“More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or
parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle
Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library
this past Wednesday, the first of many jarring points she made in a
riveting presentation.
She’s written a best-selling book,
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness,
and she discusses the problem:
Continue reading →
After he gave his
goodbye speech,
I
wished him happiness in Myrtle Beach
and thought maybe he’d make a graceful exit.
Nope, he’s still cranking the Edison phonograph on the same old
scratched wax cylinder.
Here he is last week responding to James Wright
and dozens of other people in the same thread
to which I later posted
It’s an opportunity.
In Lofton’s case, he’s still fixated on the losing proposition of biomass fuels.
-jsq
Thanks so much for sharing this and for your continued strong support of our
client’s green renewable energy project. In addition to assisting the
country in reducing our consumption of middle eastern fuel and improving the
environment, this project will provide a much needed economic impact for
landowners of every race, and the Industrial Authority will assist in the
efforts underway to assist local farmers. Google “benefits of biomass
electricity,”
Protestors wearing respirator masks held signs reading “Biomass? No!”
in front of the Valdosta City Hall building on Thursday. Members of
the Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, the VSU student organization
Students Against Violating the Environment, and other concerned Valdosta
citizens showed up to protest the construction of the Wiregrass Power:
Biomass Electric Generating Plant.
“We already have solar power resources in place that we could be using
and I feel like money should be directed towards that,” Ivey Roubique,
vice-president of the Student Geological Society, said. “It wouldn’t
be good for the community and even though I’m in college here it
still matters.”
The Spectator article quotes from two speakers for whom LAKE
happens to have video, linked below.
Continue reading →
When public officials ignore objections for long enough, eventually
people start speculating as to their motives, in this case about the proposed biomass plant.
Here’s
the video:
Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 February 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Erin Hurley provided the very model of how to give a speech:
I’m the president of
Students Against Violating the Environment at VSU.
I’m here representing
200+ members of SAVE, that consists of students, faculty, community members.
We are deeply concerned with environmental issues and
we are networking together to make this city a more humane and
sustainable community
for future generations.
As a student, I feel I have the right to be able to breathe clean air
at the college I attend.
With this biomass plant possibly being built here,
the future for generations to come are in jeopardy, and we want to protect our fellow and future students’ health.
Please take into consideration the future health of this university
and its community,
and don’t sell grey water to the proposed biomass plant.
Erin Hurley, President of
SAVE, Students Against Violating the Environment, speaking at
Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 March 2011,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
She said who she was, who she represented, how many, what they were for, what they wanted, quickly enough that attention didn’t waver, slowly and loudly enough to be heard, and briefly enough to transcribe, with pathos, logic, and politic. Even the mayor looked up at “As a student….”
It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west Texas farming
town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill Clayton
Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The charmless
steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would provide
jobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas.
For eight years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid
for prisoners to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out
all of its contract inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There
was also a scandal surrounding the suicide of an inmate.
Shortly afterward, the for-profit operator, GEO Group, gave notice that
it was leaving, too. One hundred prison jobs disappeared. The facility
has been empty ever since.
It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently
searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs,
and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime.
Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
Switchgrass seemed like a good idea five or ten years ago,
but there is still no market for it.
Not just strictly organic by Georgia’s ridiculously
restrictive standards for that, but also less pesticides
for healthier foods, pioneered as nearby as Tifton.
That’s two markets: one for farmers, stores, and farmers’ markets
in growing and distributing healthy food, and one for local
banks in financing farmers converting from their overlarge
pesticide spraying machinery to plows and cultivators.
Similarly, biomass may have seemed like a good idea years ago,
but with Adage backing out of both of its Florida biomass plants
just across the state line, having never built any such plant ever,
the biomass boom never happened.
Meanwhile, our own Wesley Langdale has demonstrated to the state
that
The
initial writeup in the VDT quoted CCA as being all coy
about if a need arose from the state they would be ready
to deploy the private prison in Lowndes County:
“This is (for) a future need that we don’t even know what it’ll
be yet,” Frank Betancourt, CCA’s vice president of real estate
development said. “There’s no ground breaking to announce. When the
need (for a facility) does arrive, we can be the first ones to offer
(our services).”
CCA has been a great partner with us for nearly a decade now. Coffee
Correctional Facility and Wheeler Correctional Facility certainly meet
the standards of the Georgia Department of Corrections. I particularly
appreciate CCA maintaining exemplary accreditation status with both
the American Correctional Association and the National Commission on
Correctional Healthcare. I look forward to a continued long relationship
with them.”
—Commissioner James E. Donald, Georgia Department of Corrections
And over in Decatur County people actually asked about this, and were
told
Continue reading →
Karen Noll of WACE, Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy,
asked the Valdosta City Council not to sell wastewater
to the proposed Wiregrass Power LLC biomass plant.
She presented
“500+ signatures from community members and organizations”
asking for that.
She also said
“…furthermore a response to our request each
member of the council is expected before the next council meeting.”
WACE, Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, at
Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 March 2011,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Saturday I heard somebody bragging about how fast the Internet is in Atlanta.
That would be maybe a tenth of the speed it is in Tokyo.
But still blazing fast compared to the broke-down wagon in a muddy ditch
speeds we get in south Georgia:
I wrote that article more than a year ago, and Internet speeds in rural
Georgia have not improved much if at all.
This isn’t just about playing Farmville.
It’s about communicating with your relatives,
about competing in business,
Continue reading →
“More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday, the first of many jarring points she made in a riveting presentation.
![](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emperor_Norton_proclamation_re._assumption_of_prerogatives_WFHM_SF.JPG")
It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently
searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs,
and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime.
Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession
greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
