Southern Bookman

Legendary Texas Observers battles to survive

The venerated Texas Observer is desperately trying to stay alive.

After the small, feisty magazine's board decided Sunday to close the publication this week, 17 staffers targeted for layoffs began a fund-raising campaign led by editor Gabriel Arana. Nearly $200,000 had been raised as of Tuesday afternoon,  impressive but not enough to keep the Observer alive.

Began by Ronnie Dugger in 1954, the Observer gained a reputation for independent investigative reporting and brilliant writing. Legendary journalists Willie Morris and Molly Ivins edited the Observer before moving on to national fame. Novelist Larry McMurtry was one of the Texas writers who examined the Lone Star State's peculiar culture for the Observer.

Longtime editor Dugger is the father of noted New York Times journalist Celia Dugger, named for Morris' first wife. She worked as a young reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Observer is a vestige of Texas' once vibrant progressive Democratic politics, exemplified by late Gov. Ann Richards and former Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower. Former Congressman Beto O'Rourke and other Democratic leaders have failed to restore the state's progressive tradition.

With a circulation of 4,000, the Observer has fallen upon rough times in the digital age. Kept afloat by haphazard donations and paid subscriptions to the print edition, the Observer gives free email newsletters and hasn't set up a pay wall for its digital edition. Nor does it accept advertising.

The magazine that annoyed Lyndon Johnson, John Connally. George Bush and a motley group of rapacious Texas legislators also faced competition from the well-funded online news operation Texas Tribune, which broke the news of the Observer's closing. Texas Monthly magazine. edited by several Observer alums, covers much of the same territory.

Dugger's Observer was a model for alternative newspapers around the nation, such as the Village Voice and the Los Angeles Free Press.

When I was a young would-be Gonzo journalist, I saw the Observer as a bright shining light. I associated the publication with the progressive spirit then flowering in Texas, personified by hippie country artists Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ray Wyle Hubbard, Gary P. Nunn and Townes Van Zandt.

If the Observer dies, part of Texas' soul will go with it.

 

Microchip wars will decide world's fate, writers Chis Miller and John Lanchester reveal

Microchips will decide the West's coming war with China and humanity's future.

London Review writer John Lanchester in an expansive review in the publication's March issue examines the central importance of those little silicon wafers.

Lanchester for years has been one of my favorite writers, especially in uncovering the inner workings of the world's economy. He's also a noted novelist and critic of English culture and history.

In an appreciative review of Chris Miller's "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology," Lanchester gives a detailed and fascinating synopsis of the development of semiconductor technology.

From William Shockley's invention of the transistor and founding of Silicon Valley, through successive microchip innovations by Jack Kilby, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore and the continued miniaturization and prevalence of microchips in military weapons and consumer products, Lanchester shows the successes and downfalls of companies like Shockley Semiconductor,  Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel and Texas Instruments.

While American innovations led the semiconductor revolution, U.S. companies lost their competitive dominance to the Taiwanese firm Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Texas Instruments and other American firms still compete in the semiconductor industry, but TSMC is now by far the leading semiconductor manufacturer.

The Taiwanese capitalist giant is itself dependent on European companies for the complex equipment needed to program the chips through an intricate process known as extreme ultraviolet lithography.

As Lanchester details, the American firm Cymer developed the laser technology for EUV products. But the Dutch firm ASML has risen to the top in making the huge machines needed to create the ultra-tiny microchips.

While Taiwan makes most of the chips that power products from cars to Iphones, China is desperate to acquire chips for weapons and products it manufactures. China's economy now rivals the United States, yet the communist system lags in technological innovation.

Lanchester points out that the Biden administration's ban on microchip exports to China in October 2022 is "a declaration of economic war."

China Chairman's Xi's increasing aggression toward the United States and seeking closer ties with Russia's Vladimir Putin accelerate the new cold war, which might heat up with a Chinese attack against Taiwan like that of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

With no microchip manufacturing industry, communist China has increasing incentive to take over Taiwan militarily. The United States' economic future depends on Taiwan's independence.

Oil, water, alternative energy sources, climate change, food and population increases will determine humanity's future. But those tiny chips will rule the world, as Lanchester's essential review of Miller's important book shows.

 

 

 

Journalist Jim Schutze's "The Accommodation" reveals Dallas' history of racial violence

Veteran political columnist Jim Schutze's "The Accommodation: The Politics of Race in an American City" uncovers Dallas' dark history of racial oppression.

Pressure by Dallas' white power structure halted the original publication of Schutze's book in 1986. After a limited press run by another publisher, a warehouse fire destroyed most of the book's copies.

After years out of print, the book called "the most dangerous book in Dallas" by D magazine columnist Peter Simek was rediscovered in the last decade, passed around digitally and in samizdat photocopies.

At last, Dallas' Deep Vellum Books republished the book in 2021 under its LaReunion Imprint, which specializes in books on Texas history.

Deep Vellum has reclaimed a classic study of one of the strangest and conflicted American cities, torn between provincial pro-business boosterism and cosmopolitan aspirations.

Haunted by the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, the sprawling north Texas metropolis long claimed a history of racial tolerance.

Schutze, a D magazine columnist and former political columnist for the Dallas Times Herald and Dallas Observer, explodes that myth in his dynamic chronicle. 

In the early 1950s, dynamite bombs exploded at the homes of blacks moving into working-class white neighborhoods in South Dallas, repeating a wave of such attacks in the 1940s.

No one was killed, but white leaders grew alarmed, especially when the black homeowners began shooting back at those seeking to drive them out of the white areas.

Worried that the violence would hurt the city's business reputation, white power-brokers organized a "blue ribbon" grand jury to investigate the bombings.

Yet, outside of a couple of arrests of minor criminals, the grand jury took no action. Schutze claims that the grand jury issued no indictments because high-up political and religious leaders would be implicated.

However, the investigation resulted in the "accommodation" of Schutze's title, an agreement between the all-white "Citizens Council" that truly ran the city and black religious and community leaders to dampen racial protests.

After years of resistance to the 1954 Supreme Court agreement outlawing school segregation, the city won praise for a limited plan to integrate schools. The schools were never truly integrated, and Dallas engaged in efforts to destroy black neighborhoods for commercial projects.

Despite blatant housing and economic discrimination, Dallas escaped the racial turmoil of other Southern cities, because of the complicity of black leaders with the pro-business white community, as Schutze documents.

Civil rights organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference ignored Dallas' racial inequities for years. At last, a SCLC organizer from Atlanta led effective protest efforts, leading to court victories and concessions by the power elite.

A key moment was  the overturning in federal court of Dallas' strange system of at-large council seats rather than districts, which like Georgia's notorious county unit system diluted black political power.

In a chilling chapter, Schutze castigates the Dallas Morning News for its rabidly racist and anti-Kennedy administration editorials before the assassinated president's fatal visit to the city. Schutze blames the then ultra-conservative newspaper for fostering a sinister atmosphere that he claims led to Kennedy's death.

He apparently believes accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but his documenting of Dallas' right-wing paranoia leaves room for the conspiracy theories many Americans now accept.

Schutze writes with a distinctive voice, like that of an extended newspaper column blended with historic depth. He skewers white leaders with a sardonic tone, while maintaining a rigorous objectivity.

In one amusing chapter, he satirizes a group of white leaders for seeking to stop "communist" modern art from being displayed a at the Dallas Art Museum.

Dallas department store executive Stanley Marcus is a progressive hero of the book, preventing the removal of a sports art exhibit that somehow was characterized as "communist" by the local Philistines. Marcus is also a lonely voice of racial justice.

Such leaders were rare in the Big D. Their pro-business gospel and the city's amazing growth into a major metropolis covered a sordid history of racial oppression.

Schutze shines a bright light on that long-shrouded past. His illuminating book has also emerged from the darkness.

 

Atlanta's red-hot political dramas examined in Sunday New York Times

Atlanta stands in the glare of the national media spotlight with two connected stories - the battle over the $90 million police training center and Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis' likely indictment of former President Donald Trump.

The dual dramas of political conflict and racial dynamics received their latest national examinations in the Sunday New York Times.

Noted environmental novelist Richard Powers in an article in the newspaper's Sunday Opinion section called for a city referendum on the massive police training center, to be built in a wooded area in South DeKalb County.

The nonprofit Atlanta Police Foundation's plan has resulted in violent confrontations between environmental protesters and law enforcement officers at the site, including the killing of an activist by police.

Powers, noting the similarities between his 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Overstory" and the confrontations between environmental protesters and police, pointed out that the construction would disrupt plans for the South Forest Greenbelt.

Citing the potential importance of the greenbelt to Atlanta's environmental future and the conflict over the training center site, Powers said the issue should be decided by city voters. The Atlanta City Council approved a $30 million appropriation for the training center, mainly funded by the Atlanta Police Foundation.

In the Sunday New York Times magazine, writer Mark Binelli in an in-depth profile of Willis portrayed her as an aggressive prosecutor who will likely use the same forceful tactics against Trump if she charges him as she has against rap stars, gang members and schoolteachers convicted in the Atlanta cheating scandal.

Binelli's profile revisited recent Atlanta flashpoints such as the downtown protests over the George Floyd killing and the killing by police of Rayshard Brooks at a South Atlanta Wendy's, the scene of violent protests in which the restaurant was burned down and a young child murdered.

The article also claims that Buckhead political powerbroker Mary Norwood's support carried Willis to her decisive 2020 victory over former District Attorney Paul Howard, for whom Willis was chief prosecutor. Now an influential member of the Atlanta City Council, the reputed Republican Norwood has twice run for mayor, receiving narrow defeats to black candidates.

The two Times articles taken together give a searching examination of Atlanta's racial and political undercurrents, involving police brutality and training, shifting Republican and Democratic allegiances and the city's economic divisions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, DeKalb CEO Michael Thurmond launch police training site

The Atlanta Way lives.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and DeKalb CEO Michael Thurmond on Tuesday announced an agreement that will start construction on Atlanta's embattled police and fire training center, a $90 million, 85-acre mini-city of urban landscapes, fire towers, meeting rooms and firearm shooting ranges.

The extensive training center is to be built on a wooded site in south DeKalb Country, where neighborhood opposition resulted in Dickens agreeing to Thurmond's demands for buffers from firing ranges and fire towers, preservation of wooded areas and the planting of hardwood trees. The site is part of the proposed South River Forest conservation area.

After months of violent battles between protesters and police, the agreement pushes the training center forward, the latest manifestation of the ages-old "Atlanta Way" partnership of white business leaders and black politicians.

The private, non-profit Atlanta Police Foundation is funding much of center, staunchly supported by The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Alex Taylor, the CEO of AJC owner Cox Enterprises, has raised money for the police foundation and the training center, sometimes noted in AJC articles.

A gun battle between state troopers and protesters led to the shooting death of protester Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, an avowed pacifist whom police claimed wounded a police officer who has not been named.

Police wouldn't release the wounded officer's name because of possible retribution by protesters. Yet he should be identified in the interest of transparency in the case.

Environmental activists dispute the police account. State police involved in the gunfight say they were not wearing body cameras during the battle, so the required GBI investigation will depend on conflicting eye-witness accounts and forensic evidence.

Unlike national media including The Washington Post, the AJC has not complied with Terán's preference to use the trans pronouns "they" and "them,"  instead of "he" and "him."

Terán's death led to a violent protest in downtown Atlanta in which Peachtree Street high-rises were damaged and a police car burned. One of the damaged buildings is the Philip Johnson-designed 191 Peachtree Tower, where the Atlanta Police Foundation's offices are located.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared an emergency, allowing for him to call out 1,000 members of the Georgia National Guard. A number of protesters have been charged with "domestic terrorism" under a constitutionally dubious Georgia law enacted in 2017.

I've been following the story through the AJC and national media, and haven't formed a clear judgment.

It sounds as if the wooded area is not as pristine as the protesters claim - one absurdly called it "the lungs of Atlanta" in a Washington Post story. Dickens said the site doesn't encompass original hard-wood trees, and is overgrown with invasive species.

The Dickens-Thurmond deal will preserve the most environmentally sensitive forest areas. The South River and a creek are seriously polluted, according to an Atlanta magazine piece by former AJC reporter Timothy Pratt, the most comprehensive article on the center conflict I've read.

Over the years, a work camp and other operations have been located at the city-owned site, originally the home of the Muscogee Indians before they were forced to leave. For years, the area served as a trash dump. The nearby predominantly black neigbhorhoods already hear gunfire from an existing police firing range.

Ryan Gravel, the originator of the Atlanta Beltline, did a comprehensive study that called for making the area an extensive nature park. The Atlanta City Council agreed to the plan, before former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms surprised residents, local officials and Gravel with plans for the training center, according to Pratt's article. The council subsequently approved allocating $30 million for the center.

Overall, the training center appears needed, but other options could be considered. The removal of trees should be limited, but thousands of trees are destroyed in the metro area each week as development relentlessly progresses.

While protesters vow to fight on to stop the training center, its building appears inevitable. That's the Atlanta Way.

 

 

 

 

Star power burns bright in Rolling Stone founder Jann S. Wenner's memoir "Like a Rolling Stone"

Rolling Stone magazine founder and influential editor Jann S. Wenner's memoir exudes Baby Boomer aspirations, arrogance and delusions.

"Like a Rolling Stone" gives a blow-by-blow account of Wenner's career in the rock and roll fast lane, from the founding of Rolling Stone on a shoestring in 1967 to his giving up control of his Internet-challenged media empire after Donald Trump's election shocked Wenner's cohort of celebrity progressives.

Like images flashing past in a video game, Wenner beams out a dizzying array of famous names, dinner parties, cruises, ski trips. concerts, power lunches and drug-drenched bacchanalias.

While Wenner gives an impressive roll call of of Rolling Stone's scoops and journalistic innovations, his hedonism, egoism and thirsting for celebrity validation exhibit the worst excesses of his generation.

He breathlessly chronicles what he characterizes as close friendships with superstars John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Bono, Bruce Springsteen and Pete Townshend, closely linking his magazine to promoting their careers. He also boasts of friendships with recording industry executives, a bit close for a music journalist.

Never resting from the social swirl, he also recalls close relationships with Jackie Onassis, John F. Kennedy Jr., Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Tom Wolfe, Bette Midler and Michael Douglas.

The rapid-fire collision of names, gossip and events makes for an exciting narrative, much more captivating than Joe Hagan's lackluster biography "Sticky Fingers."

As the magazine rises in power and influence, and he launches new magazines like "Us Weekly," Wenner veers further and further away from the modest communal values of co-founder Ralph J. Gleason.

Rolling Stone star writer Hunter S. Thompson's rise and sad decline is the book's tragic centerpiece. Fans of Rolling Stone's classic days will again thrill to Thompson's emergence in the magazine with "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and his coverage of presidential campaigns. Wenner poignantly expresses the despair and heartbreak of Thompson's mental and physical downfall, culminating in his suicide.

Wenner nearly met a similar fate. He recounts his recovery from a terrifying health crisis that almost caused his death. But he came back to write his memoirs.

On his last issue of Rolling Stone, he placed young environmental activist Greta Thunberg on the cover.

At 75, he's forever young.

 

Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech still a guiding light for America

Martin Luther King Jr's  "I Have a Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963, was a masterpiece of metaphor, prophecy and exhortation.

Delivered from the Lincoln Memorial to a huge crowd gathered at the Capitol Mall on Aug. 28, 1963, the speech called on the United States to give full citizenship to black Americans.

The black and white video of the speech, the culmination of the "March on Washington," is from another world.

In the sweltering heat, many of the men wear coats and ties, and the women formal dresses. Many had come from the violent struggle for civil rights in the American South. No public leader today can match King's eloquence.

King's speech and the march pushed President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to increase federal protection of civil rights activists. Under President Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States made a step toward cashing the promissory note of black equality cited by King in one of his brilliant metaphors.

King modulates his resonant voice like a musical instrument, its prophetic biblical cadences ringing with poetic grandeur. He indicts American society for the injustices still suffered by black citizens: segregation, police brutality, political and economic discrimination.

Yet, as his voice swells with outrage and impatience, he refuses to succumb to bitterness. He points out that the destinies of white and black Americans are intertwined, and that the denial of full freedom to blacks also suppresses whites.

Those of us who grew up during segregation knew the South's smothering oppressiveness. Because of King, the South is a much better place now, with much greater diversity, social freedom and economic opportunity.

In the 60 years since King's speech, the country has made significant progress fulfilling his dream of freedom and racial equality. Too much remains undone.

Saturday would have been his 94th birthday.

 

Atlanta History Center documentary reveals Stone Mountain monument's sordid history

The Atlanta History Center's impressive documentary "Monument: The Untold Story of Stone Mountain" gives a comprehensive history of the state-owned Confederate memorial, a legacy of white supremacist Georgia's resistance to the civil rights movement.

History Center President and CEO Sheffield Hale sets the tone for the 30-minute production, available on the AHC's web site. Hale asks whether the massive Stone Mountain carving of Confederate heroes Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson represents Georgia's values in the 21st century.

A group of noted historians gives brief but insightful commentaries on the memorial's twisted history. AHC senior historian and curator Gordon Jones stands out with an impassioned analysis of the monument as a symbol of the Confederate lost cause and resistance to black civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s.

Former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes offers perspective on the state's racially fraught politics and history.

The carving was begun by the revived Ku Klux Klan and the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the early 20th century, but the original campaign ran out of money in the 1920s. The carving was not completed until 1970 after the state took over Stone Mountain, developing the site into a popular state park.

Former Georgia Gov. Marvin Griffin and the Georgia Legislature's massive resistance to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling overturning segregation led to the state purchasing the site and completing the carving. The Confederate battle flag insignia was added to the state flag at the same time.

Barnes recalls his successful effort to remove the Confederate symbol from the state flag in 2001. But strong opposition led to his not winning re-election.

Emory professor Joseph Crespino and Spellman professor Cynthia Neal Spence, along with other commentators, point out that the monument originally celebrated the South's "Lost Cause" mythology, which led to Confederate monuments rising across the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The return of white supremacy in the South brought repressive Jim Crow laws and the horrifying lynching of blacks.

Donna Barron, the daughter of Roy Faulkner, the welder who completed the carving, speaks for those who want to preserve the monument as a historic shrine to those who fought and died for the Confederacy. The documentary shows a new group of young white males demonstrating at the park in favor of preserving the carving, protected from destruction or alteration by state law. 

Removing the monument would likely require dynamite, and the untrained Faulkner's carving is an impressive work of art. An exhibit is under way to give "perspective" on slavery, reconstruction, lynching and the imposition of Jim Crow laws.

Atlanta Beltway founder Ryan Gravel in an article in the British newspaper the Guardian called for the monument to be covered by the uncontrolled growth of foliage.

Hale and the History Center deserve praise for calling for an end to the state's support of an egregious monument to white supremacy.

But destroying the carving would be objectionable. The removal of a work of art, no matter how distasteful, would be a terrifying precedent.

Perhaps some kind of shroud could cover the carving, allowing viewing of the monument by those who venerate it or have a historical interest.

 

Conservative Republican Brian Kemp adds to alternative-energy stature

Ga. Gov. Brian Kemp runs the risk of being mistaken for a liberal.

A rising star of the climate change-denying Republican Party, Kemp landed yet another major alternative energy plant with Q Cells' $2.5 billion solar energy investment in Cartersville and Dalton.

The South Korean company owned by Hanwha Solutions will operate the United States' first complete solar panel supply chain, according to media reports. The corporation will assume a major presence in the state where Georgia Power has long sought to control solar power's growth. 

Generous tax incentives backed by Kemp and the Republican-controlled Georgia Legislature have sparked a boom in electrical vehicle and battery factories. Now, the state will lead the nation's solar panel economy in competition against China.

Kemp heralded Georgia's latest alternative energy plant, but the tax incentives in Democratic President Joe Biden's climate change and infrastructure law led to Q Cells' decision. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff wrote the solar panel inducements included in the act, supported by Sen. Raphael Warnock.

But the state tax incentive were also a significant factor. Under Kemp, Georgia is the national leader in the economic transition from fossil fuels, with Rivian's electric-truck factory east of Atlanta, South Korean SK corporation's electric battery plants and South Korean automaker Hyundai's electric vehicle investment in Savannah.

Kemp also sounded progressive Wednesday in announcing support for affordable housing. In a speech at the Georgia Chamber of Commerce's Eggs and Issues Breakfast, Kemp promised affordable housing programs so that workers can find places to live near their workplaces.

In another progressive development, a Republican-led Georgia House committee will study the state's woeful health care system, which could lead to Medicaid expansion, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article.

Kemp soundly defeated Democratic celebrity Stacey Abrams to win re-election in November after surviving former President Donald Trump's effort to defeat him in the Republican primary. Along with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Kemp defied Trump's machinations to overturn Biden's presidential election victory in Georgia.

Many moderate Georgia voters supported both Kemp and Warnock in the general election. While Kemp reluctantly supported Republican Herschel Walker in the runoff won by Warnock, the governor has worked closely with the Democratic senators, bringing economic development to the state.

In contrast to his green-economy accomplishments, Kemp has drawn Democratic ire for his support of restrictive election laws, harsh antiabortion legislation and gun rights measures.

Yet in boosting Georgia's solar panel and electric vehicle industries, Kemp stands as one of the nation's most progressive governors. His affordable housing stance matches that of progressive Democrats.

Atlanta will benefit from the new factories, which will form a radius surrounding the city. But  it's regrettable that Atlanta itself hasn't landed such a massive operation, which would add another dimension to the city's economy. Worker training for high-paying factory jobs would alleviate the city's persistent poverty and social inequality.

 

 

City of Buckhead movement returns to Georgia Legislature

A fresh batch of City of Buckhead yard signs proliferate as the Georgia Legislature begins another slog to springtime.

Last year, the movement calling for Buckhead to leave the city of Atlanta died in the legislative session.

But the new forest-green and gold signs reflect a resurgence, with heightened outrage over crime following the shocking stabbing death of 77-year-old Eleanor Bowles at her home and the slaying of Christopher Eberhart, a worker found shot to death in a Buckhead driveway.

New Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who co-authored the city of Buckhead bill last year as a state senator, will likely accelerate new legislation, unlike former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who bottled up the bill in committee. Jones in an interview with Axios didn't include city of Buckhead among his legislative priorities.

The death of former Speaker of the House David Ralston, who also scuttled city of Buckhead legislation, improves the effort's prospects.

New House Speaker Jon Burns, a longtime Ralston ally, appears likely to support Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens' opposition to the bill. But Burns might not match Ralston's ironclad control over rebellious Republicans eager to punish Georgia's Democratic-run capital city.

Jones' political future is uncertain following a special Fulton County grand jury's investigation into former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn Joe Biden's 2020 presidential election victory in Georgia.

The lieutenant governor, one of the few candidates supported by Trump who won election last fall, joined Georgia Republican leaders who registered as false electors for Trump.

Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis was forbidden to investigate Jones' role in Trump's Georgia intrigues, because she supported his Democratic opponent, Charlie Bailey.

But with the Trump investigation now headed to a regular grand jury empowered to seek indictments, Jones might face criminal prosecution, along with former GOP leader David Shafer and other prominent Republicans.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is pushing for the public release of the special grand jury's report, based on testimony of state officials and GOP notables such as former New York City Mayor and Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Trump in a phone call pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,000 votes to overturn Biden's Georgia victory. Raffensperger refused. Gov. Brian Kemp also denied Trump. Both Raffensperger and Kemp testified before the special grand jury.

If indicted, Jones might be forced to resign, which could derail city of Buckhead legislation in the Senate.

The strong Democratic contingent representing Atlanta in the Legislature likely will rebuff the city of Buckhead push. But Buckhead's boiling anti-crime fervor might galvanize GOP support.