First Slice 7/19/16: Could Atlanta strip clubs be the next casualty of gentrification?
Plus, Mayor Reed’s closed-door meeting with activists criticized for lack of transparency
Mayor Kasim Reed called yesterday’s meeting with four local protest leaders “productive,” but many organizers denounced the closed-door meeting for its lack of transparency and continued to protest inside and outside Atlanta’s City Hall. If it is a divide-and-conquer strategy, as many have suggested, it may be working. Among the leaders who presented Reed with the list of 25 demands, model/actor/activist Sir Maejor Page turned his criticism toward those who continued to protest: “If I was the mayor, and I had protestors bullying me, I wouldn’t even give you a meeting,” he said.
Yes, Melania Trump stone cold plagiarized portions of her RNC speech from Michelle Obama. No she didn’t, the Trump campaign claims in an attempt to spin its way out of the act of plagiarism. Maybe the Trumps love the Obamas more than they’re willing to admit.
Black-owned bank Citizens Trust got a huge boost in business following the latest spate of high-profile killings of African Americans by police. Killer Mike took to Hot 107.9 to voice his opinion that Atlanta’s black community to shift its accounts to the black banks en masse. An estimated 8,000 new accounts were opened at Citizens Trust in the immediate aftermath.
Is nothing sacred? Strip clubs, the last bastion of urbanity in the age of gentrification, could be next up on the nationwide chopping block. While clubs like the Cheetah are already counting their days next to the attack of the luxury condos in Midtown, Curbed suggests clubs like Magic City, with its industry cachet, could be an anomaly.
“I put lipstick on a pig,” Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of Donald Trump’s 1987 book “The Art of the Deal,” says. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.... I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”