Atlanta goes for the gold: and the poor get left in the dust.

• Author: Chepesuik, Ron
• Position: Atlanta, GA gets ready for the 1996 Olympic Games

The Olympic Games going on right now in Atlanta represent a major financial boon to the city's business community and civic leaders. "Atlanta has a chance it has never had since the Civil War to redefine itself and present an image it wants to project to the world, as opposed to the mind-set most people who come to the South bring with them," says Bill Crane, director of marketing and communication for the city's Chamber of Commerce. "We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to promote Atlanta as a business mecca."

To prepare for the big event, the city has quietly swept the poor out of the way. Atlanta activists charge that thousands of poor people have been displaced from their homes, while the homeless are subjected to repressive measures that violate their civil rights.

Virginia McDey is one of the low-in-come Atlantans who found herself in the path of the Olympic money machine when it came rolling into town. Until May 13, McDey was one of several thousand residents of the Techwood/Clark Howell Homes, a group of buildings that includes the nation's first public-housing project. The project is located downtown, right across the street from Coca-Cola headquarters and the campus of Georgia Institute of Technology. Georgia Tech is home to the brand-new Olympic Village, which received some $40 million from the Olympic Committee and millions more from a state bond to build new dormitories, an aquatic center, and a central commons. McDey was forced to move so the housing project could be flattened and "revitalized" as part of the Olympic Village.

"I have been in the project for twenty-one years and it's home to me," McDey said the day before she vacated her apartment. "I've raised five kids here and I've never had a problem." McDey is still bitter about the city's drive to get rid of her and her neighbors. "They don't care where we go. They just want us out."

What has happened to the Techwood/Clark Howell Homes graphically illustrates Atlanta's priorities. When it opened in 1936, Techwood was the pride of the New Deal era. But by the 1980s it had become an eyesore for corporate Atlanta, largely because of overcrowding. Atlanta's selection as an Olympic city created the right political climate to level the project.

"Coca-Cola and Georgia Tech have wanted to get rid of the poor people in Techwood Homes for years," says Ed Loring, an activist with the Open Door Community, which serves Atlanta's poor and homeless. "The Atlanta Housing Authority...