Driving Down Peachtree: Preview
An Eye-Opening Journey from Buckhead to The City Jail, Featuring Atlanta Journalist George Chidi
The following is a short excerpt of a fascinating car ride.
At the wheel is George Chidi, a tenacious and empathetic investigative journalist — creator of the highly informative and fair-minded newsletter on Substack called The Atlanta Objective.
Here, he introduces us to the story of a homeless woman he is calling “Harmony,” who was living in a state of squalor that was, in his words, “too much to bear for an observer with a soul.”
On Friday, I’ll be sharing more of George Chidi’s account of Harmony, and our eye-opening drive down Peachtree Street — which sheds new light on crime and justice and inequality — and potential — in the city of Atlanta.
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Looking Ahead
Next week, for Veteran’s Day, I’ll be sharing the story of Command Sgt. Maj. Bob Gallagher — whom I profiled in 2003 for CNN. His buddies called him The Metal Magnet because of how often he had been under fire, from Blackhawk Down in Mogadishu, to Highway 8 in Baghdad.
“I was a juvenile delinquent,” he told me.
My mother passed away when I was young, 6, 7 years old, left my father to raise myself and my two brothers. I did not finish high school. I just decided on my own, I'm either I'm going to stay in this town and probably wind up in jail, or I'm going to get up and go. And I got up and went.
Bob Gallagher went on to become a leader, the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer of the 3rd Infantry Division’s First Combat Brigade, known for keeping his cool and inspiring confidence in the heat of battle.
Years later, well after his final deployment in Iraq, he let me know what a toll those deployments had taken on him, as they have on so many service members. Wounds that were not always visible.
The story of The Metal Magnet, on The Wavemaker Conversations Newsletter, next week.