Best Freedom Fighters

When thinking of an advocate, Liliana Bakhtiari embodies the definition. The Muslim daughter of Iranian immigrants, she has dedicated her life to helping those in Atlanta, and in other countries, looking for a better life. She’s raised money for Cambodian refugees and has traveled the world to gather stories from survivors of genocide and sex trafficking. Once she returned to ATL, she resumed working with refugees, as well as becoming active in homeless outreach, local arts advocacy, and women’s health programs. In August she purchased a school bus to assist in community based projects and for living and working on the go. She’s also taking it a step further running for District 5 of Atlanta City Council.

Photo courtesy of Michael Schwarz

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Synonyms for the word “advocate” include: supporter, proponent, spokeswoman, fighter, crusader. ANITA BEATY, who used to run the Southeast’s largest homeless shelter, Peachtree-Pine, resembles all those descriptors and much more. For 20 years, she broke bread with the shelter’s “guests,” led them in marches to vote at the polls, spoke out alongside them in neighborhood meetings, and fought the City — among others — on their behalf time and time again. While we may no longer see her speaking from the City Hall podium as spokeswoman for Peachtree-Pine, which will close this month, we’re not convinced Beaty won’t remain the staunch advocate for a more just and equal Atlanta she’s long been. www.facebook.com/anita.l.beaty.

photo by: Joeff Davis/ CL File

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ASMA ELHUNI’s name bubbled up in new outlets worldwide this year when she videotaped a man harassing her at local coffee shop because she’s Muslim. But beyond that incident, Elhuni — who serves as the outreach director for the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations — has been fighting the good fight in Atlanta for a while now, lending her time and platform to a number of causes. Case in point: Months ago she helped organize a variety of activists and organizations to fight the displacement of residents who live around Turner Field. The former baseball stadium is under development by Georgia State, and through a prolonged camp-in at a makeshift tent city, Elhuni and fellow concerned citizens worked to raise awareness about the downside of gentrification in that part of town. Her efforts underscore what she has identified as her personal mission to fight policies that discriminate against “the poor, immigrants, blacks, Muslims, people of color, trans, queer and nonbinary folks.” www.twitter.com/asmaelhuni less...

For lawyer STEPHEN BRIGHT, May 23, 2016, was a sound victory in a long career spent fighting for the legal defense of people on death row. Bright had argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that his client, Timothy Tyrone Foster, a black intellectually limited man convicted of the 1987 killing of a 79-year-old white woman and sentenced to death, didn’t get a fair trial. Bright was armed with newly discovered notes showing the local prosecutor kicked black people out of the potential jury pool because of their race. It was the quintessential unfair trail. Justices agreed and Foster was granted a new trial — and Bright’s record before the highest court in the land became 3-0. His influence is large as an attorney, an author, a professor — he’s taught at Yale University for decades — and a longtime leader of the Southern Center for Human Rights. Because of Bright, and the attorneys he’s helped lead, arguments against racial bias in prosecutions and for fair indigent defense are louder across the South. Not bad for a former trial lawyer who, concerned over the lack of legal resources available to people facing state-sponsored execution, moved to Atlanta decades ago with nothing to his name but a car donated by a homeless shelter. www.schr.org. less...