know, they said, if this don't
14:51
Speaker 6: work out as mayor, you can come on back. I
14:52
Speaker 6: was like, all, but this is God's plan, this is destiny.
14:56
Speaker 6: I prayed about this. So we won and now serve
14:59
Speaker 6: on their board as you know, a support of chech Bridge,
15:02
Speaker 6: but not you know, I work as the mayor.
15:05
Speaker 3: So it all worked out.
15:06
Speaker 6: I know I'm making it sound easy because it but
15:08
Speaker 6: it's a lot of days and nights to planning. And
15:11
Speaker 6: I lost twenty five pounds during the process of running
15:14
Speaker 6: from mayor, just the anxiety just to being going all
15:17
Speaker 6: the day time.
15:19
Speaker 2: And I was gonna ask you that because mental health
15:21
Speaker 2: is a big thing, and how did you stay you know,
15:26
Speaker 2: on point or focused to finishing the job? Yeah, to
15:30
Speaker 2: get into the finish line map and for better.
15:33
Speaker 3: Terms, you gotta you gotta do a few things.
15:35
Speaker 4: Everybody's pulling at you.
15:36
Speaker 6: Everybody's pulling at you, and everybody's saying, you know, if
15:40
Speaker 6: you don't do this, you're gonna lose, or you better
15:41
Speaker 6: do this so you can win, or I got an idea.
15:44
Speaker 6: You got to go over here to these people and
15:45
Speaker 6: that and talk to these people. And you're like, this
15:48
Speaker 6: is Thursday at three o'clock, and y'all want everybody to
15:51
Speaker 6: you know, you want me to be in five places
15:53
Speaker 6: at the same time.
15:54
Speaker 3: I can't be.
15:55
Speaker 6: I gotta choose and I gotta try to make things
15:57
Speaker 6: work for this campaign. Everybody's on you all the time,
16:01
Speaker 6: and now as mayor, everybody's pulling on you. So you
16:04
Speaker 6: you learn how to manage competing interests. Like there's a
16:09
Speaker 6: various interest. Somebody wants to stop sign somebody wants a
16:11
Speaker 6: traffic light, and they all got a pitchfork and a
16:13
Speaker 6: and a you know, in a megaphone saying do what
16:16
Speaker 6: I tell you. And so you have to learn to
16:18
Speaker 6: balance that. And I'm just talking about stop signing traffic lights, right,
16:21
Speaker 6: I'm talking about other yeah, or powholes or policing or
16:27
Speaker 6: fire stations or you know anything. You know, you know,
16:30
Speaker 6: park swings or park slides. You know, a baseball, basketball court,
16:34
Speaker 6: or soccer court, soccer field. You know, it's you got
16:37
Speaker 6: to manage these competing interests. And so what I do
16:40
Speaker 6: is I pray. I'm I'm a Christian man, I'm a believer.
16:42
Speaker 6: I'm a deacon of a church. So I you know,
16:45
Speaker 6: I go into my own, you know, conversation with God
16:47
Speaker 6: about decisions that I make, and in the morning and
16:50
Speaker 6: the night, you know, wrap up with that and try
16:52
Speaker 6: to make sure that I'm grounded too. I sleep. You know,
16:55
Speaker 6: people know that I'm up all the time. I work
16:57
Speaker 6: from can't see morning to kn't c night. But once
16:59
Speaker 6: I get into my bed, I am out.
17:01
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't do all.
17:03
Speaker 6: That sitting in the bed thinking about the next day,
17:05
Speaker 6: what I'm gonna wear. You know, I wish I want
17:08
Speaker 6: to said that. I wish I would have used this
17:10
Speaker 6: term instead of that term.
17:11
Speaker 3: I don't.
17:11
Speaker 6: I don't go down the litany of you know, things
17:14
Speaker 6: that are just keep you up.
17:16
Speaker 3: You know, No, they.
17:17
Speaker 4: Probably won't get you probably won't get no sleep.
17:19
Speaker 6: Oh, I never get any sleep. I'm like out, and
17:22
Speaker 6: then it's tomorrow hours.
17:24
Speaker 4: Do you get eight hours?
17:26
Speaker 3: No?
17:26
Speaker 6: I don't get eight hours yet. I mean I'm a
17:28
Speaker 6: solid six and a half, six and a half.
17:31
Speaker 3: I hit the gym.
17:31
Speaker 6: That's the other thing is I go to the gym three, four,
17:34
Speaker 6: sometimes five days a week, some kind of physical activity,
17:37
Speaker 6: you know. I work out in Atlanta, had a nice
17:39
Speaker 6: gym Union Fit, and also do a little running on
17:42
Speaker 6: the track in my house just to kind of stay
17:45
Speaker 6: you know, physically ready. You know, you can't do all
17:48
Speaker 6: this work if you you know, eating fried food and
17:53
Speaker 6: you know, never get any exercise.
17:55
Speaker 4: Not gonna get there soon. I don't know ready for that.
17:57
Speaker 6: Yeah, I do eat some fried food. I don't don't
17:59
Speaker 6: get me wrong, I'm from Atlanta. I teased something up,
18:01
Speaker 6: but you got to mix it up to put a
18:04
Speaker 6: salad in there.
18:04
Speaker 1: Please, let's get into some of the things that you
18:07
Speaker 1: have done. You've done so many things throughout your career,
18:10
Speaker 1: but you know, as mayor, you have done a lot,
18:12
Speaker 1: and one of them was the for a lot of
18:15
Speaker 1: people who love to go to the belt Line and
18:17
Speaker 1: you know, enjoyed that space. You did the inclusionary zoning
18:21
Speaker 1: policy where you did fifteen percent apartments built around the
18:25
Speaker 1: belt Line will be for affordable housing.
18:28
Speaker 3: Yeah.
18:28
Speaker 6: So, and you know when I got on city Council
18:31
Speaker 6: in twenty thirteen, was the election twenty fourteen started. I
18:35
Speaker 6: started noticing things, being that I'm from Atlanta. Back then,
18:37
Speaker 6: people weren't talking about the need for affordable housing. It
18:40
Speaker 6: was actually like taboo, like affordable housing for those people
18:43
Speaker 6: that don't work. It's section eight in the housing is bad.
18:47
Speaker 6: But I was like, yo, I'm noticing, like people that
18:50
Speaker 6: have you know, salaries and in the good quality of
18:52
Speaker 6: life are now struggling because it's harder and harder to live.
18:55
Speaker 6: Atlanta's becoming more and more expensive. I started saying that
18:58
Speaker 6: in twenty thirteen, just because I know my city, but
19:01
Speaker 6: it wasn't talked about in political circles. And then casual
19:03
Speaker 6: conversation like we need more affordable housing. But I'm like, yo,
19:06
Speaker 6: that rent is not supposed to be that much. And
19:10
Speaker 6: so then then we started building out the beltline. As
19:13
Speaker 6: it was being built, developers was like, yeah, people would
19:15
Speaker 6: want to live near this. This is beachfront property. It
19:18
Speaker 6: will be beachfront property essentially. So people was like, yeah,
19:21
Speaker 6: I'll live there. I'll live in that. And it was
19:22
Speaker 6: putting nice amenuties in there. But when I started noticing
19:24
Speaker 6: that only the you know, well to do, only those
19:28
Speaker 6: that had nice jobs were able to live in there,
19:30
Speaker 6: And I was like, Yo, what's going to happen for
19:31
Speaker 6: the teacher? What about the firefighter, police officer, the nurse,
19:34
Speaker 6: the person that works at Macy's, at Starbucks, at the bank.
19:37
Speaker 6: How are they going to live in this city? This
19:39
Speaker 6: is gonna be a problem.
19:39
Speaker 3: Now.
19:40
Speaker 6: I used to live on the West Coast for three years.
19:42
Speaker 6: I lived in LA and I knew San Francisco in
19:44
Speaker 6: LA and I knew, Wow, these places have problems with affordability,
19:49
Speaker 6: And I was like, this can happen in Atlanta. So
19:51
Speaker 6: I created this policy that said that every new apartment
19:54
Speaker 6: that goes up around the belt line has to set
19:56
Speaker 6: aside fifteen percent of its units for affordabilit meaning you know,
20:01
Speaker 6: you can set aside ten percent at sixty percent of
20:03
Speaker 6: the area meeting income or fifteen percent of the units
20:07
Speaker 6: at eighty percent of the area median income. This allows
20:09
Speaker 6: for people, like I said, nurses, you know, teachers, firefighters,
20:12
Speaker 6: police officers, those people that in today's number, in that
20:15
Speaker 6: fifty to sixty five seventy thousand dollars rain.
20:18
Speaker 3: These people go to work every day, they work very,
20:20
Speaker 3: very hard.
20:21
Speaker 6: But if fifty five thousand there can't come out here
20:25
Speaker 6: and get a house in Atlanta, they're going to drive
20:27
Speaker 6: an hour to get to their job. But we want
20:30
Speaker 6: our police officers, fire fighters, and teachers to live in
20:32
Speaker 6: the community that they serve. It makes them more knowledgeable
20:35
Speaker 6: about the people they're affecting or supporting.
20:37
Speaker 3: And so that passed.
20:39
Speaker 6: It was a hard lift because the state of Georgia
20:43
Speaker 6: has a policy that prohibits rent control. Unlike a New
20:47
Speaker 6: York ors Chicago, or Maryland, they have rent control that
20:51
Speaker 6: there are certain properties that are capped. Atlanta can't do
20:54
Speaker 6: that because the state of Georgia prohibits it. So I
20:56
Speaker 6: got around it through some technicalities around what we use
20:59
Speaker 6: to build the outline that said this is we actually
21:02
Speaker 6: by building out this beltline, we created a new economic
21:06
Speaker 6: opportunity for those developers and they have to give something
21:09
Speaker 6: back in return, which is affordable housing. So to this
21:12
Speaker 6: day it exists and over a thousand units of affordable housing.
21:15
Speaker 6: Or when you look at these nice new apartments actually
21:18
Speaker 6: mixed in those units, are people standing right next to
21:21
Speaker 6: each other unit one twelve versus unit one thirteen, They
21:24
Speaker 6: may be paying different amounts and you wouldn't even know it,
21:26
Speaker 6: because that is the quality of the policy that we
21:29
Speaker 6: put together.
21:29
Speaker 5: And Atlanta's filling up fast. They had come here because
21:32
Speaker 5: it's more affordable to live.
21:33
Speaker 6: Than those other places. Yeah, we are growing.
21:38
Speaker 2: I just it was a report I just saw. We
21:40
Speaker 2: went from number seven to number six.
21:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, we actually went from eight to six. We skipped seven.
21:45
Speaker 6: We went from the eighth largest city in the metro
21:47
Speaker 6: area to six that fast. And now one point eight
21:52
Speaker 6: million more people are slated to come to Atlanta between
21:55
Speaker 6: now and twenty fifty.
21:57
Speaker 4: So you think that'll make us in the top five.
21:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, to make us in the top five. People are
22:01
Speaker 3: moving more towards the South.
22:03
Speaker 1: I think they're in a pandemic too. They moved here
22:05
Speaker 1: a lot. In Resolvant, we've seen uprising crime as well.
22:10
Speaker 1: So let's talk about public safety.
22:11
Speaker 6: Yeah, you are absolutely right. During the pandemic, nationwide crime spiked.
22:16
Speaker 6: It picked up because of people being in isolation, people
22:19
Speaker 6: feeling depressed, a little bit of anxiety, uncertainty. You think
22:24
Speaker 6: that we were all locked in. But once the pandemic
22:27
Speaker 6: started coming out of it in twenty twenty one, crime
22:30
Speaker 6: was high. We were at an all time high or
22:32
Speaker 6: at least near all time high in twenty twenty one
22:34
Speaker 6: from the last couple of decades. And so that was
22:37
Speaker 6: literally what most of the campaigns were about when I
22:40
Speaker 6: was running for mayor in twenty twenty one, was how
22:42
Speaker 6: were you going to bring down crime? People from you know,
22:45
Speaker 6: all parts of Atlanta south to the Bucket to the
22:49
Speaker 6: east side, west side.
22:50
Speaker 5: Everybody was the Bucket, one of their own police.
22:52
Speaker 6: Bucket won their own police. Some people in Bucket wanted
22:54
Speaker 6: their own city, like to break away from Atlanta because
22:57
Speaker 6: they were like Linux, you know, they were very well publicized.
23:00
Speaker 5: Money to live there. They want to keep it safe.
23:02
Speaker 3: Yeah they do, and so do everybody else.
23:05
Speaker 6: Yeah, so people, but you know, everybody thinks what they
23:08
Speaker 6: are is the worst effected right. But oh my god,
23:10
Speaker 6: somebody got shot at Lenox and I'm like, yeah, that
23:12
Speaker 6: should not happen. But somebody got shot at greenbro That
23:15
Speaker 6: should not happen either in southwest Atlanta. That should not
23:18
Speaker 6: happen anywhere. Life is precious. So I come into this
23:21
Speaker 6: thing saying all of us deserve to live. And you know,
23:25
Speaker 6: people were, you know, taking various political angles, whether it
23:28
Speaker 6: was Democrat, Republican, whether it's black, white. I believe that,
23:32
Speaker 6: you know, all of us actually care about public safety.
23:35
Speaker 3: I'm a father, I have a daughter. I want her
23:37
Speaker 3: to be safe.
23:38
Speaker 6: You know, Black folks want safety, White folks want everybody,
23:41
Speaker 6: everybody in between, young people, middle people, you know, all
23:44
Speaker 6: of the above. So I said we had to be
23:46
Speaker 6: smart on crime though, and so one the methodology is important.
23:50
Speaker 6: We don't want to come out here and just police
23:52
Speaker 6: our way out of this problem. Police you don't want
23:55
Speaker 6: to turn into a police state where you got you know,
23:59
Speaker 6: all like over policing, because that's just historically leads to
24:03
Speaker 6: the other challenges that you have, which is excessive use
24:06
Speaker 6: of force, or people feeling like they're going to be
24:08
Speaker 6: victimized by the people that are supposed to protect them,
24:12
Speaker 6: or that you will end up in a situation where
24:14
Speaker 6: you feel like you can't move because somebody's always on
24:18
Speaker 6: your back. No, we want to use non policing and
24:21
Speaker 6: policing actions. Yes, we need police because something's a violent crime,
24:26
Speaker 6: but there's also we needed more street lights because crime
24:29
Speaker 6: was happening, you know. Being an engineer, I said, do
24:32
Speaker 6: an overlay of where the crime is and then do
24:35
Speaker 6: our street light you know map, and you would see
24:38
Speaker 6: like where it's darker and with less light, it was
24:41
Speaker 6: a propensity for more crime and crashes, car crashes, bicycle crashes,
24:45
Speaker 6: et cetera. So came in with the Light of the
24:47
Speaker 6: Night campaign, where we added eleven thousand street lights in
24:50
Speaker 6: the first year and another ten thousand in my second year.
24:53
Speaker 6: Now it's brighter in these areas that were darker, so
24:55
Speaker 6: you can't get away with more dirt in the dark,
24:57
Speaker 6: you know, I mean when it was dark you could
24:59
Speaker 6: and the light you can't. Then we saw night life
25:02
Speaker 6: crimes was our problem. If you were called back in
25:05
Speaker 6: twenty twenty twenty twenty one, they were shooting up the club.
25:08
Speaker 6: Part of that was people coming from other places because
25:10
Speaker 6: Atlanta was open.
25:12
Speaker 3: So when their city.
25:13
Speaker 4: Was closing, DJs I was there.
25:14
Speaker 6: Yeah, east side in Atlanta, No, west side in Atlanta.
25:17
Speaker 6: We ain't got to beef because we know what the
25:19
Speaker 6: understandings are. But if you come out here from Saint
25:21
Speaker 6: Louis or Chicago or whoever, and you're trying to and
25:23
Speaker 6: you're trying to get in, be started to cook. So
25:26
Speaker 6: what we started to do was say, hey, how do
25:28
Speaker 6: we make sure the night life is safer? So we
25:30
Speaker 6: train right now, we train nightlife operators on how to
25:35
Speaker 6: de escalate, you know, fights. So just because you take
25:39
Speaker 6: people's guns and don't let them bring guns into the club,
25:41
Speaker 6: don't mean that when you kick them both out that
25:43
Speaker 6: they're not going straight to the trunk and shooting each
25:45
Speaker 6: other in the parking lot. So we taught them how
25:47
Speaker 6: to one keep the aggressor inside of the building, let
25:51
Speaker 6: the lesser leave, get thirty minutes gone, and then by
25:55
Speaker 6: that time the aggressor is going to chill out and
25:57
Speaker 6: he don't know where the other one is. And then
25:59
Speaker 6: now they can all go home safely, and then we
26:01
Speaker 6: talked them about you know, alcoholism, how to make sure
26:04
Speaker 6: that these bartenders don't over you know, don't keep pouring
26:07
Speaker 6: for somebody who's clearly drunk, this and that and lighting
26:10
Speaker 6: in the parking lot and these other things. I'm harping
26:12
Speaker 6: on that to say that I get very granular about
26:15
Speaker 6: how we make, you know, decisions in the city. So
26:19
Speaker 6: police is one thing, non policing, and then the last
26:22
Speaker 6: thing is to really we saw that a lot of
26:24
Speaker 6: crime was happening with our young people. So if we
26:27
Speaker 6: bring down youth crime, we bring down all crime, because
26:30
Speaker 6: it's so many things that they were doing. It was
26:32
Speaker 6: fourteen fifteen, sixteen year olds shooting at each other. And
26:35
Speaker 6: so we did the Year of the Youth, which was
26:38
Speaker 6: hugely successful last year, which gave them so many things
26:41
Speaker 6: to do, the very things that I did when I
26:43
Speaker 6: was younger, all of the after school programs, all of
26:46
Speaker 6: the summer jobs, all of the training. Kids were making money.
26:50
Speaker 6: They were having fun, they were in art school, they
26:53
Speaker 6: were getting internships. They were at you know, Tyler Perry
26:56
Speaker 6: Studios or Coca Cola or working in the Mayor's office.
27:00
Speaker 6: Five thousand teenagers worked last year and made seventeen dollars
27:05
Speaker 6: in our minimum way, I mean a average wage. They
27:08
Speaker 6: had money, they were having fun, they weren't trying to
27:10
Speaker 6: do crime. And so we had forty six percent reduction
27:13
Speaker 6: in youth homicide last year.
27:15
Speaker 3: So that is a non.
27:16
Speaker 6: Policing action that made it better for young people, which
27:20
Speaker 6: brought down crime. So they weren't doing, you know, the
27:22
Speaker 6: things that were leading to the challenges that we saw,
27:25
Speaker 6: and that's how we brought down homicide twenty one percent
27:27
Speaker 6: last year.
27:28
Speaker 1: Speaking of Ada Towner's, do you feel like Atlanta's or
27:31
Speaker 1: is Atlanta being affected by their legal immigration crisis?
27:36
Speaker 3: Not yet in a not in a huge way yet.
27:40
Speaker 6: Atlanta, right now, we have a few individuals that have
27:44
Speaker 6: migrated here. These these individuals are coming through various points,
27:49
Speaker 6: either through Texas or they go to Texas and then
27:52
Speaker 6: go to like a Denver and then they end up
27:54
Speaker 6: in Atlanta. But so far we have not had the
27:59
Speaker 6: large amount of immigrants as a New York has had
28:03
Speaker 6: or some other places. They say, we are poyised at
28:07
Speaker 6: some point get them if the border continues going as
28:10
Speaker 6: is going right now. In Atlanta, we're still under you know,
28:14
Speaker 6: somewhere in that you know, mid hundreds and not thousands
28:18
Speaker 6: of individuals, and.
28:19
Speaker 5: So how can we prepare for something like that.
28:22
Speaker 6: Yeah, we have gone to the federal government and for
28:25
Speaker 6: the number that we have, we have asked for financial support.
28:29
Speaker 6: And we are applying as financial support to housing so
28:33
Speaker 6: like hotels, and to some of the you know, clothing
28:37
Speaker 6: and food and and some of these folks have skills.
28:40
Speaker 6: They may not have the language, but they have skills.
28:44
Speaker 6: They know how to do construction or culinary et cetera.
28:46
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
28:47
Speaker 6: So some of this has been like, well, let's help
28:49
Speaker 6: them find a pathway towards a job or a business.
28:52
Speaker 6: And you know, some of that's moving forward. These folks
28:55
Speaker 6: are actually no longer in need of government support because
28:58
Speaker 6: they are they're working, they're are I mean, our economy
29:01
Speaker 6: is booming. We're in Atlanta, we're below three percent unemployment.
29:05
Speaker 6: So you want a job, you pretty much can find
29:07
Speaker 6: one that means, you know, Atlanta or a newcomer to
29:10
Speaker 6: this country or this city. So some of them, we've
29:14
Speaker 6: you know, pretty rapidly in a short amount of time,
29:17
Speaker 6: got them to self sufficiency. And then others we're just
29:22
Speaker 6: taking it one day at a time and helping them.
29:25
Speaker 6: I'm still concerned, but we're dealing with it the best
29:27
Speaker 6: as best we can. I have a hotline directly to
29:31
Speaker 6: the White House because you know, we made routine visits
29:33
Speaker 6: and we are consequential to this upcoming year election. So
29:39
Speaker 6: if I if I need to yell for help, I can't.
29:42
Speaker 7: We'll be right back. Stay tuned with more of the
29:44
Speaker 7: Baller Alert Show. You're listening to a special edition of
29:50
Speaker 7: The Baller Alert Show.
29:51
Speaker 6: Hey, what's up, y'all? This is Mayor Andre Dickens. You
29:54
Speaker 6: are now tuned in to the Baller Alert Show.
29:56
Speaker 2: How could we get more young people? Have five kids
30:00
Speaker 2: on my babies, but how can we get young young
30:02
Speaker 2: people more involved in their neighborhoods?
30:05
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would love that. I want a city where
30:08
Speaker 6: everybody participates. Man, Like, these young folks got a lot
30:11
Speaker 6: of energy and they got a lot of you know, ideas,
30:14
Speaker 6: and they are the future. Why not train them now? So,
30:17
Speaker 6: whether that's if you want to work and come through
30:20
Speaker 6: the at L Year of the Youth program, we have
30:22
Speaker 6: opportunities for them depending on their ages.
30:25
Speaker 3: Speak about that.
30:27
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you can anybody can go to at L
30:29
Speaker 6: yearofthe Youth dot com. So While we started the Year
30:32
Speaker 6: of the Youth last year, we're keeping it going every year.
30:34
Speaker 6: I'm going to call it the Year of the Youth,
30:36
Speaker 6: right because I think they're just so vital and so important.
30:39
Speaker 6: So in that program are various other programs that we support.
30:45
Speaker 6: We financially support nonprofits that are either doing you know,
30:49
Speaker 6: whether that's sports, but some are doing stems, some are
30:51
Speaker 6: doing arts and dance, some are doing you know, chess
30:55
Speaker 6: and chess and other skills games, and some are doing entrepreneurship.
30:59
Speaker 6: So I mean, like it depends on how old your
31:01
Speaker 6: kid is. Some programs are for middle school and some
31:05
Speaker 6: are for high school, some are for younger and some
31:08
Speaker 6: of them for college. And in internships, you can also
31:11
Speaker 6: you know, contact us again this summer, we are going
31:14
Speaker 6: to have jobs for young people. Some of them are
31:17
Speaker 6: in the government, some of them are in your neighborhood.
31:19
Speaker 6: So we actually we help fund nonprofits to pay for
31:27
Speaker 6: internships for kids. So let's say it's a nonprofit that
31:29
Speaker 6: just does community gardening. You know, there's some nonprofits that
31:35
Speaker 6: are in the area that are serving our food deserts,
31:38
Speaker 6: and they don't have enough money to pay an intern
31:40
Speaker 6: seventeen dollars an hour.
31:41
Speaker 3: That's fine.
31:42
Speaker 6: We'll pay a portion or all of that young person
31:45
Speaker 6: to come work for you because we want them to
31:47
Speaker 6: learn about urban gardening and urban farming. So that's you know,
31:51
Speaker 6: So it just depends on your kids interests well.
31:53
Speaker 5: Also talk about economics for a minute.
31:55
Speaker 1: You fieled over twenty three thousand potholes.
32:00
Speaker 6: Low and we got more to go it y call
32:02
Speaker 6: three one one if you see a powerhole, we don't
32:04
Speaker 6: feel it again. Three one one. If you have a
32:07
Speaker 6: powerhole and we try to fill it within a week.
32:09
Speaker 2: Man.
32:10
Speaker 7: Yeah.
32:10
Speaker 1: Man, you're also part of invest Atlanta. Yeah, can you
32:14
Speaker 1: let us know a little bit about that and all
32:15
Speaker 1: the great things that you guys done.
32:17
Speaker 3: Yeah.
32:17
Speaker 6: Invest Atlanta is one of the man, it's one of
32:20
Speaker 6: the best organizations that a city could form. It is
32:24
Speaker 6: our economic development tool. I'm the chairman of it. The
32:27
Speaker 6: mayor is always the chair of Invest Atlanta. And I
32:31
Speaker 6: was going to Invest Atlanta when I was a council
32:33
Speaker 6: member as well. And the goal of Investing Atlanta is
32:35
Speaker 6: to help small businesses start and for businesses that are
32:40
Speaker 6: started to grow, and then to attract new businesses here
32:43
Speaker 6: to Atlanta. So it's all about you know, so you
32:46
Speaker 6: might got an idea and you don't know what to
32:49
Speaker 6: do with it. Well, invest Atlanta can help you get started.
32:52
Speaker 6: And then if you are started, Let's say you are
32:54
Speaker 6: in business in this you and your you know, just
32:56
Speaker 6: one employee, and you want to grow, but you need
32:59
Speaker 6: a loan or you need a grant, or you need
33:02
Speaker 6: you know to help you know, expand you need to
33:04
Speaker 6: buy a piece of equipment. Let's say you a pizza
33:07
Speaker 6: parlor and one of your you know, ovens goes down
33:10
Speaker 6: or let's not go in the negative. Now you want
33:11
Speaker 6: to open up have another oven. Well, these ovens might
33:14
Speaker 6: be hundreds of thousands of dollars, So we help you
33:16
Speaker 6: finance that because you want your business to thrive, because
33:20
Speaker 6: we know that you will hire more employees, which then
33:23
Speaker 6: helps our local economy. It's you know, it's a it's
33:27
Speaker 6: a great cycle. We have grants that we give out,
33:30
Speaker 6: which are grants are free, I mean you don't have
33:32
Speaker 6: to pay them back. So we have some of those
33:33
Speaker 6: and we did about nine million dollars or so last
33:36
Speaker 6: year and grants, and most of them went to women
33:39
Speaker 6: and minorities, particularly on the South and the West side.
33:42
Speaker 6: So it was a big you know, a big turnarout
33:45
Speaker 6: turnout of these grants went to communities in need. But
33:49
Speaker 6: then you know, sometimes it's people that used to in
33:53
Speaker 6: the past was like, Hey, I don't want one of
33:54
Speaker 6: them loans. I can get a loan from the bank.
33:56
Speaker 6: I don't want to invest that landloan, give me a grant,
33:58
Speaker 6: you know. And so now now with bank loans being
34:01
Speaker 6: seven eight percent invested, Atlanta's loans off between one and
34:05
Speaker 6: three percent. So and everybody's like, young, mas, let me
34:07
Speaker 6: get one of them loans, because a one percent loan
34:09
Speaker 6: is almost like free money.
34:11
Speaker 1: And Atlanta's like the home of an entrepreneur. Like everybody
34:14
Speaker 1: is an entrepreneur, no doubt.
34:15
Speaker 6: Did you see Black Enterprise two weeks ago or maybe
34:18
Speaker 6: last week said that Atlanta is the best place to
34:21
Speaker 6: start a business. That's what Black Enterprise said, that Atlanta
34:25
Speaker 6: is the best place for you to start a business.
34:27
Speaker 6: And that's why everybody here has got at least a
34:30
Speaker 6: business on them. They might be working at a regular
34:33
Speaker 6: nine to five, but they also got another business. And we,
34:36
Speaker 6: you know, we applaud that we support that.
34:38
Speaker 3: In Atlanta.
34:39
Speaker 6: You know, we want to help you succeed because we
34:41
Speaker 6: know that your success means family success and community success.
34:46
Speaker 1: Do you feel any weight on your shoulders when you know,
34:49
Speaker 1: looking at other mayors that come before you, like the
34:52
Speaker 1: Maynor Jackson's, Andrew Young's and people like that, do you
34:56
Speaker 1: feel any weight on your shoulders?
34:58
Speaker 3: Absolutely, But I think it's that's a good thing. I
35:01
Speaker 3: think it's a good thing.
35:02
Speaker 6: I wouldn't want to not be challenged in that way.
35:07
Speaker 6: The people deserve us to level up, to do even more,
35:12
Speaker 6: to stand on those shoulders, to not collapse under the pressure.
35:16
Speaker 6: It's hard being after Maynor Jackson, this huge legend, Mayor Jackson, and.
35:23
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't know Harsville Jackson is the
35:26
Speaker 1: airport and they are two mayors, William Hartsville and Mayor Jackson.
35:33
Speaker 5: So that's just a fun fact.
35:34
Speaker 3: For the people. That's right. That's right.
35:36
Speaker 6: So maybe about fifteen years ago it was just Hartsville,
35:40
Speaker 6: but then Mayor Jackson we added his name, and you know,
35:44
Speaker 6: he was the first black mayor of the Deep South,
35:46
Speaker 6: and fifty years ago we're celebrating this whole year, the
35:49
Speaker 6: fiftieth anniversary of his inauguration.
35:51
Speaker 3: Imagine being the mayor when a legendary.
35:53
Speaker 6: Mayor's hit his fiftieth anniversary, like right now, All day,
35:57
Speaker 6: every day it is like, well Maynor was doing this,
36:00
Speaker 6: doing that, and I'm like, yeah, I know, got to
36:02
Speaker 6: catch up the mayor.
36:03
Speaker 3: I've only been at this two years. I'm catching up.
36:05
Speaker 3: You know.
36:05
Speaker 6: It's not really a competition. This is more of an inspiration.
36:10
Speaker 6: It's looking at a man who you know. I'm going
36:13
Speaker 6: to maybe go a little long, but I want to
36:15
Speaker 6: tell a quick story since we're talking to young people.
36:17
Speaker 6: Maynard became mayor at thirty five. This dude, but wait,
36:23
Speaker 6: there's more. As they say in Late night TV, this
36:26
Speaker 6: dude ran for US senator at thirty In nineteen sixty eight.
36:31
Speaker 6: He ran for US senator. They don't only get two
36:33
Speaker 6: of them per state. He ran against an incumbent, a
36:36
Speaker 6: white man named Talmage. He Now, remember this is nineteen
36:41
Speaker 6: sixty eight. We had just got the voters rights active
36:43
Speaker 6: in sixty four. So this black man runs in the
36:45
Speaker 6: state of Georgia to be the US Senator. He didn't win,
36:48
Speaker 6: but what he saw was I won Atlanta. He won Atlanta,
36:53
Speaker 6: and so he was like, well, you know what, I
36:55
Speaker 6: ain't winning US Senator, I'm going to run for vice
36:58
Speaker 6: mayor at the time. We used to have that, we
36:59
Speaker 6: won't have that now vice mayor. He won vice mayor
37:02
Speaker 6: by a big, huge amount, so he became the vice
37:05
Speaker 6: mayor of the City of Atlanta, and Samsel was the mayor.
37:10
Speaker 6: So then when the next election came around, he ran
37:12
Speaker 6: against his the mayor. Sam Sel was running for his
37:15
Speaker 6: second term.
37:16
Speaker 3: Maynor.
37:16
Speaker 6: Jackson then ran for mayor. So mayor ran for senator,
37:20
Speaker 6: then ran for vice mayor and one, then ran for
37:22
Speaker 6: mayor and one.
37:23
Speaker 3: This dude was relentless.
37:24
Speaker 6: About getting to the goal, and the goal was to
37:27
Speaker 6: make sure that Atlanta was economically inclusive. He said, when
37:31
Speaker 6: that airport was we were building the fifth runway. We
37:34
Speaker 6: were building this airport out to make it the world's
37:36
Speaker 6: business airport. And he said, stop all construction, and I
37:40
Speaker 6: need twenty five percent of all that construction to go
37:44
Speaker 6: to black on firms. Minority on firms. Stopped the construction,
37:48
Speaker 6: and then all these folks started going crazy, saying, what
37:50
Speaker 6: is he doing.
37:51
Speaker 3: He can't do that, He doesn't have the right to death. No,
37:53
Speaker 3: we're in control of the airport.
37:54
Speaker 6: He said, y'all can have seventy five percent of this
37:57
Speaker 6: great thing, or you can have one hundred percent of
37:59
Speaker 6: nothing because I will stop all construction right now. And
38:03
Speaker 6: the business folks and everybody got together and chopped up
38:05
Speaker 6: twenty five percent and let it go to the minority
38:07
Speaker 6: businesses that to this day still exists. We're at thirty
38:10
Speaker 6: seven percent now, But had he not started it, where
38:14
Speaker 6: would we be. So yes, I live on you know,
38:16
Speaker 6: It's not weight on my shoulders. It's inspiration. So whenever
38:19
Speaker 6: I got to make a tough decision, I think about
38:21
Speaker 6: what would Shirley Franklin do?
38:23
Speaker 3: What did the ambassador Andrew Young? Do we have the
38:24
Speaker 3: World Cup coming? Well?
38:26
Speaker 6: The Olympics was these guys were doing the Olympics and
38:30
Speaker 6: Bill Campbell and Ambassador Young were setting up the play
38:33
Speaker 6: to win the Olympics and along with Maynor Jackson and
38:36
Speaker 6: then Shirley Franklin was a part of that committee. So
38:38
Speaker 6: I'm looking at leaders as role models and inspiration. I
38:42
Speaker 6: talked to them. I call I can't you know, unfortunately
38:45
Speaker 6: I can't call manor Jackson, but I call his wife,
38:47
Speaker 6: Valerie Jackson, and we talk and she tells me stories
38:50
Speaker 6: and they give me ideas and I feel supported.
38:53
Speaker 3: I wouldn't. I can't ask for more than what I
38:57
Speaker 3: have I'd hate to do this job if I didn't
38:59
Speaker 3: feel support it and have you know.
39:02
Speaker 1: Examples some of the things that you are doing now.
39:05
Speaker 1: Is coming this year of just run down real quick
39:08
Speaker 1: Murphy's Crossing with that a new Marta station at that location,
39:13
Speaker 1: and that is pretty big for the city.
39:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's big.
39:16
Speaker 6: We haven't added a new Marta station in a long time,
39:18
Speaker 6: so we're going to bring a new Marta station and
39:20
Speaker 6: that would be the first mortar station on the belt line,
39:22
Speaker 6: so you can, you know, get off at Murphy Crossing
39:25
Speaker 6: station once we build it, and Murphy Crossing is going
39:27
Speaker 6: to have affordable apartments as well as market rate apartments,
39:30
Speaker 6: some retail and all that stuff.
39:32
Speaker 3: But it'll be right there on the belt line.
39:34
Speaker 6: So then you can take a walk, you can scoot,
39:36
Speaker 6: you can jog, you can do whatever.
39:38
Speaker 3: You can ride to the belt line.
39:40
Speaker 6: You can come straight from the airport straight to the
39:42
Speaker 6: belt line at Murphy Crossing and then going the way
39:44
Speaker 6: you need to go.
39:44
Speaker 5: And you got three more Marta stations coming too.
39:46
Speaker 3: That's right.
39:47
Speaker 6: We are proposing three more and hopefully we'll get support
39:49
Speaker 6: from the city from everybody to do so. But we
39:52
Speaker 6: think everybody's excited about it because I announced it and
39:54
Speaker 6: folks like, yes, the one at Crog where everybody right
39:57
Speaker 6: now goes to that Crog.
39:59
Speaker 3: Area the belt line.
40:01
Speaker 6: And then one at Armory Yards, which is like northeast
40:03
Speaker 6: up there where the breweries are and in that area
40:06
Speaker 6: near where I eighty five the belt line and BEU
40:09
Speaker 6: for Highway area.
40:10
Speaker 3: And then one on.
40:11
Speaker 6: Joseph Boone which is on the west side not far
40:14
Speaker 6: from the Au Center and Martin Luther King area and
40:17
Speaker 6: uh you know, going towards you know, Grove Park in
40:20
Speaker 6: that area. So I think it's going to be phenomenal
40:23
Speaker 6: that people and all four of these are on the
40:25
Speaker 6: belt line, so you can take Marta to the belt
40:27
Speaker 6: line in four different places, get out on wall or
40:30
Speaker 6: eventually you know, we can have some transportation on it.
40:33
Speaker 6: So I'm trying to make sure that we grow the
40:35
Speaker 6: city out in the right way.
40:38
Speaker 3: Connect Us is the town.
40:40
Speaker 1: Yes, Can you give us five of the best wings
40:46
Speaker 1: in Atlanta?
40:48
Speaker 4: The best wings spot?
40:50
Speaker 2: Man?
40:51
Speaker 6: Well, I'm a lemon pepper head, right, love lemon pepper
40:56
Speaker 6: So you know I like JR.
40:59
Speaker 3: Crickets. I love wings. Stop. I know Rick Ross, you said, yeah, crickets.
41:04
Speaker 4: See they was getting on me by jail crickets go ahead, contain.
41:07
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, jail crickets wings stop. I even
41:12
Speaker 6: you know, we got atl wings that far from my house.
41:15
Speaker 6: We got JJ's. I don't know if y'all like j
41:19
Speaker 6: So how many is that? That's four or five?
41:21
Speaker 5: Put the little stuff on the.
41:22
Speaker 3: Top of what is that stuff? I don't know what
41:25
Speaker 3: it is.
41:25
Speaker 2: You can't say it, but you know they call it
41:27
Speaker 2: the cracks.
41:28
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, it is the one. Oh man, what is
41:35
Speaker 3: said American Deli? I said American Deli. That's what I thought.
41:38
Speaker 3: I hit five. I thought that American americ.
41:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So one more thing. Keith Lee came here.
41:44
Speaker 1: He gave, you know, kind of gave Atlanta a satisfactory
41:47
Speaker 1: brother's coming back though, but he's coming back.
41:50
Speaker 5: So where do you suggest that he go this time? Yeah?
41:52
Speaker 6: Man, Keith Lee. Man, that was a bad week in
41:55
Speaker 6: Atlanta history. Man when he came out told everybody our
41:59
Speaker 6: food wasn't good. Yeah, well something went wrong that day.
42:03
Speaker 5: Should go.
42:05
Speaker 6: So he tends to like grabpable food that he could
42:08
Speaker 6: eat in this car and talk about. So I wouldn't
42:10
Speaker 6: you know, there's some fine dining that I don't think
42:12
Speaker 6: he's interested in.
42:13
Speaker 3: That's not his thing.
42:14
Speaker 6: So I would say, like Local Green, y'all ever been
42:17
Speaker 6: in Local Green over there, Joseph Lowry was Zach Zach.
42:21
Speaker 6: He got this new I mean, now it's they got salmon.
42:24
Speaker 6: They don't do beef and chicken, but got salmon. And
42:26
Speaker 6: this cauliflower burger is to die for. It is so good.
42:30
Speaker 6: And I know people will be like, wow, cauliflower, but no,
42:32
Speaker 6: it's delicious to sea LEAs you ever had to see Lee,
42:37
Speaker 6: which is these great. These are kind of on the
42:39
Speaker 6: healthy side of they're delicious. But then also, you.
42:44
Speaker 3: Know, I mean selectly bigger.
42:46
Speaker 6: Ain't bad, but they're now everywhere so in Atlanta, you know,
42:53
Speaker 6: but but but okay. The other side of the game
42:56
Speaker 6: is if he was to go to busy Bee, he
43:00
Speaker 6: can get some good busy beef fried chicken.
43:04
Speaker 3: And I love.
43:07
Speaker 6: The Baltimore Seafood. I don't know if you've ever been
43:09
Speaker 6: to like it's called Baltimore Seafood, but it's in Atlanta. Listen,
43:15
Speaker 6: let's let's not do that because it's called Baltimore. Maybe
43:17
Speaker 6: they got the ingredients in Baltimore. I want to get
43:19
Speaker 6: Atlanta at.
43:20
Speaker 3: Atlanta, Atlanta and do y'all like spice House.
43:25
Speaker 4: Spice House is good.
43:25
Speaker 6: I love spice House because I like I like Jamaican
43:27
Speaker 6: food and I like Haitian food and stuff.
43:30
Speaker 5: Yeah, like Mangoes is good.
43:32
Speaker 3: Mangoes is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:35
Speaker 6: What he got to one on Auburn and one right
43:37
Speaker 6: there that Ralph David Abernathy. And now it's so I
43:42
Speaker 6: eat everywhere. I mean he he could have gone to
43:46
Speaker 6: a number of spots like I mean, I eat everywhere,
43:48
Speaker 6: by the way, So I'm thinking I'm trying to stay
43:50
Speaker 6: away from too fancy.
43:52
Speaker 4: Like the places that you know he's gonna go to.
43:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, places that he's just gonna grab.
43:57
Speaker 2: But see, another thing that he had was he was
44:00
Speaker 2: talking about the he was talking about the customer service too.
44:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that was the thing that he was yeah.
44:07
Speaker 6: Yeah, See he went to some of the tourist spots
44:09
Speaker 6: on the weekend, and it's just long lines. And that's
44:12
Speaker 6: a challenge. I mean, I mean, you definitely have to
44:15
Speaker 6: be honest about that. You know, I like the food
44:17
Speaker 6: at those places, but you can't go there on a
44:21
Speaker 6: Saturday if you you know, locals don't do that because
44:23
Speaker 6: they they He'll find.
44:25
Speaker 1: Some look at one of the places that you said
44:27
Speaker 1: one quick last question, where can I find a peach tree?
44:32
Speaker 3: Yeah? See, so that's the deal.
44:34
Speaker 6: We we talk about peaches a lot, but we don't
44:36
Speaker 6: really have a lot of peach trees in Atlanta.
44:39
Speaker 3: You have to grow your own in your backyard.
44:41
Speaker 6: But now you go North Georgia you can get to
44:44
Speaker 6: some peaches, or south you can get to some peach trees.
44:46
Speaker 6: But in the city of Atlanta, now we just we
44:49
Speaker 6: ain't got that many street signs called we got oh
44:52
Speaker 6: my god, we got all the P Street got.
44:54
Speaker 3: Peach tree, Industrial, Pea Street, Center, West Street Circle.
45:00
Speaker 6: Yeah, P Street Street Downewoody P Street Street.
45:04
Speaker 5: Dickens, we appreciate us on the bottle.
45:07
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, that one bad. I'm sitting up thinking all
45:11
Speaker 6: the places I eat. I eat everywhere, and I'm like,
45:13
Speaker 6: why am I freezing up? And why do I sound
45:15
Speaker 6: so that ain't healthy.
45:16
Speaker 3: I'm like, you're here.
45:20
Speaker 5: Before we get out of here, though, we do have
45:22
Speaker 5: a pep talk.
45:23
Speaker 6: Hey, this is Andre Dickens, the mayor of the City
45:26
Speaker 6: of Atlanta, and my word of advice for you is
45:29
Speaker 6: to always aim high, reach for your goals because you
45:33
Speaker 6: just might hit them.
45:35
Speaker 7: You can't get enough of baller Alert. Follow us on
45:37
Speaker 7: all social media platforms at baller alert. Log on to
45:41
Speaker 7: baller alert dot com