“What I see happening on the streets of Atlanta is not Atlanta. This is not a protest. This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” an impassioned Bottoms said at a news conference. “This is chaos.”
Bottoms, a former judge and city council member, was sworn in as mayor in 2018 and has quickly emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars. On Friday night, amid a swirl of increasingly tense and occasionally violent scenes, she faced the cameras, her constituents — and the country.
“I am a mother to four black children in America, one of whom is 18 years old. And when I saw the murder of George Floyd, I hurt like a mother would hurt,” Bottoms said. “And yesterday when I heard there were rumors about violent protests in Atlanta, I did what a mother would do, I called my son and I said, ‘Where are you?’ I said, ‘I cannot protect you and black boys shouldn’t be out today.'”
She stopped for a moment, pursed her lips, and then delivered a frank and personal message.
“So, you’re not going to out-concern me and out-care about where we are in America,” Bottoms said. “I wear this each and every day, and I pray over my children, each and every day.”
She dismissed the federal targeting of migrants as a means of reducing crime, as the Trump administration has often framed it, and said her office would provide legal assistance to immigrant families, in English and Spanish, and warned those communities to be vigilant ahead of the scheduled sweeps.
“Our officers don’t enforce immigration borders,” Bottoms said. “We’ve closed our city detention centers to ICE because we don’t want to be complicit in family separation.”
From there on, she became one of his strongest surrogates, attending other debates and standing by his side even as the polls showed Biden slipping ahead of the first round of voting this year.
Bottoms’ assessment of a campaign still in flux would be proven out over the coming months, as African American voters, especially older members of the community in states like South Carolina, helped revive Biden’s campaign and vault him to the front of the primary pack. By April, he had consolidated the field and emerged as the party’s presumptive nominee.
In a statement Saturday, Biden campaign national spokesman TJ Ducklo applauded Bottoms’ grace under fire.
“Vice President Biden has been grateful for Mayor Bottoms’ support and counsel since the earliest days of our campaign,” Ducklo said. “Her passion, her empathy and her strong and steady leadership are shining through during this difficult moment, and the city of Atlanta is lucky to have her leading the way.”
Bottoms ‘spoke to us from the heart’
“Mayor Bottoms spoke to us from the heart not just as a leader, but as a mother of four black children, reminding us that the safety and freedom of our families and our community must remain our primary collective focus,” said Amico, who is running in Georgia’s Democratic Senate primary on June 9.
The protests in Atlanta had started peacefully Friday afternoon, when crowds gathered in the city’s famed Centennial Park. But by 6 p.m. ET, demonstrators began moving toward the front of the CNN Center, where police had gathered. Over the next few hours, the gathering swelled as SWAT officers were called in to confront the crowds.
Later, protesters could be seen damaging the CNN Center in downtown Atlanta, which is sandwiched between State Farm Arena and Centennial Park.
“There was a black reporter who was arrested on camera this morning, who works for CNN. They are telling our stories, and you are disgracing their building,” she said. “We are no longer talking about the murder of an innocent man. We’re talking about how you’re burning police cars on the streets of Atlanta, Georgia.”
Demonstrators funneled their anguish in cities like New York and Washington into chants, signs and occasional outbreaks of disorder, smashing windows and setting vehicles ablaze. Police in New York were also captured on video posted to social media lashing out violently at protesters in Brooklyn.
“A protest has purpose. When Dr. King was assassinated, we didn’t do this to our city,” Bottoms said in Atlanta. “If you want change in America, go and register to vote … That is the change we need in this country.”
This story has been updated Saturday with additional developments.