GTCO-ATL March on T-Mobile

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The community members of Margaret Harris Comprehensive School for the disabled children of DeKalb County led a march today that started in their community, ran up LaVista Road and ended at the T-mobile sales location at the corner of Northlake Highway. 

This area of DeKalb County was first featured in our GTCO-ATL You-Tube video back in August 2011.  When we fought to have Brockett Elementary removed from the school board list, there were 86 cell towers in a 4-mile radius of our school. 

After the July 11 vote, we decided to stay involved with this issue and help other families who were likely not informed about the decision to place a tower near their home or school.   We released a YouTube video that we had originally expected we would need to continue our Brockett protest in front of the DeKalb County Office of Planning and Sustainability.

In May 2011 the Millers (pictured above as they went door to door
to gain petition signatures) were very much alone
on their road to uncovering the truth surrounding the
controversial decision by the DeKalb County School Board
to place cell phone towers on school grounds.

But, we were fortunate and several board members responded to our email and petition and voted yes on an ammendement that removed us from the list.  They also removed Medlock and Meadowview Elementary Schools.  The Medlock community had already been approached by T-mobile several months before the other schools and they were enticed with all kinds of promises like turning the tower into a monumnet with their mascot at the top  or making the tower look similar to a large pine tree.  Medlock's neighborhood association members were not interested and that likely led to the next approach T-mobile took  in this process.

At the end of the 2011 school term, when parents and kids are very busy, there are lots of papers coming home everyday, activities to attend at school and vacation plans in the works, the DCSS threw a monkey wrench into things for a lot of people.  A flyer came home in the backpacks of the kids that announced meetings about cell tower coverage that would be held at several school locations. 

"It was not until after the meeting that we learned the true intent was to place a tower at our school," says Cheryl Miller, GTCO-ATL co-founder.  "And every day since I learned that fact I have been involved in some way in this whole cell tower nightmare."

Today, they were joined by hundreds of protesters from all over the county who marched from their schools to
congregate outside a T-mobile location near Northlake Mall in Atlanta.

A big concern for Miller and her husband Paul was that the meetings were obviously intended to garner low attendence.  The Millers say that threw up red flags for both of them, so they set out to figure out what the school board thought they would have objected to, if they had actually attended the meeting.

"If one single person would have approached us to say this is why you should not be concerned about the cell tower and here is a list of the good things it will do for your school, I think we would have both been relieved and said 'Thanks.'  And that would be the end of it," said Paul Miller.

Instead the Millers have reported a plethora of conflicting stories and explanations that they received to their questions that range from officers of their PTA on up to the county commissioners and the DeKalb Office of Planning and Sustainability and CEO's office, which should normally be overseeing the zoning regulations on issues like these.

"With every step we took to try to figure out what was going on, we just found out more and more bad news," said Cheryl Miller.  "Bad for the parents, bad for the children and bad for the taxpayers of our county.  It has to end somewhere."

Local communities have printed signs to mark their
communities as being clearly against the cell tower
decision which has helped bring even  more awareness to
others in the county who may not have heard about the
issue or how the residents feel about being left out
of the decision-making process.

In the meantime, Miller stated, they will continue to follow the issue until the end, whatever that may be.  So, today's march was more of a step in the process than it was a victory for the Millers.

"We've wanted to hold a march to draw attention to T-mobile's poor citizenship and greed almost from the very beginning.  So, we were very happy to finally see that part of our mission realized today with the help of the awesome communities who are fighting on behalf of their schools."

Paul Miller says it is unfortunate that the towers may start going up as early at Jan. 12, the due diligence deadline assumed if there were inital contracts signed under Ramona Tyson back  in July as was indicated would be the case at the time.  He said it has been the most difficult to reach some of the South DeKalb schools who may not have as much ready access to computers and have unfortunately been overlooked by the more organized groups like the PTA-driven Briarlake and neighborhood association-driven Margaret Harris. 

Even Lakeside High School, which reportedly initiated the request with the school system to provide them with better cell phone reception, has a community action group assembled to protest the towers.  The issues surrounding the Get the Cell Out mission have been documented and discussed in a popular blog that has muliple contribors and invites discussion and feedback.  It is located at www.GETtheCELLoutATL.org.  From there, you can acess the countywide petition: www.thepetitionsite.com/1/GTCO-ATL,  to protest the cell towers slated for these public schools, along with Martin Luther King, Jr. High, Narvie J. Harris, Princeton, Jolly, Smoke Rise and Flat Rock.

The cell tower battle in DeKalb County has remained in
front of the public for months on end as the protest
continues to gain more momentum and the D.A. is reportedly
investigating the School Board for criminal activity.

The Millers have also worked with several groups in an effort to spread the word in South and Central DeKalb such as Unhappy Tazpayer and Voter, Concerned Citizens of South DeKalb and CHASE (Citizens for a Healthy and Safe Environment).
"We believe the key to stopping these towers is to unite the county in protest and show solidarity for the cause regardless of how any of the schools may feel about each other or how they think about various other issues," he says.  "We have studied how these deals go down in other parts of the country and the basic tactic that wins every time is 'divide and conquer.'"

He says they have tried to stay a step ahead of T-mobile, but that effort will not be successful if the DeKalb Planning Department or CEO does not get more involved.  The immediate concern is the claims being made that the school board can exempt T-mobile from our local zoning laws.  The next conccern is that the permit they plan to issue is one that does not require public input. So, the neighborhoods that were already overlooked by the school boad will again be ignored by the county.

"It kind of makes you wonder what you pay taxes for, or why we are fighting in a war to protect our rights if we are willing to give them up so easily, doesn't it?" says Miller. 

Miller states that through their group Get the Cell Out - Atlanta Chapter, they have been able to notify and reach out to all the affected communities and have assisted many of them with the process of sharing information with each other.  The result has uncovered a lot of information and conflicting stories that may even catch the attention of the District Attorney or Special Grand Jury in light of their recent announcement that they are looking at the DeKalb School Board very closely.

Children at elementary schools across DeKalb County, who are likely too young to really know what a cell tower is, are getting an early education on the right to peaceful protest.  Parents say they are saddened that they have to teach their kids this lesson with an issue that involves their own school.  These children at Briarlake Elementary School in Decatur will likely lose their playground or their outdoor classroom as a result of the school board's actions.

While the Millers say they applaud the efforts of the schools who participated in the demonstration today, they want to remind every school to be vigilant in keeping an eye out for any activity on the proposed sites and continue to hound the zoning office until they get some answers about the permit process.

The next step?  The Millers say they can't reveal all of their game plan, mainly because it can change from day to day depending on what is learned or what T-mobile does next.  But, they have suggested that the fight will continue and is actually gaining credibility. 

There might be legal battles ahead for some communities while the Millers are hoping to make positive contributions to the future. 

"We hope to work together with our state legislators to enact some type of law or referendum either locally or statewide to stop this process from repeating itself," says Cheryl Miller.  "We're seeing more progressive states like Californina and admired the progress they are making in order to protect their children and that's what we hope to be able to do here."

For more, see this story at CBS Atlanta:  http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/16469365/dekalb-co-parents-protest-against-cell-towers-on-campuses