The brainchild of Audrey Davis & Liliana Bakhtiari — Uncertain Times started as a simple idea born on a Friday night in quarantine and became a creative fundraising project supported by a small crew of creatives, mixologists, entertainers, and volunteers to help the local bars we know and love survive through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blue Neighbors Project is a Political Action Committee dedicated to supporting progressive, Democratic candidates for the Georgia State Legislature. We are a partnership between progressives in Georgia and California, united in the shared purpose of recapturing power at the state level, starting in Georgia and eventually expanding into other battleground states.

Liliana Bakhtiari’s 2017 run for Atlanta City Council was founded on the principles of positivity, equity and accessibility, building off of her extensive history of organizing and activism. She made national headlines as a queer, Muslim daughter of Iranian-Azeri immigrants and refugees during her first run for political office. As her next move after running for office, Bakhtiari bought a retired school bus in Bartow County with the vision to transform the bus into a mobile form of voter engagement during the midterm elections in November 2018. 

Liliana collaborated with Atlanta-based, female arts group Living Melody Collective, who painted the school bus with landscapes of Georgia and scenes of voting history in order to inspire and mobilize voters throughout the state. In the wake of a tumultuous election season, after a “deportation bus” had toured the state and with polling places closing across rural Georgia and voter suppression on the rise, it was more important than ever to mobilize voters, this time with a message of hope. Bakhtiari hoped not only to raise awareness around the gubernatorial election, but also to bolster excitement for other statewide and down ballot races that had the potential to drastically impact Georgia's future.

The Hope for Georgia Bus was born out of the partnership and immediately began making its way around the state. After making its debut last year at the Atlanta Pride Parade, Bakhtiari took off to clutch swing districts before the midterm elections of 2018. Her collaboration with Living Melody Collective continued, with programming at each stop that emphasized the power of civic engagement through art.

This year, the Hope for Georgia Bus begins phase two of development. Bakhtiari is continuing her efforts by taking the bus on a whole new level. Currently, the bus is being renovated into a mobile voter registration station, with the intention of targeting the counties that were hit the hardest by voter purging and suppression during the last election.

The long term vision for the bus is to create a mobile advocacy unit to adapt to other crises needs, but for now, the priority is voter engagement. It is important to Liliana and her team to reach people from all landscapes, all socio-economic backgrounds, and all ideologies, but the bus is just one vehicle for that movement.  It is more important now than ever to unite as Georgians in order to imagine a better Georgia for all. 

In response to the severe blood shortage in Georgia, Liliana began a partnership with LifeSouth to establish regular blood drives in and around her neighborhood in Southeast. These blood drives are unique as they take place on buses outfitted as mobile donation centers. She continues to partner with both BloodSouth and neighborhood leaders to consistently plan blood drives to give back to the community.

In East Atlanta, Liliana spearheaded collecting donations for our local seniors who are quarantined in Branan Towers. So often our seniors feel forgotten, and during the pandemic, they felt more isolated than ever. In collaboration with Armando Celantano of Argosy and Village Church of East Atlanta, Liliana coordinates weekly donation deliveries of food, cleaning supplies, art supplies, and basic necessities to make sure our seniors are cared for.

Concept: Upcycle is a community-wide collaborative recycling project between artists and consumers.

As a new project, we are partnering with community organizations and schools for single day recycling awareness and DIY manufacturing workshops that integrate recycled items - like plastics, textiles, and wood - into making a new, sustainably made products by (and for!) the community.

Community Impact: Our leading objective is to bring swift, accessible recycling practices to the larger Atlanta community. By hosting a series of programs that teach specific skill sets for reusing various recyclable materials, we aim to foster a creative ecosystem for sustainable communality where anyone can make products that they could typically buy from a store.

This saves people money, and saves humans from having to detrimentally harvest the earth's resources for single use products.

Seasonal workshops along the Beltline: Each season, Upcycle will panner with an existing sustainably-friendly and/ community organization located along the Beltline to host a one day, rapid recycling event.

Each event will follow the project model and will leverage seasonal consumer demand with connecting our partner's communities to DIY solutions for their needs.

Project goals beyond Spring 2020: We are building Upcycle to be a scalable project so vve can cast a wider net of influence beyond the scope of this particular Beltline activation series - starling in Spring 2020. Our two goals for Spring 2020 include:

1. Integrate RAPID CITY into institutional + city-wide outreach programs.

2. Create an online e-commerce platform for community artists that collaborate with RAPID CITY to sell their upcycled goods.

Team:
Liliana Bakhtiari, CEO + Marketing Strategy
Maggie Kane, CCO + Systems Engineer