Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 01/16/2011 - 23:29.
Cincinnati Civil Rights leader Marian Spencer speaking at Taft STEM Elementary School MLK Day 2011
In early commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2011, 90-something Cincinnati civil rights and community leader Marian Spencer spent Friday afternoon, January 14, sharing with the students at Taft STEM Elementary School her experiences knowing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and helping to lead the civil rights movement of her day, in her state of Ohio.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 01/07/2011 - 16:42.
I strongly recommend subscribing to Greenversations - the Official Blog of the EPA - it is written by EPA staff with their personal observations and perspectives about the environmental world around them. The latest posting is about Environmental Justice and schools, which should interest all parents of school children, and school children.
I would be interested to see or help develop an environmental justice rating system for Northeast Ohio schools - that could be used to improve academic performance and the health and well being of students and staff region-wide. Does anything like that exist today, here? How is the environmental justice in Cleveland Schools?
Grace, how is the environmental justice in the schools down in Austin?
Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC, drafted and adopted 17 principles of Environmental Justice. Since then, The Principles have served as a defining document for the growing grassroots movement for environmental justice.
PREAMBLE
WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice:
1) Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction.
This Forum was the public interface, and culmination of a year of expansive activity in the White House, throughout the Obama Administration, and nationwide, to advance EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s priority to “expand the conversation on environmentalism and work for environmental justice” in America, in clear recognition of harm caused disadvantaged citizens by current Environmental Injustice (aka Environmental Racism... Environmental Genocide... from the mouths of victims), and showing clear US government concern over "Climate Gaps" (e.g. in Heat Islands), and over those worsening, causing more environmental injustices, to be exacerbated by future Climate Change and resulting Climate Injustices that will harm life on Earth, in this age of human-caused global warming.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 01/03/2011 - 08:22.
I have compiled a summary outline list of 15 "Top 10ish Environmental lists of 2010" found on the Internet - these are drawn from diverse, largely US-oriented environmental media services and organizations - many focus on organizational objectives - most feature positive and negative developments. I have summarized all but the last list - A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice - by Joe Romm, as that should be read in its' entirely, including linked reference material.
Romm points out: "The last year or so has seen more scientific papers and presentations that raise the genuine prospect of catastrophe (if we stay on our current emissions path) that I can recall seeing in any other year." "Any one of these would be cause for action — and combined they vindicate the final sentence of Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe: “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”
Romm concludes: "Unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases threaten multiple catastrophes, any one of which justifies action. Together, they represent the gravest threat to humanity imaginable. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media ignored the overwhelming majority of these studies and devoted a large fraction of its climate ‘ink’ in the last 12 months to what was essentially a non-story (Climategate) is arguably the single greatest failing of the science media this year."
Voice your comments and suggestions on improving Cleveland's neighborhoods with Community Development Block Grant Funds, Federal HOME, Emergency grant, Neighborhood Stabilization and Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 12/27/2010 - 00:36.
Fisheye view of KushCon2 Marijuana Industry Convention in Denver, Colorado, December 17-19, 2010
December 17 - 19, 2010, the Colorado Convention Center hosted the world's largest marijuana lifestyles convention TO-DATE - KushCon2 - offering those active in the legal global marijuana industries a place to meet, collaborate, learn and grow their new-economy enterprises, together. In one convention hall, in one weekend, mingled 10,000s of cannabis entrepreneurs and their stakeholders - nurturing $ billions in new GREEN, taxable economic opportunity for America - and their truly Green Revolution is just taking off.
Meet America's Greenest Revolutionaries ever... Mom and Pop Mainstreet, Small Town, Middle America!
Please see the agenda below and let me know if there are any specific concerns you would like addressed - you know I'll be focused on lead poisoning, source point industrial emissions in general, and especially industrial pollution from coal and steel-making, so serious in Northeast Ohio. I do not know the format of the forum but there will be some question and answer opportunities. I encourage you to tune in and watch it live at whitehouse.gov (link below). For Clevelanders, this is one of the most exciting developments yet from the Obama Administration. With all the right players at the table at the White House - and these are some very right players - I expect good outcomes for environmental justice in America to come of this. I look forward to covering and learning from it first hand.
Environmental Leaders, Cabinet Secretaries to Participate in First White House Environmental Justice Forum
WASHINGTON – On December 15, Obama administration officials will convene the first-ever White House Forum on Environmental Justice. Environmental leaders from across the country will attend the day-long forum featuring White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 12/13/2010 - 20:06.
I have no doubt everyone interested in public health, planning, engineering, architecture, real estate development, cool stuff and local foods will find absolutely fascinating the feature and the following three videos from The Economist on vertical farming...
Three views of the vertical farm
GROWING crops in vertical farms in the heart of cities is said to be a greener way to produce food. The idea is that skyscrapers filled with floor upon floor of orchards and fields, producing crops all year round, will sprout in cities across the world. As well as creating more farmable land out of thin air, this would slash the transport costs and carbon-dioxide emissions associated with moving food over long distances. But the concept is still unproven. Does it really stack up? To accompany our article on vertical farming in this week's issue, here are three videos offering different perspectives on the subject.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 12/13/2010 - 15:44.
An original John F. Kennedy Democrat - paid-his-way through college - self-made-rich made Reagan Republican - this interview on 60 Minutes shows Boehner is highly emotional, very proud, business-like, with firm middle-American (Ohio) roots, firmly planted in his world... which is most of Ohio and middle America's dream-world, which has included achieving the American Dream... going en mass to mass EVERY MORNING... growing up one of 12 children in a modest, small house near Cincinnati... nice siblings... nice wife... what's not to like?
I'll find out for myself.
I intend to challenge Boehner on my core objectives for transforming the economy of Ohio and America, and will see where we find common ground.
My #1 priority is reducing harm from pollution here and worldwide. We need impartial science driving effective climate change legislation and environmental justice regulation - world-wide - to address our global environmental crises during our time together on common ground Earth.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 12/13/2010 - 05:00.
The new science about lead's effect on the brain may force policymakers to re-examine some social issues through a new prism. For example, if lead can cause aggressive behavior, learning disabilities and hyperactivity, might it not also be a contributing factor in poor educational performance among low-income blacks, who suffer the most lead poisoning? - Newsweek, 1991
Where Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eugene Sanders, and CMSD overall, have been completely ineffective, and so failed, is in their Strange Ignorance of The Role of Lead Poisoning in Failing Schools. Sanders is not alone in responsibility for this tragedy, as leadership of Northeast Ohio in general has been so incompetent as to make Cleveland the lead poisoning capital of America and the developed world.
Perhaps our politicians even hired Sanders with the specific direction to ignore the realities of lead poisoning here, as "there exists a body of medical research which demonstrates that politicians themselves are responsible for a conveyor-belt of tragedy that produces precisely those symptoms attributed to "failing schools.""
The good news for the future of Cleveland and education and students here is Eugene Sanders has announced he shall resign, as of February 01, 2011, meaning we may now select a CEO who may lift CMSD students off the "conveyor-belt of tragedy" caused by lead poisoning that literally guarantees the direct hardship of around 30% of CMSD students, guaranteeing the failure of CMSD and Cleveland.... greatly harming the economic competitiveness and sustainability of the state of Ohio.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 08:00.
With the deceptive headline "68% in poll say parents, not teachers, are to blame for students' poor performance" the Cleveland Plain Dealer published today results of a "poll", paid for by eugenics champions and world's richest "humans" Bill and Melinda Gates, which misrepresents poorly-surveyed, poorly-reported opinions of 1,001 Americans about public education in America as significant indicators regarding the failure of the American public schools system, and reports "68 percent of adults believe parents deserve heavy blame for what's wrong with the U.S. education system -- more than teachers, school administrators, the government or teachers unions."
In fact, "government" was not a category in this poll... and, statistically, these Americans placed the same level of blame on State Education Officials (65%, with +/-3.9% sampling errors) as on parents... and all these answers are irrelevant.
Science proves a primary cause of failure in education in America is lead poisoning and other toxins put in the environment by the industrialists partnered with the Gates to control the world.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sat, 12/11/2010 - 14:24.
Did You Pay Homage and Taxes To One Of The Most Heinous Humans Ever To Walk The Earth, Today? Did You Turn on Microsoft today! If you use Microsoft, you turned on the Bill Gates fortune and all the harm that causes the world, today and forever hereafter. If you use a computer running any Microsoft products, you must know how your Microsoft addiction and dollars work for the world today, via perversely enriched micro-psychopath Bill Gates... from AlterNet's "5 Awards For the World's Most Heinous Climate Villains":
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet
Misdeeds: Pretend to be friends while engaged in a vicious competition to see who ends up with the most expensive coffin. Flew together to inspect the Alberta Tar Sands and ponder investments, looking to add to Buffet's $34 billion Burlington Northern Santa Fe coal-hauling railroad purchase and the Gates Foundation Nigerian oil portfolio. Gates is dumping cash into geo-engineering as a way to "hack" the climate, instead of getting off oil and coal. The duo insist that the government should be responsible for clean energy development, but that we need to tax our citizens to pay for it. They can't be bothered, since they're too busy banking on sure things like fossil fuels.
Corporate Teat: They're the tits, not the pups. Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway, much of it tax sheltered by the Gates Foundation.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sat, 12/11/2010 - 11:44.
Americans certainly don't waste much of our limited TV-time and mutated brain-power seeking insight from our past failures, as our global industrial complex has so screwed-up humanity itself that the work-a-day citizen must stay focused on basic survival on Earth today. So, as a quick review of the distinctly American political views and interests of yesterday, as they shaped the world today, scan some highlights from the 1973 Presidential tapes of great visionary Republican leader Richard Nixon, among his White House staff, and know these people and their followers have shaped our national interests, civil rights, and international and humanitarian policies ever since - this is the legacy and culture influencing our post-Nixonian Industrially Complex President Obama, who is shaping our national interests, civil rights, and international and humanitarian policies today...
Nixon offered sharp skepticism at the views of William P. Rogers, his secretary of state, about the future of black Africans.
“Bill Rogers has got — to his credit it’s a decent feeling — but somewhat sort of a blind spot on the black thing because he’s been in New York,” Nixon said. “He says well, ‘They are coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.’ So forth and so on.
“My own view is I think he’s right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years,” he said. “I think it’s wrong if you’re talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.”
First of all, from comments, CRA is a confusing issue and even liberal community development advocates associate CRA with urban development ills - projecting frustrations with local political corruption and planning failure upon all Federal urban renewal efforts, lumping in CRA (and organizations like NCRC). In fact, these citizens do not understand where CRA fits in and are misplacing their anger - missing an opportunity to support what may help.
Those responsible for educating citizens about CRA and credit issues - the councilpeople and CDCs - are the ones causing the harm and frustration for working class citizens, who feel under-served and under-represented - and they are under-educated about Federal efforts to improve their lives, and the availability of basic help.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 04:00.
I never miss a chance to see the work of - and celebrate - Cleveland-based artist Julian Stanczak... a father of Op Art and one of the great artists of all time. So, during a tour of downtown Cincinnati (VERY NICE) last week, I was thrilled to unexpectedly be walked right past Stanczak's landmark 2008 work "Additional", on the Fifth Third bank and parking complex at Fountain Square. My host in Cincinnati seemed pleasantly surprised I was familiar with a work of public art in his Queen City, as I proudly exclaimed "Wow, there's the Stanczak mural... he's from Cleveland" and ran off to take pictures to share with realNEO.
If the art-superstar status of Julian Stanczak was ever to be challenged - for his life-work or his late-career accomplishments, as he remains productive in his 80s - Julian's most recent and important mural-scale public art masterpiece enforces his position at the top of the "art world" forever.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 04:15.
I recently met with Marcia West, Regional Organizer for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), in Washington, DC, to explore how economically distressed communities should respond to the foreclosure and housing crises in America, to expand credit access for working-class residents - to learn what leaders of Northeast Ohio may do to improve access to loans for housing and community development for us common folk. The short answer is "Expand the Community Reinvestment Act to Bring Billions of Dollars in Safe and Sound Investments to America's Neighborhoods" - go to Expand CRA to learn more and contact your representatives... SPREAD THE WORD!
CRA encourages banks to respond to a variety of needs in low- and moderate-income communities, including the financing of affordable rental housing, sustainable homeownership, small business creation, and economic development projects.
Joshua Gunter/ The Plain DealerSteve Dettlebach, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Ohio.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When federal prosecutors began to work with the Greater Cleveland Partnership on ways to encourage ethical business practices in the wake of local corruption scandals, they heard a stunning story.
During a trip abroad to recruit business, partnership representatives were told by a Dutch company that Cleveland wasn't a place they were interested in coming to because they believed it to be corrupt.
November 30, 2010 -- The National Research Council, at the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has launched a study to strengthen the scientific basis for incorporating sustainability concepts into EPA’s decision-making. “Today I am formally requesting President Cicerone and the National Academies convene a committee of experts to provide to the U.S. EPA an operational framework for sustainability that applies across all of the agency’s programs, policies, and actions,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at an event held at the National Academy of Sciences’ Koshland Science Museum. NAS President Ralph Cicerone and Bernard Goldstein, chair of the committee that will conduct the study, made remarks as well.
Wow! November 30th was an amazing day for the EPA. Not only are we in the midst of commemorating four decades of accomplishments in protecting the health and the environment, but Administrator Jackson also made a landmark speech at the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Science on the future of the EPA. That future is sustainability. The Administrator laid out her vision to a packed house of luminaries from across the spectrum, from academia to industry, to environmental groups.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 12/01/2010 - 11:25.
2010 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement
"Well-conceived, effectively implemented environmental protection is good for economic growth… A clean, green, healthy community is a better place to buy a home and raise a family; it’s more competitive in the race to attract new businesses; and it has the foundations it needs for prosperity." – EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, March 8, 2010
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Tue, 11/30/2010 - 20:29.
More valuable than all the steel we mill, Cleveland has forged from our blighted, industrial, rustbelted, toxified, sprawling fruited-plains some of the most innovative, transformational music ever heard on Earth, since long before we gave birth to Rock and Roll.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Tue, 11/30/2010 - 06:13.
TheLoop21.com's senior financial/political reporter and blogger Devona Walker observes on her blog, "This is a classic Depression for Black America, and few appear to be paying attention. Just look at the numbers." She goes on to point out, for Ohioans:
In several states, Michigan and Ohio for example, African-American unemployment is expected to exceed 20% in 2010
Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Kansas, Colorado, Mississippi, and New Jersey — the unemployment rate for Blacks was at least 2.5 times higher than that of whites
At the top of our broken Democratic political, social, environmental, and economic pyramid-scheming is President Obama, who has "turned out to be such a political dud as chief executive" that our "blue-state financial misery continues", along with other blue-states, and that "deepens the ideological crisis for American liberalism" worldwide. Even billionaires traditionally supportive of Democratic party interests and candidates appear to be seeking "alternative brands to Obama himself."
I quote above two excellent columns published online this week, coming from opposite directions, analyzing the challenges Obama faces ahead, mid-term into his presidency, if he seeks any hope of winning a second term in office in 2012 - The Second Wave, by conservative writer Michael Gerson... andSaving Progressivism from Obama, by liberal writer Robert Kuttner.
