Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (Atlanta, GA), Mayor LaToya Cantrell (New Orleans, LA), Mayor Lori Lightfoot (Chicago, IL).
Mayors Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans by most accounts have demonstrated grit, determination and the kind of leadership needed to help their citizens navigate the ravages of the disease at a time when there is a lack of national leadership to help them.
“As the mayor of Georgia’s largest city, I expressed opposition to Gov. Brian Kemp’s recent order allowing certain businesses—dine-in restaurants, gyms, hair and nail salons, barbershops, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys—to reopen before health experts say doing so is safe.
However, Lightfoot is grappling with many young people being non-compliant with the shelter-in-place orders her city is aggressively enforcing in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 in its neighborhoods; black neighborhoods, in particular.
Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, a professor of Urban and Regional Planning and the director of the Center for Urban Studies at the University of Buffalo, said we should not give these mayors a pass or holding them partly responsible for the catastrophic impact the pandemic has had on the black communities in their cities.
