Category: Guest Column

By Guest Columnist REV. JOSEPH LOWERY, a Civil Rights leader and former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

We have come so far in this country in our efforts to bring forth harmony among all people – black and white, conservative and liberal, Democrat and Republican.

We have made great strides on so many issues when we have worked together for the common good.

In the South, and in our own city of Atlanta, we have emerged from the dark days of racial division that preceded the Civil Rights movement. Here, in Atlanta, we collectively made a conscious decision to usher in a movement of progress and prosperity for all in building a global mega- region.

By Guest Columnist SALLY FLOCKS, founder, president and CEO of PEDS, an Atlanta-based advocacy group for pedestrians

The decades-long neglect of pedestrian safety in the design of state roads exacts a heavy toll. Each year in metro Atlanta, some 1,400 pedestrians are hit by motor vehicles, resulting in 1,000 pedestrian injuries and 70 pedestrian deaths.

While the region has made dramatic progress during the past five years in reducing overall traffic fatalities, the number of pedestrian deaths remains constant. In 2009, pedestrians accounted for one out of five traffic fatalities in the 10-county region.

By Guest Columnist STACY SHELTON, public affairs specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Southeast Region

Development, dams, pollution, invasive species and water scarcity are a few of the challenges facing the survival of many fish and wildlife species today.

Climate change is expected to exacerbate them all.

In recent years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began taking a hard look at how the changing climate – marked by warming temperatures, rising sea levels and new precipitation patterns – is and will impact the species we are charged with protecting.

By Guest Columnist JACK HARDIN, co-chair of the Regional Commission on Homelessness and co-founder of the Atlanta-based Rogers & Hardin law firm

As the co-chair of the Regional Commission on Homelessness, I heartily approve of teaching our young people to look beyond stereotypes and to get involved in making our community stronger.

The week of May 23, with only the clothes on their backs, $4 and discarded shoes, middle school students at Paideia School spent one week as homelessness individuals. They actually lived on the streets for one week and tried to survive without shelter, money or any basic necessities.

In an innovative program created and led by Elizabeth Hearn these students meet, serve and get to know homeless individuals. They learn that while much homelessness is caused or exacerbated by poor decisions, the realities of homelessness are compelling human conditions.

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.