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we raise our kids. My husband is Black, my kids look mixed, and I am very deliberate about them knowing that they are Black and they are going to experience certain things because of it. I'm very careful about ensuring that they're not judged or disciplined more harshly in school. But my nine‐year‐old is at that age of really making friends and figuring out who people are, and so I'm also very deliberate about making sure he knows that it's okay to be the different kid or to like something that isn't what everybody else likes.

      I want my kids and the people I work with to welcome people in regardless of whether they fit “the mold.” That's something that we can do for each other. That's one of the first lessons in life I learned. That's how we achieve diversity.

       60th Mayor of Atlanta

Photograph of Keisha Lance Bottoms

      Although she was not the first African American woman mayor of The ATL (she was in fact the second), Bottoms was the first mayor of any race or gender to earn her stripes having served in all three branches of the city's government—and to be swept into office on a wave of jubilant hashtags.

      #MyMayorsNameIsKeisha was a shout‐out to her hard‐earned victory as a Black Gen X woman with a Black name in a chocolate city whose politics sparkled like a bright blue star in the state of Georgia's crimson sky. And her 2018 inauguration, one year into Trump's America, was an early sign of stunning political changes yet to come.

      In 2020, she became one of the first Black women in history to seriously be vetted by a presidential candidate as a potential running mate. And no wonder. Lance had survived an incredibly tight runoff election to become mayor, only to face a more daunting and complex set of issues than she or any of her predecessors could have imagined.

      From multiracially charged violence and the local unrest that followed, to a hailstorm of sociopolitical battles in which her intersectionality as a Black woman both compounded her challenges and informed her responses, she was catapulted onto the national stage. And then there was the COVID‐19 pandemic, in which she opposed Republican Governor Brian Kemp over state protocols, drawing his ire even as she and her family personally contended with the virus at home.

      When Bottoms announced that she would not seek reelection, she admitted that she didn't have a plan. But having had plenty more mom time during quarantine, her four children, ages 12 to 20, are anxious to see what she'll do next. They are not alone.

      Home has always meant everything to me. [Growing up,] because my dad was an entertainer, he worked at night and our family's income was inconsistent. But he was the one at home when I came from school every day. He was the one to greet us and cook for us, then he went to work after my mom got home. He was a wonderful, good‐hearted person, and I was a daddy's girl.

      One day, when I got home, the police were taking Daddy away. They had completely torn up our apartment. We were in the process of moving, so a lot of things were packed up. They had ripped up all the boxes, including the one with my toys. And I remember my dad saying, “Don't worry, it's okay. I'll be home soon.”

      I was eight, and it shaped everything about me. When my dad went to prison [for four years after a cocaine possession conviction], that was the hardest time in my life. It made me so sad. At points, it made me angry, and I just missed him so much.

      For a very long time after that, I didn't have any gray in my life. Everything was good or bad, it was right or wrong. In a lot of ways, it made me pursue perfection in an unhealthy way. I didn't want to have to struggle [when I grew up], I didn't want to worry about how my bills would be paid, I didn't want to ever be at the mercy of somebody else. So, there were a lot of lessons that were very rigid: “Do this, don't do that.”

      With age, I learned to moderate those lessons, but I didn't always have the ability to do that. And when you see things in black and white, there's no room for empathy—especially with addiction. You don't understand that if they could stop, they would stop. Learning that has given me empathy for a lot of the circumstances and people that I dealt with as mayor. I completely understand that really good people sometimes make bad decisions, and then there's an impact on the family that you can't always make immediately right.

      When I was a little girl and my dad was still actively touring, I envisioned us being this new version of Natalie Cole and Nat King Cole. Seriously. I knew I couldn't sing. But when you're five or six, what are limitations?

      I majored in journalism at FAMU [Florida A&M University] and I really wanted to be a sportscaster, but at that time, there weren't many women doing that. Going to law school was kind of a fluke. I used to hang out with a group of friends from Morehouse, and they were all applying to law school. And I thought, Oh, that's what we're doing now? Okay. So I applied to law school, and with my journalism background, my plan was to be a legal analyst.

      Before the kids came, I used to drive down to Macon, Georgia, and do a newscast [on the] radio in the morning [while] still practicing law full time. You know when we don't have kids, we have a lot of capacity. I think back on the schedule now and, my God, that's probably why I couldn't [conceive] a biological child. I was completely stretched.

      I never really liked practicing law. So I always tried to do something different with it and at some point, I concluded that perhaps the whole point of my getting this law degree was that I met my husband, Derek, in law school.

      It was not until I got on the city council that I began to see the value in my law degree. I realized lawyers really do think differently, they process differently and they plan differently. And I thought, Okay, well in addition to meeting my husband, this is what that was all about. It definitely helped me as a mayor, too.

      I didn't write it down, but there was definitely a day, a date, a moment when I knew I had to run for mayor. I'd been praying about it. I have a great team and, from a data metric standpoint, I knew that I could win. The question was, did I want it? I'd been praying and talking, and praying and talking, and I was sitting in church one day and, at the end of the sermon, I couldn't get out of my seat.

      It was such a hard, ugly, long race. One part was really countering the misconception that people had of who I was. Having the support of a

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