Blogs

This announcement via e-mail from Al McSurely:

I hope you will post an open invitation to everyone about the 23rd Annual Martin Luther King Service at First Baptist on Monday, January 16th at 11 am. Dr. William Joseph Barber, Jr. will be speaking on War and Poverty. He recently won the Presidency of the State Conference of the NAACP, ousting the sitting President, Skip Alston, from Greensboro in October 2005.

Dr. Barber held the Statewide Directorship of the N.C. Human Relations Commission in the early l990's. He is an outspoken opponent against the War in Iraq, and takes most of his scriptural texts from the Old Testament prophets, like Dr. King. The State Conference of the NAACP has over 80 Branches, over 15,000 members.

Dr. Barber was strongly supported by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Branch 5689, under the leadership of Fred Battle, and the Northern Orange Branch, under the leadership of Keith Cook. Dr. Barber has named Al McSurely, local civil rights attorney, as the Chair of the Legal Redress Committee.

Sustainability - it's the buzzword that gets used and abused but somehow a useful replacement word is never found. It gets bandied about constantly as corporations, governments, and other agencies seek to position themselves for a future of inevitable resource scarcity, increasing energy costs, and pollution blowback. It gets hard to tell the greenwashers from those authentically committed to adaptation and innovation.

The Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) recently published its first Sustainability Report (download PDF). It reports on many aspects of providing water and sewer services in an environmentally sound manner such as strategies for maintaining high water quality, a commitment to water conservation, the partnership with UNC for the utilization of wastewater for non-potable uses, energy efficiency, green design features at the new Operations Center, hiring a Sustainability Administrator, and recycling – to name a few.

Why are the University's community relations people so tight-lipped about their new Carolina North committee? The town's Horace Williams Citizens Committee (HWCC) first learned about it in the paper in October. But at our last several meetings we have asked our University representative, Linda Convissor (UNC Director of Local Relations) for any news and she had none. When I ran into Jonathan Howes (UNC Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Local Affairs) he asked me why we keep hounding Linda for information.

Perhaps it's because we can't collaborate with a partner that doesn't share critical information? It's also because "UNC news" is a standing item on the HWCC's agenda, and we can't do much of anything without it.

The chairman of a new "leadership advisory committee" being set up by UNC to get input on Carolina North planning will be Kenneth Broun, a former mayor of Chapel Hill and former dean of the UNC School of Law.