\n\n<\/a>\nNot sure what started this particular post, but as Stephen Hawking put it:\n“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion\nof knowledge.” –\n
\nWe are where we are as a community in relationship to the biomass issue\nbecause of our holistic approach, and with “we” I do not mean WACE\nexclusively. There have been countless\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
\none on one conversations with\nprivate citizens and elected representatives, presentations at churches\nand at VSU, guest columns, letters to the editor and phone calls, regular\ntables at downtown events, newsletters, a letter writing campaign to\nlocal doctors, most recently a billboard on Baytree, etc.\n\nFrom the start, myths and facts about biomass have been presented and\ndissected, alternatives for energy production and conservation offered,\nwhile the imminent questions of jobs and economic development have also\nbeen addressed (much of that on LAKE) … BECAUSE once we, our COMMUNITY,\ncan move beyond the idea of biomass, it is time to finally bring the\nideas worthy of the 21st century to fruition.\n
\nIn the end, though, the most important focus for WACE has been and\nremains the threat to our commual health, which ultimately does not\ndifferentiate between economic class, color of skin, age, or political\naffiliation. (There is a reason why the mosaic of those who have joined\nus at our protests is so diverse, as has been pointed out before on this\nblog.) The State Director of the American Lung Association in Georgia\n(Mrs. June Deen) has been very clear on this in a letter we received,\nas has been Dr. Craig Bishop, one of many local doctors who supports\nour fight against the biomass plant.\n
\nBy the way, we have always had signs that go beyond the simple yet\nimportant “Biomass? No!” message. “Honk if you are for clean air”,\n“Go Solar” and others have always been part of our protests. Just check\nthe various recordings and photographs of our events outside City Hall,\nthe Industrial Authority, etc. and you will “see” and even “hear” them\n… but that may bring us back to Stephen Hawking again …\n
\n-Michael G. Noll\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This comment by Michael G. Noll, president of WACE, came in yesterday on The backfire effect. There are more comments on that blog entry, and also on Seth Gunning’s posts, a key to community organizing work and organizing and activism. -jsq Not sure what started this particular post, but as Stephen Hawking put it: “The […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,556,120,40,41,700],"tags":[4359,1815,8738,8701,1814,1813,548,8702,12,7,185,181,3330,502,183,182,6,180,8749],"class_list":["post-2009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-air","category-biomass","category-community","category-health-care","category-wace","tag-17-may-2011","tag-allan-ricketts-acting-executive-director","tag-biomass","tag-georgia","tag-j-stephen-gupton-attorney","tag-jerry-jennett-chairman","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mary-gooding","tag-norman-bennett","tag-protesters","tag-regular-meeting","tag-roy-copeland","tag-tom-call","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-wp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}