{"id":2210,"date":"2011-04-09T17:39:08","date_gmt":"2011-04-09T21:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/concerned-scott-orenstein.html"},"modified":"2011-04-09T17:39:08","modified_gmt":"2011-04-09T21:39:08","slug":"concerned-scott-orenstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/concerned-scott-orenstein.html","title":{"rendered":"Concerned for the community and get up and leave in the middle of the meeting?  &#8211;Scott Orenstein"},"content":{"rendered":"Scott Orenstein made a very good point at the end of the 7 March 2011\nValdosta City Council meeting:\n<blockquote>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/98706376@N00\/5604310784\/\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4096\/5604310784_fbfc4e189a_m.jpg\"><\/a>\n&#8230;spirit of concern and participation in the community.\nI&#8217;d just like the videographer to pan around and see how many\npeople are still here at the conclusion of the meeting.\nAnd then talk about their true concern for the community.\nAre they really concerned\nwhen they get up and leave in the middle of the meeting?\n<\/blockquote>\nThere&#8217;s more, but I&#8217;m not going to transcribe it all;\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0ZQz9kr0u08\">\nlisten for yourself:<\/a>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0ZQz9kr0u08\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<br>\n<small>\nRegular monthly meeting of the Valdosta City Council (VCC),\n<br>\nValdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 April 2011,\n<br>\nVideos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.\n<\/small>\n<p>\nThe mayor re-opened Citizens to Be Heard at the end of the meeting\nso\n\n<!--more-->\nmore people could be heard, and nobody but Orenstein stood up to be heard.\nOf those who earlier showed up\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/01\/the-road-of-respect-goes-both-ways-matt-flumerfelt-1.html\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/i4.ytimg.com\/vi\/w7qDyG3KZ4Q\/default.jpg\"><\/a>\nto talk about biomass, not one stayed to say anything.\nNot even to thank the mayor for doing that.\nAs someone said in a different meeting, and a speaker alluded\nto in this same meeting:\n<blockquote>\nThe road of respect goes both ways.\n<\/blockquote>\nThis time it wasn&#8217;t the mayor not showing respect.\n<p>\n(Two previous speakers did stay, George Rhynes and me,\nbut we weren&#8217;t there primarily to speak about biomass,\nand we were coming to these meetings long before that\nissue came up, and we&#8217;ll be coming to them long after\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/04\/when-the-biomass-plant-is-cancelled-john-s-quarterman.html\">the biomass plant is cancelled.<\/a>)\n<p>\nLike Orenstein, I like to witness a government meeting all the way through,\nincluding the financial reports and everything.\n<em>That&#8217;s<\/em> what I find entertaining!\nThe whole thing, because how can you connect the dots without that?\n<p>\nUnless you&#8217;re only interested in one dot,\nand nobody else&#8217;s dots concern you.\nThen are you really participating in the community?\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scott Orenstein made a very good point at the end of the 7 March 2011 Valdosta City Council meeting: &#8230;spirit of concern and participation in the community. I&#8217;d just like the videographer to pan around and see how many people are still here at the conclusion of the meeting. And then talk about their true [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[97,120,40,2,11,22,54,4689,700],"tags":[4702,8701,10,8702,12,7,6,8726,2671],"class_list":["post-2210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-biomass","category-community","category-government","category-lake","category-politics","category-valdosta-city-council","category-vcc-7-april-2011","category-wace","tag-7-april-2011","tag-georgia","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-vcc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-zE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210","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=2210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}