Category Archives: Education

Coalition against private prisons in Shelby County, Tennessee

In at least one southern county, church groups are working together with other groups to prevent private prisons. Why not here, too?

The Mid-South Peace and Justice Center is organizing a broad coalition against private prisons in Shelby County, Tennessee:

No Private Prisons
The Shelby County Commission is in the process of trying to privatize our criminal justice system. Private prisons have a well-documented history of inefficient security, poorly trained and underpaid workers, high turnover rates, scant benefits and unprofessional and unsupervised treatment of inmates.

The Coalition Against Private Prisons has been created to fight this privatization plan. So far this coalition involves Grassroots Leadership, the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, the AFSCME local 1733, Shelby County Corrections Officers, Women’s Action Coalition, Mid-South Interfaith Network, educators, faith leaders, artists, and activists.

To address this we are working with our coalition partners and other community organizations to educate Memphians about the dangers of privatization, and to mobilize Memphians around the issue.

They’ve got a report, Progress or Profit? Positive Alternatives To Privatization and Incarceration in Shelby County, Tennessee. Continue reading →

PSC lining up to vote for solar

Previously PSC Chair Lauren McDonald said he wanted Georgia Power to “come up with options in the next 30 days for expanding the tiny amount of electricity generated from solar power”. Yesterday, PSC Commissioner Chuck Eaton said “Solar is great for diversity, independence, research, and business,” and added that until recently he had discounted solar, but now he had seen it. And it turns out that Friday PSC Commissioner Tim Echols wrote an op-ed saying
It wasn’t until I entered the training room of Mage Solar in Dublin and saw 40 subcontractors in their solar academy that I got it. The growing solar industry is not just about funky collectors on a roof or left-leaning environmentalists who hate fossil fuel. It is about skilled jobs in manufacturing and construction, about economic development in Georgia, about consumers saving money on their power bill so they can spend it somewhere else, and about empowering people to essentially create their own power plant. This could eventually be big.
That’s three out of five commissioners. I’d call that a majority shaping up to do something in the PSC Energy Committee meeting of 16 July 2011. I couldn’t say what, exactly, since there nothing on the energy committee’s agenda about this. But something solar seems to be in the works.

-jsq

Georgia officials are getting it about solar

Chuck Eaton, Georgia Public Service Commissioner, moderating a panel of Georgia’s Policy Makers at Southern Solar Summit said
Solar is great for diversity, independence, research, and business.
He said that until recently he had discounted solar, but now he had seen it. Continue reading →

Transparency is key —Steve Kalland of NCSC

The earth receives enough energy from the sun in one hour to power the whole world for a year, reminded Steve Kalland of the North Carolina Solar Center (NCSC) at the Southern Solar Summit. So how do we get solar energy deployed? Kalland said transparency is key.

Other speakers had said you could have too much transparency, but Kalland pointed out that it was only through a hearing that North Carolina found out a major power company was going to use up its solar energy credits years ahead of schedule, and without transparency there couldn’t be real competition because the customers wouldn’t know who had which prices.

What else does it take to make a state competitive in solar? Kalland discussed this table (reformatted here from the copy of his presentation he gave me):

Foundational Steps to Focus on Solar

Installed Capacity Manufacturing
Interconnection Standards

Base Resources (economic or voices)

Early Adopters
Military or Large Federal
High Tech Firms
Corporate Greens 		University Partnership Opportunities

Existing presence of businesses in multiple fields (diversification)
He said a lot more, but that’s a very interesting table to consider not only for a state, but for a region, like south Georgia, or a small metro area, like Valdosta MSA.

I know some people will react with: “but VSU is not a research university!” Nope, but this could be a way to add some research capacity to VSU.

-jsq

91% of voters support using solar power in NC —Ivan Urlaub of NCSEA

Like the previous speaker, Ivan Urlaub of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association (NCSEA) pointed out there are downsides to too many incentives, such as too much dependence on them which means if they end, so can the industry. So how to generate demand?

They’ve done it in North Carolina:

91% of voters support using solar power to meet our growing needs for energy and electricity
Solar is hands down the most popular energy source across NC, across parties, ages, genders, etc. Coal and nuclear are the politically charged energy sources, and neither got a majority. Number 2 was offshore wind with 83% and number 3 was onshore wind with 82% support. Here’s the NCSEA press release. Here’s the survey.

How did they do this? Continue reading →

This is what a mayor with vision sounds like

Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio speaks at 44:25 about
…the nexus between sustainability and job creation. Every now and then, perhaps once in a generation, there presents itself a moment, an opportunity, for those cities that are willing to seize it, to truly benefit the region for generations to come.
Here’s the video: Continue reading →

Many rural farmers are taking notice of HB 87 —Patrick Davis

Patrick Davis points out from Macon that HB 87 is producing Lowndes County farm employment problems, and maybe local farmers should take that into account when they vote.

Patrick Davis wrote, Rural Republicans in Georgia can’t have it both ways on immigration reform

With the law passed and ready for implementation, many rural farmers—especially in Central and South Georgia—are taking notice to the exodus of migrant workers and immigrants which has left some farmers without workers to pick crops.

Many of these same farmers that are hurting economically and losing crops in these rural counties had voted Republican for years.

Valdosta’s Ellis Black who represents parts of Lowndes County as a state representative helped to pass Gov. Nathan Deal’s conservative and punitive agenda and consequently it has contributed to drive an increasing number of migrant workers out of the Peach State.

Black has continued to justify his HB-87 vote and attempt to support Gov. Deal’s ridiculous assertion in regard to the use of probationers as a solution.

That last link is to Parolees to replace migrants? Gov. Deal says put probationers in fields by David Rodock in the VDT 15 June 2011, which included: Continue reading →

Protests about “trillion dollar incarceration machine” crash White House web site

W.E. Messamore wrote for caivn.org 18 June 2011, Internet activists crash White House phone lines calling for an end to the War on Drugs:
On Friday June 17th, exactly 40 years after President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs,” Internet activists organizing from the social news and activism website, Reddit.com, called the White House en masse to demand an end to the War on Drugs, calling it a “trillion dollar incarceration machine” with a measurable failure to reduce drug use, or harm from drug use.
The original post included this:
This is also the last vestige of Nixon’s fight against the civil rights and anti-war movements: And if you look at US incarceration rates, it’s been incredibly effective. . .
  • 4,919 Black males per 100,000 population
  • 1,717 Latino males per 100,000 of population
  • 717 White males per 100,000 of population.
  • South Africa under Apartheid (1993) – 851 Black males per 100,000
That’s right, almost six times as many black males per capita get locked up in the U.S. than in South Africa under apartheid. The numbers are even worse for young people and especially young black males, leading to this summary:
This isn’t a War on Drugs: It’s a Race War; It’s a War on the youth, likely to protest controversial policies (a war that conveniently takes away those groups voting rights). It’s a war on the American People, paid for by the American people, for the American people’s own good.
Yep. Except a majority of the American people don’t want the “war on drugs” any more. It’s time for the laws to change.

Back to the main article: Continue reading →

Call Off the Global Drug War —Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter in the New York Times 16 June 2011, Call Off the Global Drug War said the Global Commission on Drug Policy:
… has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

Imagine that! A drug policy meant to address the problem.

How did we go wrong? Continue reading →

Last day for advance rate at Solar Summit

The Georgia Solar Energy Association (GSEA) is holding a conference Friday a week from today in Atlanta, and you can still sign up at the advance rate today. Sounds like a good place for networking potential projects.

Announcing Solar Summit 2011! Join utilities and policy experts from around the country as we present a full day of panel discussions and presentations on solar renewables. With the theme, “Solar Works in Georgia” GSEA will layout the roadmap for success in Georgia.
Where: GTRI Conference Center- 250 14th Street, Atlanta, GA 30318
When: Friday, June 24th 8a-4p
How: Tickets on sale now
What: $79 before June 15th — EXTENDED TO FRIDAY, 6/17 $99 at the door
Coffee starts at 7:45 AM, with the Welcome session at 8:15 and keynote speaker Col. Dan Nolan (USArmy Ret.) speaking at 8:30 on “The Military’s integration of Green Energy”.

Another panel asks the question, “Will military and institutional adoption lead the way?” Hm, maybe municipalities should help pioneer solar with financing from banks and power companies.

Another panel notes, “A recent ASU study ranked Georgia 3rd in the nation for solar development potential.” That would be this study.

A wide range of speakers come from industry, military, finance, and government. Sounds like a networking opportunity. Maybe even a good place to pitch a municipal solar project.

-jsq