Georgia Today: Burns proposes gun policies; Schools receive threats; Macon building preservation

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Thursday, September 12th. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, Georgia state lawmakers say they will consider new gun policies next session. Some schools boost precautions following threats made on social media. And preservationists say several buildings in Macon are in need of what they call "intensive care". These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.

Story 1:

Peter Biello: Georgia's state House speaker says lawmakers will consider new policies next year after a school shooting killed four people at Northeast Georgia's Apalachee High School. The changes could include increasing student access to mental health care, encouraging people to store guns safely, and information sharing among schools, police and health professionals. But Republican Jon Burns' proposals today stop short of Democratic demands. They include universal background checks and a mandate to safely lock up guns, as well as a red flag law that would allow the state to temporarily take guns from someone in crisis.

Story 2:

Peter Biello: Threats made on social media continue to rattle Georgia schools. Atlanta public schools were under heightened security today, and several Atlanta private schools also received warnings about potential violence. APS sent out an alert to parents about the unspecified threats last night. In northwest Georgia's Rome, the police chief, Denise Downer-McKinney, addressed parents' concerns about a high school lockdown last week.

Denise Downer-McKinney: These threats are not a joke. And we've got to let our children know that they are not a joke and that we have no tolerance for anyone threatening to harm our students, faculty or staff.

Peter Biello: The threats in Atlanta prompted some parents to keep their children out of school for the day.

Story 3:

Peter Biello: Norfolk Southern has fired its CEO for having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate. The departure ends two years of on-the-job turmoil for CEO Alan Shaw and comes days after the company's board announced it was investigating his alleged ethical lapses. Shaw was leading the Atlanta-based railroad last year when one of its trains derailed, causing the country's worst railroad disaster in the last decade. Norfolk Southern said yesterday its chief financial officer, Mark George, has taken over as CEO.

Story 4:

Peter Biello: Current and former residents of public housing developments in Georgia are demanding improved living conditions. As GPB's Sofi Gratas reports, many of them showed up at the Atlanta headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development last week.

Sofi Gratas: Diana Brown, a caregiver from Albany, says she's been asking for years that HUD addressed poor conditions, including mold, faulty amenities and overall disrepair affecting senior residents at an apartment complex run by the county housing authority. So far, she says, nothing has changed.

Diana Brown: So what happened now? We up here hold them accountable.

Crowd demonstration: What do we want? Action! When do we want it? Now!

Sofi Gratas: Brown was part of a small group to rally outside HUD offices. Others, former tenants of Atlanta's Forest Cove, condemned for poor conditions, say it's been near impossible to find housing in the city as Georgia's affordable housing crisis continues. Meanwhile, a new law went into effect this summer mandating Georgia landlords keep housing, quote, fit for human habitation. Bambi Hayes Brown, also from Albany, says she and others will keep advocating for the hundreds of tenants waiting on inspections.

Bambi Hayes-Brown: When you don't have stable housing or healthy housing. It affects all other factors. It affects health, it affects education, it affects jobs.

Sofi Gratas: For GPB News, I'm Sofi Gratas in Atlanta.

Story 5:

Peter Biello: Historical preservationists in Macon have announced their annual list of important buildings in need of intensive care. GPB's Grant Blankenship has more.

Grant Blankenship: The preservation group Historic Macon calls their list the Fading Five and four buildings have rolled over from last year. They include a former bank with art deco details, a World War II era Quonset Hut turned nightclub where a teenaged Otis Redding once performed, and an old dentist office at the heart of Cotton Avenue, Macon's black business district during segregation. New for this year is the Hillyer-Kernaghan House, designed by renowned architect Neil Reed and one time home of the founding director of the Atlanta Reserve Bank. Nathan Lott is the executive director of historic Macon. He says caring for the city's constructed history is vital for its health.

Nathan Lott: Macon Bibb cannot prosper if our older neighborhoods at the heart of our city are in decline.

Grant Blankenship: Historic Macon seeks investors or even buyers with whom to collaborate in saving the buildings on their Fading Five list. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon.

Story 6:

Peter Biello: State court judges have disqualified presidential candidates Cornell West and Claudia De la Cruz from running for president in Georgia. In a ruling yesterday, the judges said the pair's electors didn't file the proper paperwork, even if their names remain on ballots. Spokespersons for West and De la Cruz said they would appeal the decision to the Georgia Supreme Court.

Story 7:

Peter Biello: Ratepayers and advocacy groups spoke out today against the Georgia Power proposal to use more biomass to generate energy. The State Public Service Commission is considering Georgia Power's application to add 80MW of biomass fuel generation in the next couple of years. Biomass is energy produced from plant or animal waste. Mature trees are a common source of biomass fuel. At a meeting of the PSC's energy committee, opponents describe biomass as an expensive source of pollution. Retired physician Eric Mintz says soot from burning biomass can trigger asthma, heart attacks, strokes and death.

Eric Mintz: Biomass plants produce electricity and deadly air pollution. Solar power plants produce only electricity on health grounds alone. The choice is clear.

Peter Biello: The biomass projects were included in Georgia Power's 2022 Integrated Resource Plan, which requires Georgia Power to seek bids to develop up to 140MW of biomass.

Story 8:

Peter Biello: Award winning Georgian novelist, journalist and publisher Tina McElroy Ansa has died. The coroner in southeast Georgia's Glynn County confirmed she died on Tuesday. Numerous social media posts mourning her passing circulated yesterday. One shared by Savannah writer Wanda Lloyd showed a smiling answer at the Savannah rally for Vice President Kamala Harris two weeks ago. Respected in literary circles Ansa wrote more than ten books and contributed to numerous publications in broadcast media. She was known for her writings profound sense of place, often focusing on the African American experience in the South. Born in Macon and first published in Atlanta, she made Saint Simons Island on Georgia's coast, her home since 1978. No cause of death has been reported. Tina McElroy Ansa was 74 years old.

Caption

Isley Phillips, 18, chases her brother Noah, 19, and his racoon-tail hat as part of their traditional Racoon Dance, on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022, in Macon, Ga. The teenagers are members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and performed at the 30th annual Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration at the Ocmulgee Mounds.

Credit: AP Photo/Michael Warren

Story 9:

Peter Biello: The annual Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration is taking place this week in Macon. The event is centered around the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park and represents a homecoming for citizens of the Muskogee nation of Oklahoma. Art, film and theater are now a large part of the celebration to this year that includes a one woman play by Cherokee attorney and playwright Mary Katherine Nagle. GPB's Grant Blankenship spoke with Nagle about her production.

Grant Blankenship: Let's start with the title of the play. It's called ‘On the Far End.’ Where does that name come from? What does it mean?

Mary Katherine Nagle: Now, that is the first four words of Justice Gorsuch's decision in McGirt versus Oklahoma. And the play is really a love letter to that decision. From the perspective of Jean Hill Chowdhury, a Muskogee woman activist and playwright. McGirt kind of frames the entire play. And that's kind of that's where the title comes from.

Grant Blankenship: McGirt as I understand it, it's a landmark Supreme Court case of recent years. One of the things it did among many is it sort of reestablished firm borders to what had been promised as reservation land to various tribes in Oklahoma. That's the start. But what else? Why else is McGirt so important right now?

Mary Katherine Nagle: I think it's important because oftentimes whether or not a tribal nation continues to exist or exercise its sovereignty is dependent on white expectations and white narratives of land, entitlement and power law and all these things. And what the decision really said was, you know, it's irrelevant if white Oklahomans or the current governor had in their mind this narrative or this idea that Muskogee Creek Nation's reservation no longer existed. It is still there. It was never disestablished. It was created by a treaty. And Congress has never taken action to disestablished it. So it still exists. And so, it was a moment where the law trumped, I guess, white expectations of entitlement is what I would say.

Grant Blankenship: And that was the thing that Neil Gorsuch was saying in his opinion, Right. That on the on the far end of what The Trail of Tears. Right. There was a promise. And that promise needs to be kept.

Mary Katherine Nagle: Exactly. Exactly.

Grant Blankenship: So what is it about Gene Hill Chaudhry's life that makes her just one person you could pluck out of this, you know, intergenerational story to make sense of this for us?

Mary Katherine Nagle: I think she's a miracle worker and a healer and a brilliant woman who I admire deeply. She was born on the far end and she survived at a time when they were really still trying to eliminate and eradicate Muskogee people in the Muskogee nation entirely. She was forcibly taken from her home by the DIA and sent to one of the Indian boarding schools that was open at the time. And she ran away eight times, was chased by dogs, beaten, and, you know, on the eighth time, finally made it all the way home on her own. She was like ten years old, running 54 miles at night. In her adulthood, she led a life of advocacy and activism, where she advocated on many, many, many critical issues important to Native people everywhere. You know, I think that in many cases, this victory we're going to go to Creek Nation today was made possible by generations of Muskogee woman like Jane, who kept fighting for the rights of their children and grandchildren and the next generation to come.

Grant Blankenship: Mary Katherine Nagle will perform her one person play ‘On the Far End’ Friday night at Theater Macon as part of the Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration. I just thank you so much for talking to me today.

Mary Katherine Nagle: It was a pleasure. Mvto.

Grant Blankenship: I'm Grant Blankenship and this is GPB.

Story 10:

Peter Biello: The government investigation has found that the president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve violated several of the central bank's ethics policies. The violations by Atlanta Fed President Rafael Bostic stemmed from his securities trades and investments and created the appearance that he acted on confidential Fed information and had a conflict of interest. That's according to the Fed's Office of Inspector General in a report issued yesterday. The report, however, concluded Bostic did not violate any insider trading or conflict of interest laws.

Story 11:

Peter Biello: A Georgia baker has been named among 13 best new chefs in Food and Wine's latest annual selection. On Tuesday, the magazine recognized Erica Council, founder and chef of Atlanta's Bomb Biscuits for, quote, towering and tender biscuits that it called the best in the South.

Story 12:

Peter Biello: In sports, on baseball, the Washington Nationals beat the Atlanta Braves 5 to 1 yesterday. Atlanta starter Max Freed kept his team close, but the Braves only had six hits and fell one game behind the Mets in the race for the third NL Wild card. Freed allowed four runs on 11 hits over six innings, striking out six and walking none with one hit batter. The Braves have the day off today before opening a four-game series against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Truist Park tomorrow.

And that's a wrap on this edition of Georgia Today. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you want to learn more about any of these stories, visit GPB.org/news. And if you haven't subscribed to this podcast yet, take a moment. Do it now. That'll keep us current in your podcast feed. If you've got feedback, we would love to hear from you. Send us an email. The address is GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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