Email: marc.richardson@patch.com
Phone: 404-285-1942 I have deep roots in the Cascade community.  My father was born and raised here in the community near Mozley Park and his parents were both long time educators throughout the 60's, 70's, and 80's in various schools including Washington High School and Clark College (AUC).  My Grandfather attended Friendship Baptist and my Grandmother and father are still members of St. Pauls Church on Peyton Road.  Though I travel and could live anywhere, I always say that my neighborhood is the only place I could ever live in America.  I just love our community and believe in it deeply! My quick personal story is that I was born in Wilmington, Delaware.  We lived there until I was 12 years old and then the family moved to London, England. I attended the American School in London for 3 years before moving to San Diego, California.  In my senior year of school I moved to Atlanta and graduated from Frederick Douglass High School.   I am a passionate, yet calm and purposeful person.  I am blessed to be able to wake up every day and do what I feel called to do.  I have always wanted to be in the TV and Journalism field, because I enjoy making interesting and compelling content that can help people make informed decisions about everyday issues surrounding them.  Since I was a student at Clark Atlanta University and later Georgia State University, I have practiced the crafts of story-telling and documentary work.  In this day and age, I believe that people want to see immediate coverage and feedback, and they want it now and in HD. Well, with my camera and laptop, I try to go out and give it to them. Along with taking pictures, film making and playing soccer, traveling is one of my favorite pastimes. Professionally, I am joining Patch after 2 years as a Community Web Producer with WXIA 11Alive. My Beliefs At Patch, we promise always to report the facts as objectively as possible and otherwise adhere to the principles of good journalism. However, we also acknowledge that true impartiality is impossible because human beings have beliefs. So in the spirit of simple honesty, our policy is to encourage our editors to reveal their beliefs to the extent they feel comfortable. This disclosure is not a license for you to inject your beliefs into stories or to dictate coverage according to them. In fact, the intent is the opposite: we hope that the knowledge that your beliefs are on the record will cause you to be ever mindful to write, report and edit in a fair, balanced way. And if you ever see evidence that we failed in this mission, please let us know. Politics How would you describe your political beliefs? I am a conservative liberal. I personally do not care for the 2 party system that is prevalent in America right now.  I do not think it lends itself to solving problems.  Instead we seem to find ourselves drawing lines in the sand and taking uncompromising positions.  I do not think this is helpful.  Maybe if there were a few more viable political parties, then those in power would truly have to govern and find ways to compromise. Are you registered with a certain party? I am a registered Democrat. Religion How religious would you consider yourself? (casual, observant, devout, non religious) I consider myself to be very religious, yet I have not been very devout over the last 10 years.  Well, I should not say that I have not been devout.... I have continued to pray and worship God, but I have seen my church attendance drop off over the years.  I am a Christian and grew up in the Episcopal Church.  I am constantly trying to align myself with the Will of God.  I also like to read about other religions such as Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism.  I tend to find the same revelations and teachings of compassion of love throughout all of them.   This further strengthens my faith in God and the almighty. Local Hot-Button Issues What do you think are the most important issues facing the community? I think the most important issue within our community is the issue of the economy and the lack of good paying jobs. I believe that our community is one of the communities that are always hardest hit during economic downturns, while also being one of the last to benefit from economic surplus. If we can continue to fight to save our homes and our home values, we can then focus on re-investing in our community and bringing good paying jobs back to the area. There are plenty of investor types betting on our community's downfall and "bottoming out," so that they can come in and wipe the slate clean and build another cookie cutter development at the foothills of Downtown. But I believe they have met their match with our Cascade and West End communities. We are resilient, and we will bounce back from this economic downturn and be strong and more stable than ever.