This week, the Biden administration to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of Americans. The plan applies to households making up to $250,000 a year (or $125,000 for individuals), an income threshold that targets the middle class and upper middle class and many high-earning professionals.

A core part of our mission at the Ģ����Ƶ Center for Opportunity is to give the poor and working class a leg up on the economic ladder. This doesn’t come through cycles of generational government dependence, but through career training and credentialing that provides the pathway to fruitful full-time work and, ultimately, a better life.

We believe the White House’s plan is wrong on many levels, but a top way is the way it unfairly penalizes the poor and working classes, which disproportionately do not have college degrees and have not attended any college at all. 

Many of these individuals are working service-oriented jobs, entry-level positions, or laboring in the skilled trades. They are paying taxes. Yet under the Biden administration’s plan, they will bear the burden of paying off the student loans of their wealthier neighbors through their tax dollars.

Here are four additional ways that student loan forgiveness is ill-advised:

1. It will contribute to already high inflation

Another way this plan hurts the poor and working class is by increasing inflation. This demographic spends a disproportionate share of their income on essentials like food and gas that have seen the most dramatic price increases in recent months.

, $10,000 in debt forgiveness “would involve a transfer that is about as large as the country has spent on welfare … since 2000 and exceeds the amount spent since then on feeding hungry school children in high-poverty schools through the school breakfast and lunch program.”

2. It doesn’t actually forgive anything

The White House has labeled the plan a “forgiveness” of student loan debt. But in reality, this approach simply transfers the burden onto the backs of taxpayers.

3. It penalizes hard-working Americans

We’ve already discussed how the poor and working classes are treated unfairly by this plan. But the unfairness extends to many middle class families as well who worked hard to pay off their student loans or their children’s student loans. Once again, government policy is punishing hard work.

4. Finally, it does nothing to address the affordability problem in higher education

, between 1980 and 2020, the cost of a college education jumped 169%. . The rapid inflation in the cost of college is, in large part, due to rampant government subsidies in higher education. Forgiving student loans only makes that problem worse.

The Success Sequence is a formula that outlines areas we can work in that will reduce poverty.

A better way forward

Instead of loan forgiveness, we should work with borrowers to structure their loan repayments in a way that’s manageable but also helps them honor their commitments. We should also work to find a way to lower the cost of higher education to make it more affordable and encourage high school graduates to consider stable, good-paying jobs that do not require expensive college degrees.

The post Why student loan forgiveness plan is bad for the poor and working class appeared first on For Opportunity.

Key Takeaways:

• Welfare cliffs and marriage penalties are discouraging people from work and forming families.
• The cliffs and penalties may mean that our clients are locked into poverty for much longer than they would be otherwise and despite our best efforts.
• GCO has created that allows anyone to see when a particular family can expect to experience benefit cliffs as they earn more money through work.��

Important Link:

If you work in a nonprofit serving the poor, you need to know that the government benefits your clients receive are likely discouraging them from working or forming a family, two things shows could lift them out of poverty the fastest.��

This is an especially tough problem for nonprofits, like GCO, that work to get their clients into good-paying jobs and strengthen their family relationships.

What’s going on?

These disincentives to work are often called “welfare cliffs” and the disincentives to family formation are called “marriage penalties.” Essentially, “cliffs” are generated any time a person receiving government benefits gets a raise at work that causes them to lose more in benefits than they will earn in additional income from the raise. These same individuals can face a similar financial penalty IF they decide to marry. In many cases, they will lose more in benefits than their spouse is able to provide in new income to the household.

While you would think (hope?) cliffs and penalties are rare, they are not. Instead, they are baked into the structure of nearly all welfare programs and many of the cliffs are severe. It’s also important to know that welfare recipients don’t face a single cliff or a single penalty, but they face cliffs and penalties at a number of different points as they have additional income from working or through marriage.

Why does it matter?

For nonprofit leaders, the cliffs and penalties may mean that our clients are locked into poverty for much longer than they would be otherwise and despite our best efforts. For workforce development nonprofits, cliffs could be the underlying reason why your clients don’t pick up additional work hours when they are offered or seem less than excited when they are offered a good promotion. In extreme cases, clients may quit jobs that seemed like a perfect fit simply because they panic when they learn they may lose a major benefit – like housing or childcare.

For nonprofits trying to help strengthen family relationships, marriage penalties may be driving behavior that is otherwise inexplicable, like seemingly happy couples refusing to marry or live in the same home. These dynamics can lead to stress for the couples affected and to a sense that a parent (usually the father) has abandoned the family when, if the system would allow it, he would be in the home. In these cases, children pay the biggest price.

What can you do about it?

Fortunately, we have created that allows anyone to see when a particular family can expect to experience benefit cliffs as they earn more money through work. For nonprofits working with these families, you now have a tool (available for 10 states, with two more on the way) that will allow you to help your clients plan for the future. In some cases, knowing when cliffs are likely to happen will allow your clients to seek a larger raise that will help them bypass or leapfrog a cliff. In other cases, maybe the answer is seeking additional training or certifications that will get your client into a different payscale entirely – one that avoids the cliffs.

In the coming weeks, we will be adding a tool that will allow users to see the impact of penalties on couples who decide to marry. We will also be incorporating a solutions tool that will allow anyone to see how reforming our government benefit programs can actually eliminate cliffs and penalties entirely, giving recipients every reason to pursue work and form stable households.

For GCO, it is this last point – reforming the system – that remains the ultimate goal. In the meantime, we are looking for ways to mitigate the harm caused by the welfare system, so that as many people as possible can escape the system and break cycles of poverty now.

The Success Sequence provides an outline of how to reverse the cycle of poverty in our communities. GCO uses this as a framework for much of our work.

The post Why Nonprofits Should Care and What to Do appeared first on For Opportunity.

Work has intrinsic value

Last month, I had the honor of participating in the , where scholars and practitioners discussed the state of poverty in the country and the local efforts to confront the issue.

The discussion this year centered on the Biden Administration’s Build Back Better (BBB) bill that is now making its way through Congress and the ways in which the bill would undermine work by using much of its to expand safety net benefits and create new entitlements, all while eliminating work requirements.

Despite unemployment numbers dropping nearly to pre-pandemic lows in most states, what is not widely understood is that labor force participation (the number of people who are able to work and are actively looking for work) is much lower than when the pandemic began. Some 4-5 million people have effectively dropped out of the workforce – at least for now – despite record job openings (10.4 million in September).

While the drop in workforce numbers is partially explained by fear of COVID and mothers forced to stay home with children, much of it can only be explained as being caused by increased benefits (and the elimination of many requirements for qualifying), rescue-related payments and, now, monthly child tax credit payments. The BBB bill is very likely to make these trends and others, like inflation, worse.

Although we’re concerned that people are choosing not to work and agree that more money coming from Washington, DC, will make matters worse, my remarks reflected our concern at GCO about why worklessness harms the individual. Work is not merely about earning money; it has intrinsic value.

The Success Sequence provides an outline of how to reverse the cycle of poverty in our communities. GCO uses this as a framework for much of our work.

Championing a return to normalcy and healthy social interaction

Work provides each of us with an outlet for our God-given talents and creativity. It allows us to serve others and contribute to other individuals’ well-being in exchange for having our own needs met. More than that, it provides us with social capital and a network of colleagues and friends who can help us when we need it. Much research has also shown that worklessness leads to poor mental and physical health and can contribute to increased drug and alcohol abuse – the during the pandemic representing the latest example.

As our government wrestles with how to deal with the pandemic and sets its priorities, it should avoid anything that discourages employment and causes more isolation. For individual and societal health on every front, the government should be championing a return to normalcy and healthy social interaction – including at work – that allows the American people to be resilient during times of crisis.

The post Money Can’t Replace Meaning and Purpose appeared first on For Opportunity.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t find a better job; I might have to go back [to prison].”

Two months out of prison, Ray (name changed for anonymity) was explaining to me that he had reached the end of his rope. He had been struggling to find work that paid enough so that he could simply afford the basics. His part-time, minimum-wage job, just wasn’t cutting it. But, at least it was something.

Ray had the added complication of having to take custody of his son shortly after being released, meaning another mouth to feed when he could barely feed himself.

During his most desperate days after leaving prison, Ray said he was blessed to have the help of local church ministries who provided temporary housing for him and his son at a local extended stay hotel. He called GCO because that assistance was running out. He needed more help so he could remain at the extended stay but, more than that, Ray knew he had to solve the job problem to have any hope of getting off the hamster wheel he was on.

“I’m “clean” and have no intention of going back to that life.”

With a record that included drug and property crimes, Ray worried he might not have a shot at a better job. “But I’m willing to do any job that pays enough,” he assured me.

With those details in hand, our team started looking for the resources Ray needed and found some great opportunities for him and his son. There was a local church ministry offering help with additional days in the extended stay motel, there was the local restaurant eager to interview Ray for a better-paying job.

In the end, help came from a place Ray least expected it: the extended stay motel owner himself.

After hearing Ray’s story and observing him on the motel property, he offered Ray a job as a maintenance technician, a position that also included room and board on the motel property – an answer to Ray’s prayer for better pay and housing stability for him and his son.

The Success Sequence provides an outline of how to reverse the cycle of poverty in our communities. GCO uses this as a framework for much of our work.

Like Ray, you might be surprised the motel owner stepped in to help the way he did, but you shouldn’t be. Many times, our local business owners bridge the gap for those in need in big and small ways – from helping support the nonprofits that serve emergency needs to, like the motel owner did for Ray, helping directly.

Too often, it’s business owners who get the negative press and little credit for the good they do. In reality, as Ray’s story reminds us, they are a huge part of the solution to poverty – both in the jobs they provide through their risk-taking and in their philanthropy made possible through the profits they generate.

Is this the end of Ray’s story? I don’t think so. Ray seems to have a drive that’s going to keep him reaching for better opportunities and, of course, if we can help him, we’ll be here to do that.

The point is that Ray’s story isn’t unique. For those reaching out and seeking help – for housing, for work, for food – there are often caring community members willing to help.

And sometimes that help comes from the place you least expect it.

If you or someone you know is struggling to find employment in Gwinnett or is looking for help to meet their basic needs, please visit to find resources or to be connected to one of our “guaranteed-interview” employment partners.

The post Help From Where You Least Expect It appeared first on For Opportunity.

A Community Responds to Need (or Good News You’ll Never See in Mainstream Media)

By Eric Cochling

Just seven months in and it’s fair to say that 2020 has been one of the most disastrous years in modern American history. The very fabric of our country seems to be unravelling before our eyes. As a year that can’t avoid being remembered in infamy, 2020 will forever be known for its pandemic, mass unemployment, police shootings, riots, and autonomous zones. For many of us born after the tumultuous 1960s, this is the first time we’ve seen our country in so much real, existential trouble.��

Despite all the terrible things that have happened, and despite a media establishment that seems all in on an “if it bleeds, it leads” approach, you don’t have to look too far to find reasons to be hopeful. Granted, you do have to look in different places to find the good news—you’re unlikely to see it in news broadcasts or social media where anger and outrage are the fuel.

Instead, you have to read a local paper or sign up for newsletters and blogs (like this one) from ministries and nonprofits that you know. If you do, what you will find is that many Americans—and you’re likely one—are quietly at work responding to community needs and finding ways to bring people together.��

In fact, many more of us are responding in this way than participating in riots or joining Twitter mobs. But because it’s the good, right, and (dare I say) expected response, it’s relegated to the “human interest” section of the paper, the end of the news broadcast, and the unpromoted backwaters of social media where virtually no one goes. At GCO, we are privileged to be working with community partners in just one of those efforts to respond to need.��

Leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, church, nonprofit, and community leaders in my hometown of Lawrenceville were already discussing ways we could partner to become better neighbors to those in poorer sections of the city. Unaware of what was coming, we prayed for guidance and started making initial plans for how best to work together. When COVID-19 struck and our state began shutting down, our group coalesced around a plan to serve those families living in extended stay hotels or rental properties in Lawrenceville who were on the verge of eviction. These were the families on the financial bubble pre-COVID and would be the first to be harmed as businesses shuttered. With funding from private philanthropy and the City of Lawrenceville, the Lawrenceville Response Center () was born.��

Through the partner organizations working through the LRC (organized and led by ), our groups have provided case management ( and ), housing stability (the ), food security (the ), mentoring and coaching ( at ), and job search assistance (GCO’s program). To date, the LRC has helped more than 200 families avoid eviction, have sufficient nutrition, and get on the path back to a stable income.

��

It’s the biggest good news story in my community, but almost no one knows about it. It’s a story of people (with diversity of race, gender, income, political views, and faith) coming together to help alleviate and prevent suffering. As we enter into our third month of working together, we celebrate the successes we’ve seen:

• The mom and daughter who now have a place of their own after spending many nights living in their car.
• The couple who were unemployed and living under a bridge who are now in decent housing and working.
• The mom and her two children who have been able to remain in an extended stay hotel while mom successfully found a new job.

There are other stories like this and there will be more. And our experience in Lawrenceville is certainly being replicated in other cities and states around the country. Even though you’ll almost never hear it from a 24-hour news channel or see it in your Twitter feed, this is how the vast majority of Americans respond in a crisis: They roll up their sleeves and help.

HWDG brings together community resources and technology to help un- and under-employed individuals achieve economic independence in three ways:

• Offering support: Individuals can easily search for local service providers who can help them overcome barriers to employment.
• Helping people find their strengths: Job seekers can identify their strengths and opportunities for employment through a soft skills assessment, a library of training programs, and a career pathway generator.
• Linking people directly with job opportunities: Job seekers can then connect with jobs relevant to their skill sets and personal preferences and geographic area.

The post A Community Responds to Need (or Good News You’ll Never See in Mainstream Media) appeared first on For Opportunity.

But graduating high school is not enough to ensure that our students succeed as they launch into the critical first years of their adult life. While college attendance is an important next step for many Ģ����Ƶ students, it’s not the route that most take.

According to a from the University of Pennsylvania, only 31 percent of 18-24-year-olds in Ģ����Ƶ are in college. Of those who do attend college, completion isn’t guaranteed. According to from the Ģ����Ƶ Governor’s Office for Student Achievement, only 27 percent of the class of 2012 (the most recent year available) had a bachelor’s degree, associate’s degree, or certificate five years after graduating from high school.

And then there’s the large number of young adults in the state who are still trying to find their way years after high school. According to the , in 2017 Ģ����Ƶ had 123,000 young adults aged 20-24 who were neither in school nor working. That’s nearly one in five people in that age group.

So, if nearly 70 percent of students are not going to college and a very high percentage are still floundering into their early 20s, what’s the solution for helping them find a path to a rewarding, self-supporting career?

An important answer, according to Dr. Robert Lerman of the Urban Institute, is apprenticeships—where students start working while high school juniors and seniors in fields that lead to credentials and, importantly, careers immediately after graduation. Dr. Lerman’s work researching apprenticeships spans decades and covers most of the globe. His research has shown that apprenticing is one of (if not the most) effective way to ensure that students who are not college bound find their way into a well-paying, sustainable career.

In the last two years, GCO has worked with Dr. Lerman to research the role of apprenticeships in Ģ����Ƶ and to provide recommendations on how to expand an already well-structured program into one that meets student demand.

Dr. Lerman’s most recent report, released just this week, focuses on Ģ����Ƶ’s Youth Apprenticeship program, created in the mid 1990s with fewer than 400 student participants. Today, the program has grown to more than 3,000 students in nearly 350 schools across the state. State funding of the program is relatively modest at $3 million annually and mostly funds program coordinators who oversee student participation and work to attract businesses to offer apprenticeship opportunities.

According to the report, demand for apprenticeships of this kind is high in Ģ����Ƶ. Dr. Lerman has estimated elsewhere that Ģ����Ƶ needs nearly 100,000 apprenticeships in order to meet that demand. Why hasn’t apprenticeship availability kept pace with student demand, according to Dr. Lerman? Based on interviews and surveys of program coordinators, the primary answer is that companies are skittish to offer jobs to high school students. This is due to the fear of liability for such young workers and related costs.

But, according to Dr. Lerman, these fears are largely unfounded and based on inaccurate assumptions about what the law requires and the cost of hiring younger workers. He cites Southwire as a prime example of a company that has successfully embraced apprenticeships since the 1990s and now employs more than 300 students. And Southwire has intentionally sought out students who are known to be at risk of falling into poverty and suffering from related issues, complexities not faced by the majority of students who would seek apprenticeship opportunities.

For the companies that are currently providing apprenticeships, Dr. Lerman points to regular reports of high levels of satisfaction (more than 90 percent) as a reason to be optimistic that, with accurate information and an opportunity to participate, more companies can be convinced to join the effort.

And, at GCO, we believe now is the perfect time to expand apprenticeships in Ģ����Ƶ. As the chart below demonstrates, the job market is tight in a way that hasn’t been seen for nearly two decades, with more job openings than job seekers. Surely now is the time to scale up apprenticeships to create a pathway from high school to work for those hundreds of thousands of students and young adults in our state who are not college-bound but are full of potential and have great things to offer to any company willing to take a chance on them. We owe it to them to make it happen. ����

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Ģ����Ƶ’s students continue to struggle in national measures of academic achievement, and the school choice options that currently do exist—like the tax credit scholarship program—are capped at such low levels that there are constantly long waiting lists.

Since it was first passed in 2008, the tax credit program has given tens of thousands of students the opportunity for a brighter future at a private school, but it has never served all the students who have applied for a scholarship. To do that, the program needs to grow.

First, a bit of background. Ģ����Ƶ’s tax-credit law allows private citizens and corporations to receive tax credits for donations to nonprofit Student Scholarship Organizations (SSOs), which then administer scholarships across the state on behalf of needy kids. In 2015 alone, over 13,500 students received scholarships.

The state House recently approved HB 217, which would raise the program’s current cap from $58 million to $100 million in a graduated course of six years, effectively doubling its size. But the Senate removed the slow and steady growth in the program in favor of a one-time increase in the cap to $65 million, hardly meeting current demand.�� Furthermore, the Senate version of the bill included an extreme cut to the administrative allowance available to the non-profit student scholarship organizations administering the program, which would effectively push smaller organizations out of the market.

Some lawmakers claim that SSOs spend too much on administrative overhead, including activities like fundraising, marketing, and government compliance. Currently, SSOs are limited to keeping a specific percentage of their total proceeds for administration, depending on how much they take in: 10 percent for the first $1.5 million raised, 7 percent for amounts between $1.5 million and $10 million, 6 percent for amounts between $10 million and $20 million, and 5 percent for amounts over $20 million.

This sliding scale acknowledges that as SSOs are able to raise more money, they don’t need to devote as large a percentage of their budgets to overhead. It also recognizes that smaller or start-up organizations still need a slightly higher percentage to be effective and comply with the law.

The Senate substitute to HB 217, backed by Lt. Governor Cagle and Senate leadership, eliminates the graduated administrative allowance in favor of an across-the-board cap of 3 percent. Importantly, most SSOs in Ģ����Ƶ don’t raise enough money to even afford full-time staff under the 10 percent administrative allowance, let alone a 3 percent cap. These organizations would be most harmed by the Senate change, while the largest SSOs would be least affected by the 3 percent cap due to their bigger budgets.

What’s the result? Small SSOs would be pushed out of the market in favor of a handful of large organizations.

Here’s what this scenario would look like in reality: Four SSOs raised less than $100,000 in 2015 and awarded scholarships to 308 students, almost half of whom come from families making less than $30,000 a year. The proposed change would immediately hamstring these organizations by limiting them to less than $3,000 a year for administration, forcing them to close their doors and returning 308 students back to schools that were not serving their needs.

Is that a result we want?

Aside from claims of administrative bloat, supporters of the Senate substitute bill make two more arguments: First, that SSOs should be brought more in line with other nonprofits in Ģ����Ƶ. And second, that the tax credits law should more closely mirror Florida’s program, which caps administrative allowances at 3 percent.

Both claims don’t stand up to even basic scrutiny. In the first place, of Charity Navigator’s 68 top-rated charities in Ģ����Ƶ, only one operates on less than 3 percent of funds for administration—and that organization has total revenues of more than $547 million. So it’s false to claim the proposed 3 percent cap would bring SSOs more in line with other nonprofits.

Secondly, looking at Florida’s law is like comparing apples and oranges. The Sunshine State only has two nonprofit scholarship granting organizations, only allows corporate donations, and has a total program cap of $500 million compared to Ģ����Ƶ, which has more than 20 active SSOs and a statewide a cap of $58 million.

In the end, if the Senate truly wants to bring Ģ����Ƶ more in line with Florida, lawmakers would be better served to raise the statewide program cap to match Florida’s rather than reduce the overhead allowance. If they did, the program would provide school choice to nearly 130,000 students and propel Ģ����Ƶ into the leadership position among states providing families with real options.

With only one day remaining in the legislative session, we hope the Senate and House can come together to agree on a bill that restores growth in the program and hope for thousands of desperate students and families.

The post It’s the End of Session, Will Legislators Help Struggling Students? appeared first on For Opportunity.

That is why our recent reports are so disturbing. They show that most of our welfare programs are systematically undermining two of the three keys to avoiding poverty and are doing so for some of the most vulnerable groups in our society.

In the first paper, Disincentives for Work and Marriage in Ģ����Ƶ’s Welfare System, we show that many of our welfare programs – alone or when combined –actually penalize earning more and create dramatic “welfare cliffs”.

For many parents on public assistance, receiving a raise or working longer hours can result in dramatic reductions in welfare benefits, often completely erasing what they gain by working more or receiving a raise. Even worse, there are times when earning more money through additional work or a pay raise can result in less income to the family because government benefits are reduced so much all at one time.

When families find themselves in this position, they are effectively locked into dependency, unable to work themselves into self-sufficiency without having to endure sometimes long, crippling periods of financial hardship.

To make matters worse, a similar set of perverse incentives exist when a parent on welfare decides to marry.

For many moms on public assistance for example, deciding to marry a boyfriend or the father of their children can mean that family income is dramatically reduced due to an immediate and steep loss of benefits. In many cases, the disincentives to marriage only go away if the potential husband is earning much more money than would be expected or likely under the circumstances. The result is that these moms must choose between forming a family (and the financial and relational stability it can bring in the long-term) or the short-term financial health of their families.

For a parent in this position, it is easy to see why many would simply choose to stay single and cohabit rather than marry. Unfortunately, research also shows that cohabiting couples struggle with relational instability in ways that married couples do not, so the welfare system ends up encouraging people to enter into relationships that are less likely to last and less likely to provide the stability that would allow them to escape poverty.

While the welfare system was not intentionally designed to work this way, it is unjust nonetheless. If it worked as it should, the system would encourage work and family formation at every turn – as the surest antidotes to poverty.

That is why in our next report, we will be setting out a suggested set of reforms that the state and federal governments can adopt to reform the system in a way that creates a sustainable safety-net that encourages the behaviors that we know are needed for individuals and families to escape and stay out of poverty. We will also be providing a plan for a how a state can implement these reforms on the ground if it chooses to take on reforming the system.

If you want to see how the welfare cliff works for different family types and in each of Ģ����Ƶ’s 159 counties, visit .

GET NOTIFIED WHEN NEW REPORTS ARE AVAILABLE

The post Choosing Between Family or Welfare Benefits appeared first on For Opportunity.

The Marriage Week campaign website cites to ��on the many benefits of marriage and they have provided a taking place in Ģ����Ƶ next week to celebrate marriage.

At GCO, we believe marriage is indispensable to the creation of healthy families and a stable society. That’s why we encourage you to love your family, teach your children to value marriage and the commitment it requires, and to take part in next week’s celebration.

If you want to strengthen your own marriage, check our Healthy Families Initiative and the resources we offer there.

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Diego Aponte, President of the Morehouse College Republicans, said it best when he said that, while protests are necessary at times to raise awareness of a problem that’s going unaddressed, the real question is whether we know what can and should be done to solve the problem.

While much of the discussion centered around ways the public can hold police officers accountable for their actions and how police can more effectively engage with the communities they serve – through things like actually living in the community or regularly interacting with community members – a significant amount of time focused on the systemic problems that are limiting opportunities for young African-American males.

Because of our work at GCO, the topics that kept coming up were not new to us – lack of a quality educational options, limited access to employment, and epidemic levels of family instability. Each problem, in its own way, chips away at the ability of an individual to succeed in life. Together, they can virtually insure that a person experiences poverty and all of the social pathologies – including crime – that come with it.

After a discussion that continued for the better part of three hours, a group of us agreed to come together again, but this time for the express purpose of plotting out the concrete actions we must take to change the status quo in Ģ����Ƶ on these issues.

Like a lot of the people I talk to, I am very worried for our country on many fronts. That said, the discussion that took place last night gives me hope that we still have what it takes – the intelligence, the candor, the faith, and the goodwill – to turn things around.

Many thanks to Leo Smith for the invitation to take part.

*Other panelists included Douglas County Solicitor General, Matthew Krull; Ģ����Ƶ GOP Director of Minority Engagement, Leo Smith; GAGOP First Vice Chairman and former Police Officer, Michael McNeely; Douglas County Police Chief Gary Spark; Retired Law Enforcement Trainer Darrin Bell; Conservative Talk Show Host��and Political Commentators, Shelley Wynter and Attorney Robert Pattillo; Morehouse College Republicans Chairman, Diego Aponte; Spelman College student leaders, and Pastor Joel L. Trout.

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