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Every city has its mainstays, and those familiar with the streets of Atlanta can attest to the culture of “water boys” that hustle H2O on any given intersection.
However, it looks like many are calling for a citywide shutdown of the bottled water biz after it reportedly led to the shooting death of an 18-year-old boy last summer.
Members of the Buckhead City Committee are calling for passengers to refrain from rolling down their windows to purchase from water boys. Tomeka Pless, mother of the slain teen, says her son Jalanni Pless was killed on 8th Street in Midtown back in June 2020 over $10 from selling a bottle of water. Together with the City Committee’s support, Pless held a press conference outside of Buckhead City Headquarters today (Dec 9) to plea for a ban to be enacted.
See why not everyone is in favor of a ban on the water boys of ATL, via 11 Alive:
Many believe that a simple fix to the issue would be to make the water boys official by taking them out of the intersections and possibly setting them up in storefronts for example. The issue even made it to Atlanta’s new Mayor-elect Andre Dickens, who said in a statement, “I am committed to working with the new city council to provide programming that gets the ‘water boys’ out of our intersections and into safe environments where they can learn technology and entrepreneurship skills that will make them productive members of our community. Putting more youth into the criminal justice system is not the solution. These young men and women need opportunities to thrive and we can accomplish that through job training, after school programs, entrepreneurship exposure, and apprenticeships.”
Let us know what you think: ban the water boys or let them live?
SEE ALSO:
New Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens Plans To Add 250 Police Officers In His First Year
Metro Atlanta Election Results Show the Power of Progressive Candidates
Buckhead City Committee Push To Ban Atlanta ‘Water Boys’ Following Teen’s Murder was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
