Georgia On My Mind

I moved to Georgia when I was six. My father got a job at Georgia Tech so we made our home in the Druid Hills area of Atlanta where the schools were decent. My high school could have sung “We are the World” since many of the kids were related to people either working or attending Emory University.

There are two Georgia’s really. There is Atlanta where you would be hard pressed to find someone who was actually born there rather than moved there and the rest of Georgia.

My first observations of overt racism happened in Georgia just outside of Atlanta.

Any forward progress has been made with a lot of effort and there always seems to be the point where Georgia takes like 20 steps back.

There was the battle of the flag that from 1956 to 2001, it had the confederate stars and bars in reaction to the civil right movement. 2001 to 2003 was the compromise flag that declared the flags at the bottom as Georgia’s history, which still included the confederate flag.

Then there was the adoption law that would cut out certain people from being able to adopt children in Georgia. That one died on the vine when the film industry threatened to leave the state for another state that didn’t have a version of the asinine legislations.

There was the governor’s election that was so crooked, it made other voter suppression group have to up their game. I met Stacey Abrams totally by accident at DragonCon where she was campaigning and being a big ol’ fan. I actually heard her squee when she met someone there that she admired. I liked her energy and her platform. Unfortunately the white male who was the chairman of voter registration was also running and the deck was continuously being stacked against her.

Now we have the heartbeat bill that is going to screw Georgia businesses over good without spit or pity.

Apparently the Georgia Legislation did not learn from North Carolina and the stupid bathroom bill that killed the thriving economy especially in the film and television industry but also the hotel industry, the restaurant industry, and a lot of other businesses along the way.

Disney warned Georgia that if the bill passed, they would be taking their business elsewhere. This would include the next phase of the Marvel films. With the completion of the Avengers Saga, they have the time to pick up and move before starting the next set of films. This personally affects a bunch of my friends who have had steady work for years now because of Marvel Studios. They will have to move if they want to continue when Disney moves the offices.

North Carolina lost the NCAA tournament but that was just the tip of a 3.76 Billion Dollar iceberg that it ran into. They are still trying to convince people to come back to North Carolina and the economy still hasn’t recovered.

Georgia is headed towards the same ice-burg. Conferences will pull out. People will not visit so fewer tourists.

I am already seeing this effect as various friends who I always see at DragonCon are cancelling their plans to attend and are looking for another conventions to go to instead. That’s a big deal because DragonCon has been their vacation time for years but they cannot support a state with such a bill especially when you start reading the fine print within the bill making it a felony to go to another state for any gynecological needs as well as the person(s) who transport them.

But the justice system will strike this down! I hear others say. It is getting harder and harder to believe that. The damage has been done.

And this is moving fast. Maybe some of it is kneejerk but that can still kill a booming economy.

And it is not just going to affect Atlanta. There is going to be an economic backlash through out the state. I don’t think the citizens of Georgia outside Atlanta realize how much until it will hit their areas in ways that they cannot even imagine.

I am grateful for sensible people who live in Georgia.