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When I ran for office for the first time almost over two years ago, the most important milestone for me was becoming the first Black-Latino LGBTQ+ city councilman in Atlanta. When I was growing up, it was difficult being a queer, Black man in America. When I moved to Atlanta and realized how large the LGBTQ+ community was here, how accepting the city was of my choices, values and beliefs, it showed me what our city could be. I also realized how wrong it was that this community never had someone in city government who looked like them and could be a true advocate for their values.
Atlanta has one of the largest gay populations in the country and one of the most politically involved. In 2018, Atlanta received a perfect score of 100 on HRC’s 2018 Municipal Equality Index, which rates cities' inclusivity on LGBTQ+ laws, policies and services. This is why an initiative I’ve laid out for my 2021 mayoral race is to develop a centralized LGBTQ+ community center to create a safe space for residents to come together and receive assistance.
Secondly, I want to transfer the administration of Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS (HOPWA) from Partners for Home to the newly formed Department of Housing and Community Development, developing an immediate action plan to address housing insecurity among LGBTQ+ youth, seniors and the transgender community. These are things our community has been asking for, and it would be my honor to be the Mayor who delivers it for them.
Me winning the election for Councilman of District 3, and me winning this election for Mayor, is the right step for representing inclusivity in our nation’s diverse growing population and for representing the inclusivity that Atlanta has come to be known for. But it isn’t the only reason I am running for the opportunity to be Atlanta’s next mayor.
For years, in one way or another, leadership in City Hall became a direct contributor to the vestiges of antebellum racism that still plague residents and communities in Atlanta. Has City Hall created or facilitated this racism? No. But many times City Hall has turned a blind eye to the institutions and processes founded in that racism that continue to plague Atlanta’s minority communities every day, from affordable housing to public safety, and even equity in economic opportunity, all in the name of progress.
When I look at Atlanta’s past and the adversities Atlantans overcame, I'm inspired to reimagine and improve our current setbacks. At present, there is a socio-economic pandemic that has left behind our most vulnerable residents: the poor and unsheltered, the working middle-class, our small businesses and our minority communities.
I grew up in poverty with my parents in and out of prison. To support my siblings, I dropped out of high school at 15 to be able to work and support them by bagging groceries. I have experienced the kind of life you have to live when the safety net made to supposedly catch you when you are falling fails.
That experience drives much of what I do for my city today. As a councilmember, I fought for living-wage jobs, access to affordable housing, ending food insecurity, and an equitable and just public safety system. My hope is that our campaign, our movement, will wake the people up — our constituents living in Downtown, the West Side and South Atlanta experience it every day — who really need to have their eyes and ears opened to these problems that have been a source of hardship for our people since we first arrived in Atlanta.
Between 1880 to 1900, Atlanta became a thriving and diverse city with a growing population that substantially increased over the years. Adding to this population were large numbers of African Americans, who made up less than 2,000 people in the city in 1860, to an increased number of 35,000 people in 1900, approximating 40% of the city’s population. Despite the embedded systemic racism in the south and across the United States that challenges minority communities today, Atlanta continues to remain the “Black Mecca of the South,” known for its civil rights movement, higher education, political power and culture. This was due in no small part to the dauntless efforts of the Black church and the communities they assisted in weathering storms of racism and obstruction through faith activism in those early years and even still today.
It is well known the arduous relationship between the Black community and the LGBTQ+ community. However, I still maintain the belief that the one thing that can transcend this is our faith, and the ties that bind us through our shared history and continued struggle. Throughout the adversity that has tested me during my life and is still testing me today, many thought I would not make it. They thought I would become another number amongst the seemingly infinite amount of Black men, LGBTQ+ or not, swallowed up and left to drown by systems that don’t see them as people. Nevertheless, I rose above my adversities through faith and determination, and became a successful business owner, a councilmember and now a running mayoral candidate.
Rev. Anthony Motley, pastor of Lindsay Street Baptist Church in the English Avenue Neighborhood, became a supporter because of my ambition and my potential to get things done for the city. The Black church, from my perspective, has always been supportive of me and accepting of my journey as an openly gay Black man with faith in God and my community. I believe that it’s not impossible for the Black church, and the broader Black community, to get behind a candidate who is Black, a man of faith and queer.
Many may think of that kind of statement as aspirational, but that kind of thinking is what this campaign is all about. When we say we want to reimagine Atlanta, it’s not just about how City Hall operates, how we budget for public safety, or how we create equity and equality in economic opportunity. It’s about creating a coalition of all our communities — Black, white, Latino, Asian, religious, LGBTQ+ and everyone in-between — that can come together to build a progressive society, akin to the dreams of one of our most iconic leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr., and create a future that includes all of us, not just some of us.
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Antonio Brown is a member of the Atlanta City Council in Georgia, representing District 3. He is currently running for Mayor.
