'These people' are the Occupy Atlanta protesters fighting against what supporters call corporate greed and a lack of job creation. “We are here until the civic problems that brought us here are changed,” group spokesman Tim Franzen vowed Saturday.
Mr. Morris has other thoughts. "This Mr. Tranzin (sic) needs to find somewhere else for all his foolishness. I haven't had a good night's sleep in I don't know how long. They stay up all night, singing, dancing. We tryin' to just ignore it but they's too many of them and they get pretty loud." After thinking about that, he added, "And the smell! You know it's bad if a homeless man complains. These people make us poor folk smell like a bed of roses. Mayor Reid needs to do something about this mess fo some people start throwin up from the stench." Morris then compared the group's odor to that of the city zoo. "If I wanted to smell something this awful, I'd be over at Grant Park." he alleged, then added, "This here Woodruff."
Morris' comments didn't stop there. "I would like to know exactly how come the mayor sends the po-lice by every couple of hours and makes us change benches but these 'hoodlums' are allowed to stay here and stink up the whole neighborhood and they without a permit?"
Morris said the longtime 'residents' of Woodruff at first tried to encourage the protesters to leave but were unsuccessful. "I even showed one of those boys my knife, although I hated to resort to that. He weren't scared at all. This boy went to college! I don't know what they teaching in college but they ain't teaching these people to stay away from the homeless. Asked me if he could hold hold my knife. Acted like we on the same team or some such craziness." Continued Morris, "There was a time back when I first moved down here, young people would be scared of the homeless," said Morris. "In the 90s, all you'd have to do is ask them if they had something to smoke and they'd take off runnin," Morris said, with a toothy grin that recalled better days. "Now, they gots weed alright and they ain't afraid of sellin' it either. And you wouldn't believe how prices have gone up, just in the past month." Morris added: "I don't know what this world's coming to."
Told that Franzen only wants a fair shake for all the disenfranchised, including Mr. Morris, Morris rejected the connection. "He needs to speak for himself, that's what he needs to do. Seems to me all they interested in doing is finding an excuse the keep this party going. What do they think they can accomplish by playing all that guitar music? 'Oh I'm sorry suh. I didn't realize you was gonna play the guitar. Come on in and let me give you all jobs.' They crazy!"
Still, Morris contends, if the mayor won't step in, there are other peaceful ways to solve the problem. "We may have to wait until January, I guess. If they ain't gone by Christmas, January'll freeze 'em out. It's just a shame - I don't know when we've had such a bad element around here. Probably not since Georgia State let them Art majors take classes in the business building over there. That was a freak show, too."
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