Tag Archives: Valdosta

Take your money out of Bank of America Day –Occupy Valdosta

Erin Hurley spoke for Occupy America to Bank of America.
It’s national Take Your Money Out of Bank of America Day.
Who got bailed out?
They did!
Who did it?
We did it!
All right!
[laughter]
They are the 1%; we are the 99!
Nobody came out to respond.

Here’s Part 1 of 2:


Take your money out of Bank of America Day –Occupy Valdosta Part 1 of 2:
We are the 99%,
Marching to Occupy Valdosta, Occupy Valdosta,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Then everyone headed on to the MLK monument.

Here’s Part 2 of 2:


Take your money out of Bank of America Day –Occupy Valdosta Part 2 of 2:
We are the 99%,
Marching to Occupy Valdosta, Occupy Valdosta,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Make the Industrial Authority be accounted —Tony Daniels at MLK Occupy Valdosta

Tony Daniels called for accountability at the MLK monument:
Stand up! Make the Bank of America be accounted. Make the Industrial Authority be accounted. Make the United States government be accounted.

Here’s the video:


Make the Industrial Authority be accounted —Tony Daniels at MLK Occupy Valdosta
We are the 99%,
Marching to Occupy Valdosta, Occupy Valdosta,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

The Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation

Received yesterday, The Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation: The Truth About Unification/Consolidation of the Valdosta/Lowndes School Systems By David E. Mullis, J.D., LL.M., October 12, 2011. It’s a 43 page exhaustive compendium of all the statements against consolidation by both school boards, the Valdosta City Council, etc., together with detailed debunking of every argument CUEE has made.

I think this passage on page 3 sums it up:

In other words, we can offer a great education, provide incentives for students to perform, make modifications to education to help students succeed, and provide technical help, but if the child is homeless, left home alone for long periods of time, living in a high crime area, living in a home with substance abuse, or just downright defiant, there is only so much the school can accomplish in helping these students succeed. Good parental, home and community environments are critical to the success of underprivileged children.

Therefore, CUEE and the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts are focused on the wrong methods of improving our school statistics. Unification will not accomplish any of their stated goals, but will create an enormous financial burden on the community and its families during this time of recession and high unemployment. The business community and volunteer organizations should instead focus on providing educational awareness and success clinics in low income areas. They should organize efforts to reduce poverty by bringing in industry with good wages and sponsoring basic community literacy and vocational training and tutoring. They should focus on programs to promote the value of education. They should organize drug awareness and rehabilitation programs in low income areas. They should focus their efforts in decreasing poverty. They should focus on encouraging community diversity. If they will do this, the educational problems will take care of themselves in good systems like Valdosta and Lowndes.

However, CUEE and the Chamber have insisted on pushing forward with their unification agenda despite the certain negative effect it will have on the community and the education of our children. They deny there will be any negative effect, but they have no personal accountability if they are wrong. They ignore all relevant studies and dismiss the results as being misleading. Then they state their own misleading and false assertions and claim them to be FACTS.

Indeed, what qualifies the Chamber of CUEE to talk about education? Judging by their track record, nothing does.

This Handbook is a great resource, and I applaud David Mullis for producing it.

-jsq

Videos of Lowndes County “Your Top 50 Answered” Lunch and Learn

The latest Lowndes County Lunch and Learn was yesterday, with County Clerk Paige Dukes answering the top 50 questions the county receives. Code Red! Road paving! Tax Assessment! CHIP grants! Some of these things affect all of you, and many of them could help you specifically. Gretchen was there and videoed most of it, as well as asking some followup questions.

Among other surprising answers was that the new Commission districts as shown on the maps on the county website have still not been approved by the Department of Justice. All of the Commissioners and several of the staff travelled to Atlanta a few weeks ago to tweak the lines. Paige assured us that tweaking would be completed in time for next year’s Commission elections.

Paige noted Carmella Braswell is the go-to person for many questions about what to do if you want to sink a will or put up a building. She addressed the CHIP grant in question 3, in the second video below, noting Carolyn Selby’s comments at a previous Commission meeting: Continue reading →

To the people of Valdosta and South Georgia —Occupy Valdosta

Posted today in Occupy Valdosta’s facebook page:
To the people of Valdosta and South Georgia

We, the local citizens occupying Valdosta, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; to nonviolently occupy public space; to create an open process to address the problems we face, and to generate solutions accessible to everyone.

Our issues are varied, yet related.

We seek

Continue reading →

Neighborhoods matter more than schools?

Where you live makes more difference to your education than where you go to school, says a news study, backed up by an older study.

Maureen Downey blogged for AJC 5 October 2011, Forget school vouchers. The route to improving education may be housing vouchers.

School voucher proponents argue that kids need a way out of failing schools, but research increasingly suggests that it would be more effective to provide them a way out of failing neighborhoods.

Should we consider giving poor families in low-performing school zones housing vouchers that they could use to relocate in the zone of a school performing above the area median?

I’d say that’s a bad solution to the problem the study identifies, and we already know better solutions. But first, from the abstract of the the study Continue reading →

VSU Spectator announces Occupy Valdosta

Mikayla Beyer wrote today, Occupy Valdosta,
The Occupy Wall Street movement may have started far away in New York, but Valdosta’s citizens are rallying to join the growing movement, with the hope of bringing change to their own community.

“We have the right to peacefully assemble,” Erin Hurley, senior anthropology major, said. “It’s time to take back our country and put it in the hands of the people, not just one percent.” She is one of the organizers of Occupy Valdosta, which will be protesting on Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The organization has a Facebook page with over 150 followers, about 75 of whom are expected to join the protest, according to Hurley, who is one of the organizers of the event.

Occupy Valdosta held a meeting on Wednesday, which both students and community members attended, to discuss their plans for the protest and what they hope the movement will achieve for the community and the nation.

The Spectator didn’t publish any pictures, but here’s one:


Occupy Valdosta Organizational Meeting, Drexel Park, Valdosta, 12 October 2011.
Picture by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

That’s Mikayla Beyer on the right with the backpack, at last night’s organizational meeting.

The Spectator included this interesting quote by a professor who wasn’t there: Continue reading →

CUEE radio ad helps alienate Black Crow radio host

About that CUEE radio ad, Rob Harder wrote for Valdosta Today today, “Morgan Freeman” CUEE Ad Fires Up Debate
A new radio ad from the Community Unification for Educational Excellence, Inc (CUEE) has sparked a lot of controversy in the few days it has been running in local media.

…

The ad, voiced by an actor who sounds like Morgan Freeman but is not, encourages Valdosta city residents to vote “Yes” on school consolidation November 8th. The commercial claims that Valdosta schools are “once again segregated” and ties the success of the vote to Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision.

Callers to the Chris Beckham Show, which airs from 3PM to 6PM each weekday on WVGA 105.9 FM, were overwhelming in their condemnation of the ad.

Yes, that’s what Chris Beckham told me when I talked to him today. I’ll be on his radio show on WVGA 105.9, tomorrow, about 4PM.

You can hear the radio ad in the Valdosta Today article.

The article contains this priceless quote by the real Morgan Freeman, Continue reading →

Videos of Candidates Forum by VLCoC last night

Videos of the Candidates Forum put on last night by the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce (VLCoC) are starting to appear in this playlist. The three Valdosta Mayoral candidates are there already (in order of appearance): There’s one more candidate video to come.

Here are the videos so far:


Candidates Forum, Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce (VLCoC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 October 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq