Tag Archives: Chairman

Children’s Policy Council hosts UA New Faculty Engagement Tour

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On May 11, 2023 the Greene County Children’s Policy Council hosted the University of Alabama New Faculty Engagement Tour at the Robert Young Community Center in Eutaw, Alabama. The tour”s – Exploring New Places, Meeting New People, and Engaging New Communities – purpose is to encourage new community -university partnerships. Six panelists from Greene County discussed their programs making a difference in Greene County and what type of additional community-engaged research or service partnerships with the University of Alabama faculty, staff, and students would be helpful to address priorities within the County.
The panelist on the program were Christopher Jones, Director, Greene County Ambulance Service, Dr. Corey Jones, Superintendent, Greene County School System, Mildred Morgan, Facilitator, Strengthening Family Program, Mollie Rowe, Director, Eutaw, Housing Authority, John Zippert, Chairman, Greene County Health System Board and Lillie Jones-Osborne, Chairman, Greene County Children’s Policy Council.
This is the fifth New Faculty Community Engagement Tour to visit Greene County. According to Dr. Samory Pruitt, Vice President of Community Affairs at the University of Alabama, “ Community-engaged scholarship exists at the intersection of teaching, research, and service, the three pillars of the University of Alabama’s mission. The tour plays an important role in advancing that mission by providing opportunities to connect, and for the community members to become the teachers while members of the University community embrace the role of learner.”
Judge Lillie Jones- Osborne served as the facilitator and site coordinator for the group. She stated, “We are always happy to host the group and to sit down and have new dialogue with the faculty and staff to encourage new partnerships.” She further stated that several partnerships have developed over the years because of the engagement tour. The tour visited several other areas in the Black Belt and in West Alabama over a three-day period.

Commission cannot conduct business when adoption of agenda fails

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On Monday, Nov. 18, 2019, the Greene County Commission resumed a meeting recessed from the previous week, Tuesday, Nov. 12. The Nov. 18 meeting adjourned following several failed attempts by the newly elected Chairman, Allen Turner, Jr., to get the agenda approved.
Commissioner Lester Brown moved to approve the agenda, excluding the item for an executive session. Commissioner Tennyson Smith offered the second. The motion failed with a two-two vote; Brown and Smith for and Turner and Roshanda Summerville against (only four commissioners were present).
On the request again by Chairman Turner for a motion to approve the agenda, Commissioner Roshanda Summerville moved to approve the agenda as printed and the motioned failed for lack of a second. Turner repeated this exercise of alternating motions by Brown and Summerville; each time the motion failed. Turner then asked the Commission’s Attorney Hank Sanders: “What happens now; what are our options.” Sanders replied that once the body failed to adopt/approve the agenda, the meeting is adjourned. However, Commissioner Turner again asked for a motion and Summerville moved to approve the agenda as presented. Motion failed again for lack of a second. Turner then stated the meeting is adjourned.
The commission had recessed the Nov. 12 meeting to allow time for Commissioners Brown and Turner to meet with Sheriff Jonathan Benison regarding the bingo funds the commission needed to meet payroll for all the employees in the Sheriff’s Department.

The commission approved its budget for 2019-2020, allocating approximately 51% of the general fund monies for the Sheriff’s Department, however, that budget had a contingency component consisting of approximately $800,000 which would be provided to the commission from the sheriff’s bingo funds to supplement the sheriff’s budget. The sheriff had provided supplemental bingo funds in previous years to make up the difference from what the county could provide for the sheriff’s department.
Brown inquired as to the purpose of the executive session since he and Turner had not met with Sheriff Benison. Turner did not offer any explanation except to state that all that would be discussed in the executive session. Turner also stated that he had met with Sheriff Benison, but he did not explain why Brown was not included in that meeting, or whether other commissioners attended that meeting with him.
The commission took no action to set a date for a follow-up meeting.

Newswire : Coalition of Black Organizations to hold United Nations protest against Trump insults February 15

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proudafricansempowerment
Organizing Committee for the “Repudiating and Educating Trump” Protest Rally Feb. 15

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – #ProudAfricans, a coalition of African, Caribbean, and African-American human rights and professional organizations, will lead a protest rally outside the United Nations Headquarters at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Park in New York City on Feb. 15 to denounce the recent racist and bigoted anti-Africa comments by U.S. President Donald Trump, according to the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW), a member of the coalition.
The “Repudiating and Educating Trump” Protest Rally will take place at 11 a.m. on 47 Street between First and Second Avenues.
Recent insults from Trump, reportedly referring to Haiti and African nations as S***hole countries during and Oval Office meeting, have apparently sparked an uprising in which numerous other issues are being brought to the surface. Those issues include the relationship between Africa and the U. S. and the widespread mistreatment of nations of color.
“The rally will also highlight the past and continuing contributions by people of African descent to the creation of wealth and prosperity in the United States and other Western countries. In addition, the coalition will denounce the brutal exploitation of African migrants whose plight was highlighted in a recent CNN expose showing auctions of African migrants who have been enslaved in Libya,” states a release from IBW.
It continues, “At the UN rally, the coalition will raise public awareness of the thousands of young Africans who continue to drown during desperate voyages across the Mediterranean to seek employment in Europe because the economies of their own countries have been ravaged by policies imposed by the World Bank and the IMF in collusion with corrupt regimes generally maintained in power by US and European governments.”
IBW says the coalition aims to issue “a set of demands to the White House, the United Nations, and other International organizations to address the socio-economic and political marginalization of Africans and African descendants all over the world.”
#ProudAfricans Coalition has been organized by the United African Congress (UAC), a New York-based organization representing African immigrants in the U.S. The UAC is led by Dr. Mohammed Nurhussein, chairman, and Sidique Wai, president and national spokesperson.
“We are Africans of diverse backgrounds from across the continent and the diaspora who are proud of our heritage, who have come together to denounce strongly, without stooping to his level of depravity, the vile and racist characterization of people of African descent by the current occupant of the House that enslaved Africans built,” states Dr. Nurhussein. a retired physician, in the release, which also quotes other leaders.
“As an Immigrant from Morocco and as a human rights activist and community organizer I also denounce the hateful words used to describe my beautiful motherland Africa,” said Ms. Souad Kirama founder and director of New Horizon Center for Advocacy and Development. “We are here in this wonderful newly founded coalition to say it loud and clear #ProudAfrican!”
IBW President/CEO Ron Daniels, a distinguished CUNY professor, is one of the chief organizers of the protest rally at the UN. “As president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and convener of the Pan African Unity Dialogue, I am proud to stand with our sisters and brothers in the diaspora in repudiating the foul-mouthed insults that spewed recently from the current occupant of the White House. We will not be disrespected,” Daniels stated.
Bourema Niambele, a leader of New York City-based African Diaspora Coalition for Justice, one of the protest organizers, says, “Donald Trump represents the kind of racism towards Africans and African immigrants that we see around the world today. As the world now knows from the recent CNN expose, Africans are even being auctioned into slavery in Libya. This is the 21st century and we will not stand for it.”
The rally is expected to draw large numbers of people from the continental African immigrant, African-American, Caribbean-American and Latino communities from the Tri-State area and across the nation.
The coalition’s priorities are anchored by the framework of “Protest, Policy, Power” and speakers will challenge the current socio-economic policies that negatively impact African communities at the local, national and international levels and will offer a number of solutions. In so doing, participating organizations will broaden and deepen their alliances for unified actions moving forward.
In addition to United African Congress (UAC) and IBW, the protest rally is endorsed by Give Them A Hand Foundation, African Diaspora Coalition for Justice, Nextmedia.tv, The Black Star News, African Women Solidarity Action for Development, African Hope Committee, African Commission of Newark, New Jersey, and the African Human Rights Commission.
For more information on the protest: 212-340-1975; info@nextmedia.tv; or Facebook: proudafricansempowerment.

Industrial development delegation visits Crossroads of America Industrial Park at Boligee to review feasibility for Waste to Energy Plant

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Visiting delegation review feasibility of Crossroads of America Industrial Park for waste-to-energy project: (L to R) a member of the Greene Co. Water Authority staff, Ralph Banks III, Treasurer of GCIDA, Rev. James Carter, GCIDA, Vincent Atkins, Greene County Water Authority, Mayor Louis Harper of Boligee, Dr. Ellsworth James, consultant to project, Dr. John Wu, Chairman, JMC Renewable Energy Systems, Dao Xian Feng, JMC Senior Boiler Engineer, Danny Cooper, Chair of GCIDA, Jian Tu, JMC Project Manager, Ying Hua Deng, Senior Electrical Engineer and Christopher Wu, Board Secretary for JMC.

A delegation of representatives from JMC Renewable Energy Solutions visited the Crossroads of America Industrial Park at Boligee in late December 2017, to review the feasibility of the Greene County Industrial Development Authority’s site for a potential industry. The delegation also met with GCIDA Board members, Mayor Harper of Boligee, the Greene County Water Authority and others to discuss the potential of this renewal energy project.
JMC Renewable Energy Solutions, Inc. specializes in designing, developing and operating custom renewable energy and infrastructure solutions. JMC’s goal is to reduce the carbon footprint resulting from MSW and GHG through energy recovery and sustainable infrastructure development.

JMC is partnering with the Chinese Machinery and Equipment Corporation, an eight billion dollar publicly-traded infrastructural conglomerate, which designed, financed and constructed super projects in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. The first project in the United States is a partnership with JMC Renewable Energy Solutions Inc., a Mississippi Corporation. CMEC will provide the engineering, design, and financing for the Mississippi project. JMC has put together competent local management teams in each region where renewable energy projects are planned. Current projects are planned for Bolivar County, Mississippi and Greene County, Alabama.
The proposed Greene county project is a state of the art Waste-to-Energy plant that converts all municipal solid waste – household garbage – into electricity, with no harmful emissions released in the air or toxins into the land and groundwater.
The Waste-to-Energy (WTE) plant currently under evaluation utilizes an advanced technology that converts trash to electricity and will sell the energy to the regional power grid. The plant will provide a constant supply of energy to the grid, 24-7.
The new WTE plant will reduce input to landfills and eliminate nearly 100% of toxic methane gas, the most harmful of all greenhouse gases (GHGs) to the atmosphere. The residual 3% is an abrasive material that can be sold to landfills to absorb landfill emissions and odor, or used to make asphalt.
The WTE plant will also reduce the demand for local landfills that contaminate the land and groundwater, reduce the harmful greenhouse gases being released in the atmosphere, and convert the steam produced to generate low-cost, clean electricity.
The particular system under review is a proven technology currently used the SWA’s Renewable Energy Faciity 2 in West Palm Beach Florida. At capacity, REF 2 will process more than 1 million tons (907,200,000 kg) of post-recycled municipal solid waste annually and 3,000 tons a daily – more than 660 curbside trucks worth of trash every day!
Once fully operational, the communities in the Alabama Black Belt, that participate in the project will receive direct financial benefits by:
•reducing costly municipal expenses for garbage transport to the landfill and energy expenses for residential and business customer; and
•generating revenue sharing opportunities to communities sending their municipal solid waste to the WTE plant.
By reducing expenses and adding revenue to local municipal budgets, the communities have the potential to strengthen their financial positions. With the planned revenue, Black Belt communities can develop new long-term project plans and budgets, for desperately-needed infrastructure repairs, housing and commercial developments, all of which will provide employment opportunities for area residents.
If you would like more information about this project, please contact David Hannans at geg@gatewayenergy.co.