George Chidi

1 month ago | theatlantaobjective.substack.com | George Chidi

This morning, State Senator Jason Esteves of Atlanta formally announced his candidacy for governor of Georgia. Esteves and I have spoken before here in the Atlanta Objective, when the former chairman of the Atlanta School Board had been contemplating a run for the state senate. Esteves, 41, is an attorney (and also a restaurateur, more on that in here), who has worked as counsel for Equifax.

1 month ago | theatlantaobjective.substack.com | George Chidi

Strident commentary isn’t entirely unusual for Congressman Hank Johnson (D-Atlanta), but it’s usually delivered in small forums with limited press coverage. I have some formal Q-and-A pieces with other people in the pipeline, but as I sat with Johnson and a handful of wine distributors at his Stonecrest office this afternoon, I think it’s worth reprinting his comments as a soliloquy, because they are that on point. It is edited lightly, but if a line is in bold, it is absolutely verbatim.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | George Chidi

For the past two months, members of the Elon Musk-led “department of government efficiency” (Doge) have stalked the halls of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Atlanta headquarters. Several employees told the Guardian that if a Doge staffer walked through their offices and saw a badge at an untended workstation, its owner would be fired promptly.

2 months ago | theatlantaobjective.substack.com | George Chidi

Every year, someone in the Georgia Legislature tries to sneak something sinister through on the last day, hoping that if they move fast they can get it done before opposition can rally and kill it. This time, it’s language added to a bill that would gut the Georgia Open Records Act, so that police departments can blow even more smoke up our asses when we ask them to explain themselves. Journalists have been navigating police games over initial incident reports for years.

2 months ago | theatlantaobjective.substack.com | George Chidi

When the headline reads “Atlanta rapper dies after running from officers,” it entices the reader to reduce the incident to a sign that street life in Atlanta carries lethal dangers; to simplify it and then to dismiss it. But Kenneth Bailey, the rapper Young Scooter, did not lead a life that should have led to this death. And his friends say that the police response to a fake report of a kidnapping contributed to his death.