When I first moved to East Point I did it because you could get a great place to live for real cheap. The place had been ravaged by white flight. For sale signs were everywhere.
I'm white. My black neighbors, like the people in the grocery store, were very kind to me. No prob. The people at city hall though had this, like you havn't lived here for 50 years attitude, that was troublesome. I used to call them "the last people to leave East Point, turn out the light, crowd.
.
And they tried it too. Tried to bring a big medical waste incinerator here. That's when I first met Cythinia McKinney, who helped us when we were fighting it.
The thing about East Point is that it's 5 or 10 minutes from downtown Atlanta and we gotta a MARTA train station. The MARTA train station is why all those white people moved out. Ooh, black peope will come. That sort of thing.
The reason I'm writing this is because I just drove by the MARTA station.
We are hip now. I passed a place where some great jazz was being played, (by black kids) turned the corner and saw some cute kids sitting in front of a TATOO Parler.
This place has gotten very hip now. There are liberal white people all over the place. The hood has better services and we give gay people "domestic rights". Our city council is way, way better.
But what I''m wondering is..........where have all the poor people gone?