Six months ago, as Atlantans were preparing for school and work, they might have seen an unremarkable fellow; black, burly and in dark glasses, tossing their curbside refuse into the back of a stinking trash truck and thought, you know what? That cat looks like the mayor. And he should. Because he is.

Mayor Reed Works Garbage Route: MyFoxATLANTA.com

This little pantomime had some of the stink of the political theater to it. For one thing the astonishingly corrupt, charmless and incompetent Bill Campbell, Mayor Reed’s predecessor once removed, had done something identical. It put him in the hospital. But for a press stunt there was little press appeal. Reporters, as shown in the video, had to pursue their object and ambush him like some purveyor of poisoned dog food on 60 Minutes. But that would be the ultimate PR sucess, wouldn’t it, making a cynical day of stagecraft appear like a tooth-pulling exercise? If that is the case, Mission Accomplished, as the footage looks legit to this uber-skeptic and it seems no one denies that he put in a full day of vigorous labor.

To many an Atlantan now, Mohammed  Kasim Reed, our 59th Mayor is known as The Trash Man. Most of you would be better served by your local governments than you are now if you had him on your payroll. Like the real trash men, Kasim (as we respectfully call him) has shouldered the burden of vast, putrid and unending necessities. Like so many urban areas, Atlanta has ever suffered a broad spectrum of seemingly invincible troubles. The police force has long been a pit of corruption. The schools are disastrous. The city’s fiscal situation has never deteriorated to Detroit-levels of desperation but it has certainly been bad enough for our tastes. And always, as we are seeing in all areas of governing lately, anyone seriously attacking these issues came up against imbedded interests who get their bread buttered by the taxpayer. They fight bitterly to protect their turf routinely using racially based arguments to great effect.

No one can think, at this late date, that a black politician is immune to these tactics. Reed’s impeccable civil rights credentials (he is John Lewis’s man) don’t count for much when cash money is on the line. But somehow he has managed to balance the city budget while we are far above the national average in unemployment. In microcosm of our macro problems, the city pension system became unsustainable with a collapse in investment returns. The unions, naturally, resist any solution that crops their benefits. In shades of Wisconsin’s Walker, Reed declares that the only alternative to a therapeutic haircut is layoffs. And this after he pretty much entered office promising and delivering layoffs including at the airport which previous administrations had run as a jobs program for their unemployable cousins.

Who is this guy? Newt Gingrich’s mulatto bastard? Of course not, even figuring without his midnight skintone. He is a Democrat as nearly all big city mayors are. In his previous career as a State legislator he opposed the tightening of ID requirements at the voting booth and dedicated himself to the the appropriate side in that sick-making eternal plague on all Southern politics; the presence of the Confederate Stars and Bars on our state flag. The guy interned for Joseph Patrick Kennedy for crying out loud. His resume makes Dennis Kucinich look like Michelle Bachman.

But resume and stereotype are not all there is to this man. Not this one. At Howard University he distinguished himself in a fashion that would hardly ingratiate him to a Bill Ayers. Perceiving a future danger to Howard’s endowment he agitated to add a small semester fee to tuitions and got matching funds from the feds. Now, what student politician or any other sort of politician scores points by hiking fees? This one. Today, unlike so many institutions, Howard University is flush. It has the largest endowment of any black university.

Reed distinguished himself in an even bolder fashion at a time when most young men are frivolously subject to peer pressure. You may recall the embarrassing election of David Duke as a Republican in Louisiana. As a protest the Howard student body occupied university offices to get Lee Atwater, one-time head of the RNC and the man held responsible for recycling Al Gore’s Willie Horton ad against Mike Dukakis, ousted from Howard’s board. This they did. But it was despite the efforts of a young Kasim. As a mere sophomore he publicly and personally entreated the board and Atwater to reconsider for reasons best described as diversity. Is your jaw on the floor? This controversy was so bitter that Bill Cosby was kept from speaking due to the turmoil. Bill Cosby! It is unlikely that his principled stand won Mr. Reed much in the way of popularity with his fellow undergrads.

Now the Trash Man faces his most difficult and perhaps important clean-up. In an amazing display of either bravery or insanity, he is taking on one of the most powerful, corrupt and ruthless institutions in any city. Kasim Reed is waging something close to political war on the Atlanta Public School Board. And not only is he forcefully pursuing a plan to allow himself to appoint some replacements to the hidebound and entrenched members who see the school operations and budget as personal fiefdoms, he openly allies himself with Nathan Deal, the Republican governor who has enraged these and similar interests with his own austerity, not to mention his demeanor that could let him play a nasty hick sheriff without coaching, wardrobe or makeup.

But big messes sometimes make bigger messes in the cleaning. Reed seems unconcerned. He is not afraid to get HIS hands dirty. Yes, the members of the board defend the status quo in the language of civil rights and race solidarity and yes, they may yet have their way. This would be as disastrous as Reed’s success will be wondrous but whatever the outcome Kasim rolls on. If the foregoing can be described as Reedism the nation should lift every heart to pray that, even if just here and now, Reedism prevails. Put aside the immediate local  imperative to relieve the condition of our captive children, our polluted law enforcement, our crippled fisc. Reedism offers the hope of pragmatic, broadbased change in nearly any troubled corner of our society you would care to look. But more important even than this, Reedism holds a promise, however thin (and it is not so thin), of truly and finally putting our simmering, sometimes BOILING racial animosities into their justly deserved graves, something the election of our Second Black President has conspicuously failed to do. Reed is fulfilling the promises he made with gobsmacking doggedness. He makes no excuses. He shrinks not from making enemies. And never does he preen or trumpet even his actual and hard fought successes but moves on to the next target. Because as long as we live as we do, there is always more trash on the next corner.

Watch out for The Trash Man. If we are very lucky, he is going places.

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