-My guest tonight is the mayor of the great city of Atlanta.
Please welcome to the show, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Mayor, thank you so much for making time for us today.
I want to start by a speech you gave last week.
You spoke both as a mayor and as a mother.
It was passionate. It felt very honest.
How hard has it been for you to address your city
in this really trying time?
-You know, what you got from me on Friday, Seth,
was every emotion that I've been feeling
over the past week or so.
And you got it unfiltered on Friday.
And like so many people,
we all have so many emotions about this.
And whether it's watching it, feeling it in ourselves,
or watching it with our kids
or our communities, I had a platform Friday
just to express what I felt and that frustration.
And I can tell you, I didn't plan on saying any of that.
I didn't know what I was going to say when I said it on Friday.
And in fact, after I was done,
I couldn't remember what I had said.
And I think, you know, it really speaks to
how built up and just how full I felt on Friday.
But I'm just grateful that it resonated with so many people.
-You have made the point,
which I think a lot of people would share,
that the president should stop talking.
When he talks, it's not particularly helpful.
He obviously spoke last night about the need
for law enforcement to dominate the people in the streets.
How do you both protect your city
and communicate with your law enforcement officers
as to how to move forward with what's happening in your city?
-This is a really delicate balance,
and ironically, just as I was walking in here
to record with you, I was speaking with
my 18-year-old son, and he was telling me --
showing me another video, and his frustration.
And what I was trying to articulate to him was,
when I said on Friday, "I can't protect you,"
what I was expressing was that
our law enforcement officers are tired.
They are beyond exhausted at this point.
They're working 18-hour shifts
to try and maintain some common stability in our cities.
And we understand the frustration and the anger,
and all of these emotions that people are experiencing
right now.
It's understandable.
But on the other side of this, you also have
many of our officers, especially in Atlanta,
who are African-American men,
who are experiencing these same emotions.
They're experiencing it because of who they are and the children
that they also are raising in this country.
And...it's a difficult balance.
Showing that support, asking our officers to show restraint
and compassion, while also trying to maintain
some type of order in our streets
when we have so many peaceful protesters.
But we have so many other people who are just attempting
to be disrupters right now.
-You and the chief of police made the decision
to fire two police officers after watching video
of their behavior.
How do you balance both supporting police officers
and making sure you remove the bad actors
within the police force?
Because it does strike me that what everybody wants to believe,
what all citizens want to believe,
that if there are bad police officers,
they'll be removed from the force.
Is that hopefully the message that comes across
when you make a decision like that?
-It certainly is. And the reality is that,
had this incident happened last week,
we probably would have taken a little more time
to look at what happened with this incident
and with these officers and --
but what we've seen over the past week is,
we don't have the luxury of time anymore.
We have to act swiftly,
especially when it's very clear that our officers
are not behaving appropriately.
And I think that is what's to be expected or should be expected
from so many of us across the country now.
And it's also a culture shift for many of our police officers,
that they have to understand that they won't always
have another chance to get it right.
And again, it's a shift
that we saw the Obama/Biden administration making
when they left the handbook on 21st Century Policing.
It's the same handbook -- it's a handbook
that they probably left alongside the pandemic handbook
that the Trump administration never picked up.
But one of the major pillars of 21st Century Policing
is that you create trustworthy relationships with communities
on the front end.
And so, you do things like we're doing in Atlanta,
where you have a center of hope where our police recruits go
and volunteer and spend time with the kids
so their first interaction with them
is not a negative interaction.
Where you have implicit bias training.
And there were several pillars to this program.
And we've done a very good job in Atlanta, by and large,
in following those pillars.
But it's got to happen across the country.
And it's got to come from a national level
in terms of expectations.
-Someone else who spoke passionately on stage with you
last Friday was the rapper Killer Mike.
He had incredibly inspiring words.
How does it come to pass that you end up with a rapper
on stage with you?
-Well, again, these relationships
are existing relationships.
The irony, Killer Mike, T.I., and I all went
to the same high school.
I was a little ahead of both of them,
because I'm a little older than them.
But we bleed Atlanta. We love Atlanta.
And so, Killer Mike and T.I. worked on my transition
when I went into office.
But -- and I could probably name ten other celebrities
in Atlanta who've reached out and said,
"What is it that I could do to help?"
So, this is not the first time that Killer Mike
has been at the table with us setting policy for our city,
and having these real conversations about
where we need to go and how we need to approach it.
Because again, I look at everything
as the lens of a mother.
And I know I can say something ten different ways
and all my kids hear, "Whomp, whomp, whomp."
But if T.I. says it, if Killer Mike says it,
it's going to translate, and it's going to be heard
and it's going to be felt differently.
And so on Friday, when everything started to unravel
in Atlanta, I didn't have a very clear picture
of what we needed to do.
But I knew the voices that needed to be heard.
And that's why you saw Killer Mike, and Bernice King,
and T.I., and Joe Beasley
and some other community leaders standing with me.
-And I should make it clear that while he's
one of my favorite rappers, he's also an incredible activist.
And I think that really came through
when he was on stage with you.
You mentioned your older son, who just graduated high school
in quarantine, is that correct?
-That's right. -You also --
one of your younger sons is, I believe
you've referred to it as "Club Quarantine."
He's learning how to deejay through this time?
-He is and he loves it.
He has a little corner set up in my office.
And now he even stays up all night like a deejay.
When I get up at 6:00 in the morning to take a shower,
he's taking a shower to go to bed.
So, we're going to have to undo some quarantine behaviors.
But yeah, it -- that's -- that's been the upside of this.
-All right. Give all your kids our best.
And give our best to the city of Atlanta.
And best of luck with everything.
We really appreciate the work you're doing.
-And thank you so much for just giving me a platform
to talk about this.
And I appreciate your dedicating time
to these very real discussions
about where we are in this country.
I appreciate you.
-All right. Thank you, Mayor.
-Thank you.