Racial and political tensions remain high in Atlanta and the latest evidence is the fact that a longtime and well-known restaurant is being monitored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its company president Susan DeRose has been under police protection.
“How did it get to this?” DeRose asks. The president of the company that operates the OK Café at Northside Parkway and West Paces Ferry Road near Interstate-75 provides some background.
“For those who know us, you’ll know that we are not here just to make money. For 41 years we’ve served up Southern hospitality and helped showcase and identify our Southern culture. Our aim was – and is – to make Atlanta a world class city. Liberty House Restaurant Corp. is part of the fabric of Atlanta.”
Yet DeRose says she and the OK Café are “under attack.” “On June 7th, a few days after the destructive riots in our city center and throughout Buckhead, some people felt it right to organize a march down West Paces Ferry Road to “bring the people of Buckhead out from behind their screens’ (the marcher’s cry).”
DeRose continues:
“By June 7th, OK Café and Blue Ridge Grill (also owned by Liberty House) had only reopened 4 days before and, like all others in the shopping center, we weighed the dangers of looting or harm to our staff and customers so we closed again. The marchers took over our parking lot anyways, so no customers could have parked. The marchers were mostly peaceful – that day.
“For our part, we put up two signs at OK Café and served tea. As is our 1st amendment right to do. The banner read: “Lives that Matter Are Made with Positive Purpose.” Blue Ridge Grill had a tent and served lemonade. Their sign read: “Law & Order = Peace.”
And Marvin Gaye’s lyrics:
“Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me
So you can see
What’s going on.”
“And lastly a red, white, and blue sign draped the front of OK Café on Northside Parkway. Loud and proud it read: ‘OK Café LOVES America.’ Since then we have received hundreds of negative reviews online. We have been told, kneel or go out of business.” All accompanied by the radicals’ threats.
DeRose, in a letter to friends and customers, is defiant. She says operations and customer service will go on in spite of America-haters. And she concludes in her letter: “If loving America is wrong – I don’t wanna be right. And our great and mighty team stands with us on this point.”
