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MEETINGS
The Atlanta City Council will only meet
once this month on April 17 at 1 p.m. at City
Hall, 55TrinityAve. Foragendasand more
information, visit citycouncil.atlantaga.gov.
The Atlanta Board of Education will
meet April 12 at 2:30 p.m. for the board
meeting and presentations and 6:30 p.m.
forthe community meeting and legislative
action. 130 Trinity Ave. Visit atlanta.k12.
ga.us for more.
The Midtown Review Committee meets
the second Tuesday of each month at 5:30
p.m. in the fifth floor conference room at
999 Peachtree. For more information and
to see agendas, visit midtownatl.com.
NEWS
Based on the findings of a feasibility study,
Atlanta City Councilmember Kwanza Hall
has introduced legislation that would
change zoning laws to allow tiny houses in
areas that already allow duplexes.
The Atlanta Preservation Center is encoring
residents to sign a petition calling on the
Georgia Building Authority to put protective
restrictions on the sale of Pratt-Pullman
Yard in Kirkwood. More than 2,000 people
have signed the petition at Change.org,
which asks the state to make preservation
of the buildings in the century-old train yard
a priority.
■k
The Atlanta City Council
passed Councilmember
Kwanza Hall's legislation
that would repeal 40 of
the 96 sections in the
Atlanta Municipal Code's
Quality of Life Chapter
that are unconstitutional
or that are pre-empted by state law.
The City of Atlanta will issue the final $40
million of the Housing Opportunity
Bond. The bonds will be used to fund
homeowner renovations, multifamily loans,
single family loans, nonprofit development
loans and land assemblage for affordable
and workforce housing development.
Group aims to unify metro Atlanta
against anti-Semitism
By John Ruch
A Dunwoody homemaker’s outrage
over recent anti-Semitic threats and
vandalism across the country has spawned
a rapidly growing advocacy organization
that hopes to send a nationwide message
against fear and hate.
“I want to stand up and be as loud
as the people making the bomb threats,”
said Lauren Menis, founder of the new
Atlanta Initiative Against Anti-Semitism.
Menis’s text-message chats with
other Davis Academy moms last month
snowballed into the creation of AIAAS,
which has already won support from the
regional chapters of the Anti-Defamation
League and the American Jewish
Committee.
The group hopes eventually to
hold some kind of public town hall
forums. On March 30, it plans a private
organizing meeting that representatives
of local governments and religious and
cultural groups will attend, including
some Dunwoody City Council members
and the Sandy Springs police chief.
“I am very impressed by the grassroots
efforts that Lauren has created,” said Dov
Wilker, regional director of the American
Jewish Committee’s Buckhead-based
Atlanta chapter. “The greater awareness
we bring to the issue of anti-Semitism,
the better off we will all be. If we are
able to create complementary efforts to
combat anti-Semitism, we will be able to
have a greater impact than by ourselves.”
Menis is Jewish, but “not particularly
religious,” and said she has not been
involved in advocacy organizing before.
Her background is in the media as a
producer at CNN and a local newspaper
columnist.
The north Perimeter area has a large
Jewish population and such cultural
institutions as the
“Anne Frank in the
World” exhibit in Sandy
Springs. Two local
organizations — the
ADL’s Southeast regional
office in Buckhead and
Dunwoody’s Marcus
Jewish Community
Center of Atlanta —
have received bomb
threats recently.
Menis said her
activism is not in
response to any local
anti-Semitic incidents,
but rather to the
nationwide rise in threats
and general intolerance.
“I have never had a
problem with anti-Semitism and I feel
perfectly safe in my community,” she said
“I think what happened to me personally
is, I started to feel a twinge of fear.”
Menis described several influences.
She has previously visited Whitefish, a
Montana resort town now notorious as a
home of the “alt-right” white nationalist
movement that gained publicity for
supporting Donald Trump’s presidential
campaign and which Trump later
denounced. She was angered by posts
insulting Muslims made on the Facebook
account of a former Dunwoody assistant
city attorney who said his account was
hacked.
The final straw, she said, was news
reports in February about desecration of
a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia, one of
several such vandalism incidents around
the nation.
“I thought to myself, ‘I have to do
something about anti-Semitism,”’ Menis
said.
With her journalism background,
Menis said, “I wanted
a media statement:
Atlanta decries anti-
Semitism.’”
She acknowledged
that AIAAS’s organizers
have yet to come up
with a more solid
agenda, which will be a
focus of the March 30
meeting.
However, the effort
seems to be tapping
a desire for more
discussion about anti-
Semitism. The ADL and
the American Jewish
Committee have signed
on as co-sponsors of
the organizing meeting,
and many prominent groups are sending
representatives, including the MJCCA,
the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, the
Davis Academy and the Weber School.
Sandy Springs city Communications
Director Sharon Kraun, who is Jewish
and said she is well aware of the national
threats, will attend along with Police
Chief Ken DeSimone.
“We’ll go and listen,” Kraun said,
adding that city officials are curious to
hear AIAAS’ agenda.
“As far as anti-Semitism, the city has
been very vocal that we don’t tolerate any
kind of behavior that is against anyone,”
Kraun said. “We support any effort that is
combatting hate and intolerance.”
Menis said that one potential function
of AIAAS — whose founding group
has a Muslim member — is bringing
together leaders from beyond the Jewish
community.
“Anti-Semitism isn’t a Jewish
problem,” she said. “It’s a community
problem.” IE]
Lauren Menis, founder of Atlanta
Initiative Against Anti-Semitism.
Future Growth
Atlanta City Studio moving to Cascade Heights this month
Atlanta City Studio, the pop-up design laboratory focused
on shaping the future of the city’s neighborhoods, will relocate
to Cascade Heights this month. The studio, which has been
located at Ponce City Market since its doors opened in May
2016, will be located at 2311 Cascade Road in Southwest
Atlanta.
The studio is comprised of rotating exhibits that highlight
Atlanta neighborhoods and urban design concepts, and
is staffed by city planners, architects and transportation
professionals. The space is used to host lectures, book talks,
film series, open forums, urban art presentations and other
neighborhood and design components. Residents and planners
can visit the Atlanta City Studio to learn more about the
comprehensive transportation planning initiative launched by
the City of Atlanta, as well as provide feedback.
“To promote high quality, sustainable and equitable
growth and development in Atlanta, the people who live in the
city must be a part of every planning aspect conducted by the
Department of Planning and Community Development,” said
Commissioner Tim Keane. “The City of Atlanta understands
that community engagement and involvement is an integral
part of shaping the future of Atlanta, and the Atlanta City
Studio will continue to move around the city to ensure that
every community can help guide us.”
The initiative will update the city’s existing Comprehensive
Visitors to the current Atlanta City Studio Ponce City Market draw ideas for
shaping the city’s neighborhoods.
Transportation Plan, reframe transportation policies and identify
recommendations for future transportation investment. The last
citywide transportation plan was adopted in 2008. IE]
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