Author Archives: Teresa Johnston

By Guest Columnist COLLEEN KIERNAN, director of the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club

It’s May here in Georgia, which means the pollen has washed away, the Braves are digging themselves out of their April hole, and Southern Co.’s annual shareholders meeting is right around the corner.

For years, the company has used the gathering to make a proud presentation of their accomplishments; environmental advocates have brought a litany of grievances forward; and then everyone went home.

This year feels a little different. Two years ago, Southern Co. claimed “Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are not really an option for us in the Southeast.”

By Guest Columnist JIM DURRETT, executive director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District and chairman of the MARTA board

This isn’t a bike story, but I have to say that one of the great things about riding my bicycle to work is that I have so many opportunities to say “good morning” along the way. It charges my batteries. I’m just sayin’…

Now to the topic at hand – metro Atlanta’s transportation infrastructure. My good friend, Brian Leary, who developed and ran with a great idea to turn Atlantic Steel into Atlantic Station and who, today, runs Atlanta’s BeltLine efforts, used to crack me up with a single PowerPoint slide.

By Guest Columnist SALLY S. BETHEA, founding director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper organization

As president of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Ivan Allen Jr. launched a “Forward Atlanta” campaign in 1960 to promote the city’s image and to attract new business and investment.

But, it was three years later in July 1963, after he’d been elected mayor of Atlanta, that Allen took the step that set our city apart from, and ahead of, our sister cities—as a progressive, forward-thinking place good for business and good for all families.

By Guest Columnist AMIR FAROKHI, executive director of Georgia Forward, a non-partisan public policy initiative working to engage leaders to address Georgia’s biggest challenges.

For decades, Georgians have known that ours is a state divided. Whether it is geography, economics, culture, politics or race, Georgia’s divides are frequently lamented.

While Georgia is not alone in this respect among states, other states, from Utah to North Carolina, have learned to silence their doubts and pull together with impressive

By Guest Columnist RAY CHRISTMAN, executive director of the Livable Communities Coalition

The Livable Communities Coalition and 30 partner organizations recently launched an education initiative designed to help our region’s economy and quality of life for generations to come.

On March 29, we launched what we’re calling the Fair Share for Transit Initiative, an initiative designed to make the case for significant new funding – a fair share – for public transportation as part of the 2012

By Guest Columnist CLARA H. AXAM, president and CEO of Clarification & Mediation, Inc. a management consulting firm offering strategic assistance to support to change initiatives

In September of 2010, the Department of Education (DOE) awarded Morehouse School of Medicine on behalf of the Atlanta University Center Consortium colleges, and the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, a Promise Neighborhood Planning Grant in the amount of $500,000.

Since then, a community of stakeholders have had nose to the grindstone, researching best practices for eradicating poverty and exploring application to the target area surrounding the Atlanta University Center campuses, known as the Atlanta Promise

By Guest Columnist RUTH WOODLING, founder of WoodlingLaw LLC and a member of the Political Action Committee of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys

I first became aware of Atlanta’s unfortunate distinction as the country’s hub for the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in 2006 as a result of Mayor Shirley Franklin’s “Dear John” initiative. It involved a media blitz that included public service announcements featuring Mayor Franklin and a documentary entitled “Hidden in Plain

By Guest Columnist JENNETTE GAYER, policy coordinator for Environment Georgia, a citizen-based environmental advocacy organization

The disaster that continues to unfold in Japan has caused people to think a little deeper about the health and safety of their families, and what protections we have in place to keep us safe from dangerous pollution.

In Georgia, air quality is still a huge problem.

By Guest Columnist BILL TODD, president of the Georgia Cancer Coalition and former chairman of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association

As time has gone by since the announcement that former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn had been selected as the inaugural winner of the Ivan Allen, Jr. Prize for Social Courage, it has become more and more apparent that he was the ideal

By Guest Columnist DOUGLAS B. AMMAR, executive director of the Georgia Justice Project

I believe that the business community should support House Bill 402. This bill will help thousands of men and women in Georgia who are struggling to find work and support their families.

With the unemployment numbers released last week we know just how challenging it is

By Guest Columnist BRIAN GIST, a senior attorney and transportation specialist for the Southern Environmental Law Center

Atlanta’s transportation system is already bursting at the seams. And the bad news is that if something doesn’t change soon, those seams are going to break. The numbers speak for themselves:

• Increase in metro Atlanta’s population

By Guest Columnist HATTIE B. DORSEY, president of HBDorsey & Associates and former president of Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP).

As we watch the toppling of leaders through civil unrest and violence in the Middle East, our thoughts must turn to what is happening at home.

For the first time since the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam war demonstrations, our country is witnessing

By Guest Columnist JOHN BROCK, chairman of the Metro Atlanta Chamber and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE)

Delivery of water to taps is an unseen but critical activity. It is not experienced every day like transportation congestion or air quality warnings. We are only sporadically reminded of our water needs when a drought hits, a pipe bursts or a boil-water advisory is issued. All are temporary. All are resolved in a relatively short time frame.

However, when weighing the acute loss of

By Guest Columnist APRIL INGLE, executive director of the Georgia River Network

Our state’s leadership shouldn’t prioritize building new reservoirs as its first solution to our water supply needs when other alternatives are faster, cheaper, and will provide more water.

We have existing water supply reservoirs sitting full today that no one is tapping for water supply, like Hall County’s Cedar Creek Reservoir. We have 20 existing flood control lakes that are sitting full today and were

By Guest Columnist SANDY TUCKER, Georgia field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Atlanta sits near the headwaters of every river it depends on. It’s the nation’s largest metropolitan region, with the smallest area from which to pull water.

Without the water storage provided by Lake Lanier on the Chattahoochee River — and to a lesser extent, Lake Allatoona on the Etowah River — metro Atlanta could not have grown its current population of more than 5 million.

So it’s easy to understand why leaders say we need to build more reservoirs to ensure

By Guest Columnist ROB AARON, board member of Greening Neighborhoods

A little over a year ago, a small group of people living in the Peachtree Hills neighborhood decided that saving the planet wasn’t going to work. Not that saving the planet wasn’t a laudable goal, but frankly it didn’t prove to be much of a motivator. Saving the planet was far too big and too abstract to be meaningful in people’s daily lives.

So we decided we’d work to save something else near and dear to us: money. We decided it was time to stop throwing money up the chimney and out the window. It was time to spend money intelligently, to reset the defaults on our own lives.

By Guest Columnist REBECCA SERNA, executive director of the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition.

The city of Atlanta recently took on an exciting new challenge – to rank among the top 10 most sustainable cities in the United States.

Following the announcement, Atlanta was selected as one of nine U.S. cities to pilot a new sustainability index for cities. Sustainable Atlanta, the city’s nonprofit partner in achieving these goals, plans to include miles of bike lanes and percentage of

By Guest Columnist JOHN NAUGLE, an advocate for declaring Atlanta — the City of Peace.

As we finish celebrating 01/01/11, we are beginning the second decade of the thousand-year period of human history called: The Peace Millennium (Years 2000-3000).

Atlanta, how will you grow in this special year and new decade? In our organization’s opinion, Atlanta is the best positioned city on Earth to excel and become a beacon of peace to the entire world. This dream, born in the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and “I Have A Dream”, can soon enough experience reality.

As civic, government and business leaders unite to build the global peace legacy of Dr. King’s birth city it will be transformed. The City of Atlanta will fulfill its great

By Guest Columnist BRUCE GUNTER, president of Progressive Redevelopment Inc.

Years ago, the Atlanta Business Chronicle ran a regular series of articles entitled “The Romance of Real Estate,” which chronicled the story of the rise and fall of prominent buildings.

Located at the entrance to downtown Atlanta, on Peachtree Street at Ivan Allen Boulevard, the Imperial Hotel merits such story telling today. It has risen and fallen a number of times over the course of its 100 year history, with the latest fall currently underway due to a pending foreclosure by Fannie Mae.

Nonetheless, the Imperial has proven to be resilient over the years, and it is likely that it will emerge again under new ownership and be given a fresh start.

By Guest Columnist EVERETTE HARVEY THOMPSON, Southern Regional director for Amnesty International USA in Atlanta, Ga.

The plight of China’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo is taking place in the glare of world publicity, but his terrible situation is not uncommon. Millions worldwide suffer cruel persecution, their freedom and lives in peril, while governments deny their fundamental rights as human beings.

As we mark International Human Rights Day, people are still tortured or ill-treated in at least 111 countries; freedom of expression is restricted in at least 96 countries; and prisoners of conscience are held in at least 48 countries, according to Amnesty International’s