Racist text will not stop Atlanta mayor from speaking up for residents, she says

(Source CNN)

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms had to have a discussion with her 12-year-old son after the pair received a racist text regarding her efforts to keep the city closed amid the coronavirus pandemic, she said Thursday. In a Wednesday night tweet, the mayor said she received a text addressing her by the n-word and demanding, “just shut up and RE-OPEN ATLANTA!” Her son received the same text, she later told the city council. When Bottoms opened the text on her phone, she said, her daughter was looking over her shoulder as she read it. Bottoms included in her tweet, “I pray for you. ‘Conscientious stupidity or sincere ignorance'” — a nod to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assertion that nothing is more dangerous than these two human characteristics. Following Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s controversial decision to start reopening parts of the state economy, Bottoms pushed back, saying she would consider legal options to keep Atlanta largely shut down because the city is “not out of the woods yet.”  “I have searched my head and my heart on this and I am at a loss as to what the governor is basing this decision on,” Bottoms said earlier this week. “You have to live to fight another day, and you have to be able to be amongst the living to be able to recover.”