 | | Downtown Powder Springs, Ga. Powder Springs and Austell, with under 25,000 people, will stand as a lone blue corner in a sea of red in the new 14th District.Nicole Craine for The New York Times |
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A Georgia City Reckons With a New District |
POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. — Less than a 30-minute drive from Atlanta, Powder Springs embodies the changes reshaping Georgia politics. Shops and restaurants owned almost entirely by Black proprietors line its downtown center and are frequented by a growing population of young and racially diverse residents. The suburban city elected its first Black mayor in 2015, and the county where it sits, the former Republican stronghold of Cobb, voted for President Biden by 14 percentage points in 2020. |
There is one other big change: Powder Springs, a majority Black city, may soon be represented in Congress by Marjorie Taylor Greene. |
That development, the result of new district maps drawn by Georgia state legislators, was part of a Republican drive to blunt Democrats' power. But for residents, the prospect of Powder Springs and another predominantly Black suburb, Austell, being represented by perhaps the most far-right Republican in Congress is raising questions that go beyond partisan politics. Some say they have little trust that Ms. Greene will pay them the same attention and respect that she gives to her white, Republican constituents and fear their voice in Congress won't speak for them. |
"It's about having someone that's going to take your phone calls, who's going to work on your behalf, who's going to care what happens to your children, who is going to care about making sure you get to your job," said State Representative David Wilkerson, a Black Democrat who lives in and represents the communities now drawn into Ms. Greene's congressional district. "That's what people are looking for." |
The newly drawn 14th Congressional District is a result of a tactic called "cracking," the practice of breaking up blocs of voters and scattering them across multiple districts to dilute their voting power. It is common and legal under federal law, unless found by a court to be deliberately used to prevent voters of the same race from electing a representative of their choice. |
Ms. Greene, who is best known as a bomb-thrower on social media, has said little about how she would represent the communities new to her district if she wins re-election in November. She did not respond to requests for comment. |
In November, she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she was unhappy that her district was made slightly less Republican, calling the redistricting process a "fool's errand that was led by power-obsessed state legislators." Rather than add Democrats to her district, she said, lawmakers "should have fortified G.O.P. districts for the long term instead." |
Ms. Greene won her seat by more than 50 percentage points in 2020 and her district will remain bright red under the new maps. It will still stretch through Georgia's predominantly white and rural countryside all the way to its mountainous Tennessee border. Powder Springs and Austell, with their combined population of under 25,000 people, will stand as a lone blue corner in a sea of red in the new 14th District. |
To be sure, plenty of Democratic voters around the country are represented by Republicans, and vice versa. But some voters see Ms. Greene's brand of Republicanism as a particular affront. The congresswoman has followed the QAnon conspiracy theory and questioned whether the Sept. 11 attack and school shootings were real — comments that got her ousted from congressional committees by the Democratically led House. |
She is facing a legal challenge to her candidacy after a group of Georgia voters sued to remove her from the ballot. The group argues that her comments in the days leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including calling the day "our 1776 moment," helped incite the riot. Ms. Greene testified that she was referring to "the courage to object" to the election results but was not calling for violence. |
Read the rest of the story here. |
 | | During the month of Ramadan, the group Muslims Giving Back offers a mobile soup kitchen in Herald Square every night at 11 p.m.James Estrin/The New York Times |
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Why Ramadan Generates Millions in Charitable Giving Every Year |
Muhammad Harby fasts from sunrise to sunset during the holy month of Ramadan. Then, after he breaks his fast, he heads from Brooklyn to Midtown Manhattan every day for a late night appointment with hundreds of homeless New Yorkers who rely on him and other Muslim volunteers for a hot meal. |
They pass out chicken and rice, vegetables and fresh fruit from a food truck run by Muslims Giving Back, a charity based in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, whose activities — and coffers — swell during Ramadan, when Islamic teachings urge Muslims to donate to charity and do good works for the neediest around them. |
For Mr. Harby, a kung fu teacher who came to the United States in 1995, there is no better place to celebrate Ramadan than New York. |
"Believe it or not, I love Ramadan in New York City more than Egypt," he said. "Back home, I would be so much with my friends and family, being invited here and there, and not focusing on worship and things like that. Here it is easy to focus on prayer and helping people." |
Prayer and helping people are theologically central to Islam. While non-Muslims may best know Ramadan as a month of fasting, it is also a time of year that sees a surge in charitable giving, both in New York and around the world. |
Muslim New Yorkers are a diverse community whose members have roots in dozens of countries and range from white collar professionals to low-wage laborers. Many share little beside their religion, which is the city's third largest, after Christianity and Judaism. |
The faith is based on the Five Pillars of Islam, a collection of foundational beliefs and practices that include a belief in God and his final prophet, Mohamed; prayer; fasting during Ramadan; making the pilgrimage to Mecca; and charitable giving, or zakat. |
Islam calls on Muslims to set aside 2.5 percent of their accumulated wealth each year for zakat, said Khalid Latif, the executive director of the Islamic Center at New York University. It is based on a religious understanding that a person's good fortune depends upon, and is owed to, the community around them. |
Read the rest of the story here. |
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