On July 14, PAWKids, a family enrichment center, will open a food pantry and neighborhood resource center called Claudia’s House to serve residents of Grove Park. With no grocery store or pharmacy and the local food pantries and meat market having closed due to COVID-19, the area has become a food desert. Located at 1633 Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway, the building will provide cooked meals, food items, hygiene products and more to neighbors. According to LaTonya Gates, founder of PAWKids, a grant from Northside United Methodist Church, the guidance of Grove Park Renewal Executive Director Justin Bleeker and the advocacy of Atlanta City Councilman Dustin Hillis, PAWKids was able to renovate the building and bring it up to code Now Gates’s goal is to raise $180,000 in the next six months so PAWKids can purchase the building outright. For more information, visit the organization’s Facebook page.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has convened the Atlanta Youth Entrepreneurship Advisory Council comprised of community members and partners to develop strategies to help promote youth entrepreneurship in the city. The council will recommend strategies for the development of fueling the entrepreneurial spirit of young people throughout the city and support the entrepreneurial goals of young water vendors often seen on street corners. Recommendations are expected by July 17.

A monument dedicated to soldiers on both sides of the Civil War’s Battle of Peachtree Creek as it previously appeared on the Piedmont Atlanta Hospital campus. (Gould B. Hagler)

A Civil War monument praising the “valor” of both sides in the conflict has been permanently removed from Piedmont Atlanta Hospital campus in the wake of renewed controversy nationwide over statues and other displays honoring the Confederacy. The monument had been removed for construction of the new hospital tower on Peachtree Road in Buckhead, but will not return. The removal is the latest in a revaluation of the monuments. The “Lost Cause” obelisk was removed from the Decatur Square in June, while Confederate Avenue in Grant Park was renamed United Avenue in 2019. The largest monument, the memorial carving on the side of nearby Stone Mountain, remains a lightening rod of controversy. On July 4, a self-proclaimed Black militia group called the Not F****** Around Coalition (NFAC) led 200 armed marchers in a protest that called for the removal of the memorial. Viral video of the march was widely distributed on social media, according to a report from ABC News, including the one below. Even Atlanta BeltLine creator Ryan Gravel weighed in on what to do with the Stone Mountain carving in a recent op-ed in The Guardian. One of Gravel’s solutions: let nature reclaim the mountain and obscure the carving.
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