 I spent evenings sitting inside watching cable news I've become satisfied with the idea that there was nothing I could do Then you started to become restless, started to get engaged Occupy Wall Street set up tents in Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011 to protest corporate greed and the influence of the big banks and wealthy donors on our political system Solidarity protests sprung up all over the country, including one in Athens that would have a big impact on local politics Solidarity So many cities involve United States sometimes, but we're trying to make it that way Tim Densen became a commissioner in 2018 and now in 2022 he's at the end of a very successful first term This is his story and the story of how a local protest movement changed Athens' politics forever Thanks for joining me Tim Sure Happy to be here Your time as commissioner is coming to an abrupt end in a couple months and looking back on your first term I think it's such an interesting story that I wanted to do an episode on it Full disclosure, I've been heavily involved in everything that we're going to be discussing today So I might be a bit biased about it I'm not trying to hide that, I wanted to throw that out there The Occupy Athens movement began in October about just 11 years ago Can you tell me why that happens? Why there was a local presence for the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York? Athens is a metro area that had a lot of people who were being impacted by the grievances that brought about Occupy in general, vast income and equality So many of the rich and billionaires were getting so many extra benefits and loopholes made for them while working class people struggled just to get by I can say what spoke to me about the Occupy movement even more than those social justice and economic justice issues was the very creative ideas behind the protests We're going to occupy space as part of the protests It was a very communal, populist kind of thing and it was all supposed to be one day I remember there was an organizing meeting where I saw them on Facebook That's like, hey, come make signs, we're going to have a one day Occupy protest of solidarity The next morning our plan was, I want to say it was like 9am or 8am we were supposed to come out and I had work that day but I was like, I'm going to get up early and come out before I have to go to work and I came out and it was probably like 80 of us by the time I left it was, you know, quite a few people I was like, okay, this is a lot more people were coming than going and I had to go to work and I went to work but when I was at work I was just still so excited from the energy and the people were coming and there was talk of us doing, you know, a meeting that night and possibly having a dinner that night and it was like, it was starting to grow so I was very excited at work and I decided like, alright, my shift is over I'm driving back down there and I came back down here and stayed late into the night What shall main long term or short term go? We want our voices heard and we want there to be dialogue We want the corruptive role of money and power and politics to be discussed The first step is discussion and you need to have that between like, enough of the public as possible and that involves everybody being well informed of the facts and then they're discussing their opinions based on the real facts Over those next few days, weeks and months I spent many nights out here sleeping out here I spent countless hours talking and learning with individuals really growing my own political understanding my own understanding around social justice, racial justice, economic justice it really turned to me and I think a lot of other people into a bit of an informal school on politics and economics and everything and it was just completely life changing to me and it showed me that I can do something even if it's small, I can do something and I felt very empowered from that especially whenever I felt maybe solidarity for the really first time as I like all of a sudden linked up with all these people who most of them I had never known before in my life and we started having these like real, sincere, genuine conversations about what was wrong with the world and what we think needed to change and how we could fix it Eventually Occupy Athens started focusing on local issues instead of national ones Tell me about how that transition occurred like what were some of the first local issues that you got involved in Yeah, I think that's one of the more interesting things that happened We were definitely focused on national politics, national economics simultaneous to this, there was, I think it started out as a very separate movement happening was protests and organizing against a downtown Walmart which would have been just down the street about half a mile and while Occupy didn't really take a stance specifically on the development as much definitely took a stance on some of the quote-unquote back door meetings closed door meetings that were going on around it and some of the questionable things that helped bring it about and which also helped kill a thing called Project Blue Heron which was going to be a big river district redevelopment thing and be more community focused There was a big rally at City Hall against this development again which Occupy spoke and which we had all decided that we were going to Occupy City Hall and so me and other organizers stood on the steps of City Hall announcing that we were going to Occupy City Hall This Walmart development is only a symptom of a larger problem Corruption in our local, state and national government and the tendency for those governments to side with corporate interests over the interests of the people The public was greeted with open arms in the mayor's office The people of our city had vital information hidden from them behind closed door meetings and were silenced when trying to speak their minds to the mayor and commissioners I am proud to say that Occupy Athens, acting alone and totally separate from People for Better Athens will be occupying City Hall until they bring a whole series of town hall meetings with the purpose of gathering the input from people of this town about the City Project really the pivot point here was the police were called threatened to arrest all the protesters even after they were told that they could stay and soon after that the mayor put on the agenda of one of the committees an urban camping law that was going to outlaw people from the area with the camp downtown So do you think this law was targeted at Occupy or was it more like do you think it was also against trying to get rid of the homeless population? I think it was definitely looked at as one of those things that could do both issues, two birds with one stone I think for the current government at that time and this was Mayor Nancy Denson This was Mayor Nancy Denson and there definitely were urban camping laws being passed in other places including Atlanta that was making it very difficult for the homeless population to be able to even sleep anywhere without breaking the law being arrested We saw I think a responsibility there that we helped bring about that reaction yet the people who were really going to be hurt by that law were going to be people unhoused people who are struggling So I think we felt a real responsibility to fight that law and so to do so we had to really engage with how local government works Myself and other folks started going to not only the Mayor and Commission meetings but the committee meetings were discussing this finding out what the rules of engagement and process were with those meetings how public comment worked and how we could skirt around those rules did a lot of organizing work around that and we successfully stopped that law and to me that success was really I think what gave the energy for myself and all the other Occupy organizers to really go to that next level and we all started learning these skills we figured things out as we screwed up and covered new ideas So you're saying as you learned all these skills and knowledge about how to interact with the local government you decided that hey I could use this for more than just the urban camping law I could apply this to transit advocacy I could apply this to living wages advocacy We started getting a little bit of notice and we were I think a little more impact and we realized what potential was there Before he became a commissioner Tim ran for Mayor in 2014 against incumbent Nancy Denson No relation Most of the things that happen that we see that we work on as a commission and some local government tons of little things constantly but they all kind of add up I mean everything from our benches downtown no longer have unnecessary poles down the middle that were being used just to try to be comfortable for people to lay down take a nap take a rest if they needed to Mayor Nancy Denson was very conservative for a democrat but she was running unopposed and that's why Tim says he decided to give her a challenge Did you think that you could win or if not why did you decide to run because you were an unknown candidate at that point Yeah you know I think whenever we launched the mayoral campaign you know everything what we were doing at that point was somewhat a form of protest the whole idea was that if nobody ran against Mayor Nancy Denson that I would and nobody else threw their hat in and so I think we used the opportunity to not only try to win that campaign which I definitely ran to win but knowing that if I didn't at least we're bringing these issues up to the forefront that needed to be brought up talking about that there was a lot of other solutions that weren't being explored like oh we can use this as a movement building entity which we did channeling all that momentum all the volunteers all of the platformer and researcher policy using that all to go into and create Athens for Everyone the political and non-profit that we formed basically and neatly out of that my my speech at the end of the campaign was basically the launching speech of Athens for Everyone this campaign was about me this campaign was about everyone else in this community and in that matter it doesn't matter that I have less votes it doesn't matter at all it doesn't matter that Nancy will have four more years because Nancy is going to have to deal with me and the thousands of other people who voted to have an Athens for everyone and your platform during that run included some very big topics like STI for a living wage for all Athenians guarantee access to pre-K education for all children encourage the spread of affordable housing and then some more focused ones like Sunday bus service, zero fare service legalizing backyard chickens on your platform and you criminalizing cannabis and providing digital recordings of all public meetings so the big issues were still working on but the more focused stuff has mostly all been accomplished by this point and do you think something like fare free bus service would have happened if not for your mayoral run? Absolutely, I don't think it would we very much normalized it over the many years I think it also shows that I think fare free bus service is probably the biggest, most impactful thing that we pulled off that really I think is a complete shift in the way that we think about public services and such you know I don't think that would have happened unless if we hadn't kept with it and sure that was announced on my platform back in 2013 we finally really got it done in 2020, I mean it took seven years it took seven years of like pretty consistent working and pushing on it from all different levels outside from like public advocacy from the policy research and stuff that was done with Athens for everyone to of course the other integral part of being me being on the commission and being on the commission with a lot of other willing commissioners and a mayor who was willing to take this on and really try to do it but even you know some of the commissioners who very much laughed and balked and called it crazy before supported it and voted for it because I think we kind of normalized this idea I also asked about the legacy of the defunct advocacy group Athens for everyone what did it accomplish? I don't think there's any way that we could have said that we would have swept those elections with progressives winning across the basically every single candidate that Athens for everyone endorsed except for one school board member one bringing about a major shift in the way that our local government works and also I think a huge part of this is just bringing so much focus on the local government really bringing about a shift that people need to pay attention to local government that a lot of things can get done here not everything I think sometimes we've maybe shifted too much everybody looks for every solution every problem maybe on the local government which that's not necessarily there but we brought a huge spotlight onto city hall and local government and the fact that people can be engaged with it people can make demands, people can advocate so I think that's that's the legacy despite the remarkable wins in 2018 for Tim's first two years progressives were still a minority on the commission even so they were able to end cash bail for local ordinances they resolved to achieve 100% clean energy by 2035 they instructed police to accept passports as ID at traffic stops to protect the undocumented community and they reacted quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic to set up a shelter in place and mask ordinance so tell me about those first two years was it like you expected you know the commission like when you finally got there in some ways you know it was definitely a ton of work and there was definitely a big learning curve but yeah I'm definitely proud that we were able to get some stuff done we weren't even recording all of our meetings one of the things that I was doing during my campaign and stuff and even after the campaign with Athens for everyone is we were going to the work sessions and recording them and streaming them online because our local government wouldn't do it and I can tell you this like now it's insane that our work sessions were ever not broadcast and recorded because so much gets done there and then in 2020 Deborah Gonzalez a very progressive DA was elected district attorney and Carol Myers was also elected to the commission as well as Jesse Hool got on there as well they became commission under very unfortunate circumstances but Hool was a progressive all those candidates were very progressive and so at this point we weren't even charged by the local government for I think one of the first times ever possibly I think we really hit a tipping point we really did where we had the power and ability to really pursue some of those bigger things that we were just a little bit short of before and that was a game changer so yeah I think once they came on the commission that was really a big pivot point where we had to leverage to get some of these things done that we've been trying to work on for a while just couldn't get them over to the finish line over the past two years commissioners have begun programs like Fair Free Bus Service a police alternative for 911 responses living wages for all county employees an inclusionary zoning policy to encourage affordable housing an eviction prevention program an anti-discrimination ordinance a human relations commission an in town resolution and a police oversight committee what are you most proud of having accomplished um yeah it's hard to say I mean I think I would say the eviction prevention program because it's been I think one of the most directly impactful programs with just like four months under its belt it had already kept 270 families from being evicted from their homes it had a real massive direct impact improvement that happens to those families and that has improvements for the entire community too and the other one I would say would definitely be Fair Free Public Transit but also like public art we have seen a massive increase in the amount of public art that has popped up in our community and a massive increase on how much we started funding public art here and not just so that we created public art for everybody to enjoy that's a big part of it we have a lot of support our artists that we have here in Athens and getting back to affordable housing real quick so I know it's true that that eviction prevention program has helped a lot of people but I also think that the need is possibly greater now than it has been in the past what else can we do going forward like have you really exhausted the options at the local level or is there anything else that we can do not at all a lot of this goes back to all the way back to the recession that during the recession if you look at our growth of our community plus the growth of our housing stock the number of housing units that were being produced it was keeping up at a very comparable ratio up until the recession and then after the recession hits the production of our housing units dropped pretty pretty far down and never has picked back up to the level that it needs to for population of growth so you have that factor you have the pandemic the student housing plus that Athens just has become a very highly desirable place to live plus short term rentals you add all of these things together and when the pandemic happened and as we look now with inflation happening we kind of had this perfect storm for this to happen and so for us to tackle this it requires a lot of different tools it requires us to regulate short term rentals it requires us to find ways to increase the production of housing in general but of course specifically to affordable housing we need to be hitting all of these different approaches it's not where nothing we have a lot of things that still need to be changed our land use map has to be updated and the biggest thing that we have to change that comes to the commission which I'm very worried about is the mindset of commissioners density is not bad density does not mean low quality of life I'm sure you would like to continue this work on affordable housing but you and some of the other progressive commissioners are not running for election this year or you're not able to so would you like to talk about why that's the case? yeah I have some enemies in the wrong places you know there was a very intentional redistricting effort to get myself and commissioners Russell Edwards and Melissa Link unable to run for reelection the people who did this are the republican legislators at the state level people like Houston Gaines or Bill Kouser do you think they're threatened by you like why did they do this? I can say that they definitely don't respect democracy very much but I guess that's not big news is there something specific that they didn't like that you did? I spoke to Houston Gaines who was the sponsor of the bill and he told me that Melissa Link was mean to him he told me that Russell Edwards didn't respect him this is all paraphrase of course basically and that I didn't respect him and that I was never was willing to work with him I never called upon him to work with things spoiler every time we talked about policy I called him every single time he never reached out to me once so what do you think it is? I think it's politics and the way they drew the maps they were drawn in ways to help it try to open the door up for conservatives to get in there you know to me it's just unfortunate that I have political differences with Houston and definitely not always happy with sometimes not happy but you never put your own personal vendettas, personal things over the needs and the choices of the community I think it was just pretty disrespectful to the Athens-Lark County community I plan on using the next four years to serve and work on the school board and bring good things there but also to help organize our community back to be able to have the power to work for the majority of a vocal conservative minority who uses gerrymandering and other tricks to try to bring about their own power Is there anything that you're still working on in the next two months that you'd like to get accomplished before you leave for office? Yes I am busting my ass to get a few things done before I'm out doing tons of work on housing I am hoping to have recommendations for short term rentals out of committee These are things like Airbnb's Airbnb's so that we can put a regulation like how many of them there can be where they can be, how they can operate and that they will have to be paying their taxes and fees and such to the county like any other hotel or any other business has to and then also working very hard to get some recommendations on accessory dwelling units so that people could be able to have say small apartments or in-law suites in their backyard built to again expand our housing stock There's a lot that's going on that I'm hoping that we'll get done a lot of these projects that we've had going on for years I unfortunately won't be on the commission to see them I'll get finalized but I'm hoping they will be done sooner rather than later Yeah well thanks for so much for coming on my show Yeah, thank you and thanks the Athens community for giving me a chance and hopefully they'll give me a chance again in the future What I've learned from all of this is that moving our community in a progressive direction is a long-term project but real change is possible if we stand together and demand it Bye for now