By Guest Columnist KIM ANDERSON, CEO of Families First, Inc.
This month, as temperatures plunge, it is impossible not to be aware of the number of vulnerable people in our community who are without basic shelter and the bare essentials of life.
We chafe at the notion of the homeless exposed to the bitter cold, and we wince at news coverage of house fires started by people who resort to using ovens to warm their bodies and souls. This stark reality undercuts the American Dream.
By Guest Columnist JEFF GRAHAM, executive director of Georgia Equality and facilitator of Georgia Unites Against Discrimination campaign
We’re barely two weeks into the New Year, but politics here in Georgia are already in full swing.
It’s time for all of us to begin talking about a bill that protects all Georgians – people of faith, our veterans, those who are disabled, women, our elderly – and yes, gay and transgender Georgians too.
By Guest Columnist STEPHANIE DAVIS, retired CEO of Georgia Women for a Change
New Year’s Day is like every other temporal marker – our birthday, an anniversary, a holiday, a death – validating the passage of time, reminding us that it is all too short and suggesting that we can begin anew.
By Guest Columnists REV. HOWARD BECKHAM and FRANK FERNANDEZ, leaders working to revitalize Atlanta’s Westside
The Bluff is despair. The Bluff is drug infested. The Bluff is hopelessness.
The Bluff is not the residents of Vine City and English Avenue. It does not, cannot and must not define the entire historic Westside community.
By Guest Columnist GORDON KENNA, director of business development for Consensus Energy, an Atlanta-based environmental services company
To the surprise of most observers, the climate change conference in Paris produced a historic consensus document that resembles meaningful progress.
It is remarkable that nearly 200 nations were able to agree on a common position.
By Guest Columnist SALLY BETHEA, a former member of the Georgia Board of Natural Resources and the retired executive director of Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy organization
By Guest Columnist BILL IDE, a partner with Dentons and a former president of the American Bar Association
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,” reads Emma Lazarus’ sonnet written for the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France and the most iconic and universally-recognized symbol of the United States.
By Guest Columnist JEFF JOSLIN, an airline captain who chairs the North Atlanta Citizens’ Climate Lobby
As the Paris climate talks begin this week (known as the “Conference of Parties” or COP 21) I am inspired and hopeful remembering the open hearted responses to the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris earlier this month.
By Guest Columnist AMY PHUONG, commissioner of Atlanta’s Department of Parks and Recreation
A little more than a year ago, I was named commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation by Mayor Kasim Reed and charged with enhancing the City of Atlanta’s parks and recreational programming.
By Guest Columnist SALLY FLOCKS, president and CEO of PEDS – an advocacy group for pedestrians
While waiting for a cab in front of a grocery store, I started up a conversation with an older woman who was about to get on a church van. I asked whether she got out of the house much on other days. She shook her head. “No,” she said. Crossing Peachtree Road to get to the bus stop was far too dangerous.
This is just one example of how streets designed for cars impact people’s quality of life.
By Guest Columnist KAREN BEAVOR, president and CEO of the Georgia Center for Nonprofits
Forming strategic partnerships is one of the first lessons any good businessperson must learn.
As leader of the Georgia Center for Nonprofits, which is a collaborator by definition, I’ve seen the attitudes and practices that fuel successful partnerships firsthand, especially during our annual fundraising event Georgia Gives Day.
By Guest Columnist WILLIAM T. PARKER, a seasoned executive who has just published a book about his career: “How did you get here? One Black Man’s Journey through White Corporate America.”
How did you get here? It’s a question often asked of people who appear in places and in situations usually assumed to be reserved for the privileged classes.
When I hear the question, I believe it is always aimed at trying to discern how a specific individual got “through the barriers.”
By Guest Columnist SHIRLEY FRANKLIN, executive board chair of Purpose Built Communities and Atlanta’s mayor from 2002 to 2010
Last week, Lesley Grady of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta wrote an insightful piece called “Equity, Inequality and Myth Busting” that highlighted the extreme income inequality between white households and African-American households in Atlanta.
By Guest Columnist KEVIN GREINER, president and CEO of Gas South and board chair of the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education
How important is early learning? Even more than you realize.
Early learning is an industry that generates significant and well-substantiated societal benefits.
By Guest Columnist LEON S. EPLAN, 1946 graduate of Boys’ High of Atlanta and former planning commissioner for the City of Atlanta
Boys’ High closed in 1947 after providing more than 7,000 students with an excellent college preparatory education. Since then, the Atlanta Boys’ High School Alumni Association has been making significant contributions to Grady High School – the site of Boys’ High.
By Guest Columnist GEORGE “CHIPP” NAPPER III, a sales account executive for the Atlanta Business Chronicle and one of Cabral Franklin’s dearest friends
Growing up in Cascade in the early 1980’s was a golden era. We lived in a close and tight-knit community, where everyone was my uncle.
There were families like the Arringtons, the Axams, the Youngs and the Franklins. This close-knit community was also strengthened by the facts that professionally the families worked together.
By Guest Columnist JOHN NAUGLE, president and CEO of Atlanta: City of Peace Inc.
On Sept. 21, millions of people worldwide will celebrate the “International Day of Peace.”
The day has special meaning in Atlanta – a city that has the opportunity to become recognized as a leading city of peace in the world.
By Guest Columnist MATTHEW CHARLES CARDINALE, CEO and news editor of Atlanta Progressive News
As Atlanta’s City Council considers its next big moves on affordable housing and community development, decision-makers and stakeholders alike have the opportunity to benefit from a bold, cutting-edge policy tool: Affordable Housing Impact Statements.
Much like an environmental impact statement or a fiscal impact statement, an Affordable Housing Impact Statement would specify the estimated impact of certain public policy decisions of the City Council on Atlanta’s affordable housing stock.
By Guest Columnist PATTY DURAND, a former director of the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club who currently works in the energy field
When I was a teenager I rode horses in the summer. The barn where I rode had a vending machine filled with Coke, Tab, Fanta grape and orange flavors, and Sprite. I remember wishing the vending machine had chilled water but couldn’t imagine a company being able to sell a product that we get free out of our tap.
And now, 30 years later, I find myself on the opposite side of my teenage fantasy of chilled water from a vending machine: I don’t want bottled water to exist anymore. I don’t want it because 80 percent of the bottles aren’t recycled and so end up in the landfill or the ocean.
By Guest Columnist DANIEL R. FERREIRA, assistant professor of environmental science Kennesaw State University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology
Georgia has two nuclear power plants with another under construction today. Together, the current plants produce about 20 percent of the electricity used in the state.
Whether you are pro- or anti-nuclear power, the truth is that nuclear power matters and all such plants carry with them the inherent risk of a radioactive release.
