GwinnettForum | Number 20.65 Sept. 11, 2020
LIBRARIES REOPENING: Gwinnett County’s public libraries are on the path to restore all services after the pandemic limiting of services. Starting Monday, September 21, all branches will be open for computer use and browsing. Curbside holds for pickup will continue to be available. Charles Pace, Gwinnett librarian, says that with COVID-19 being an ongoing concern, “We will continue to monitor the situation and have measures in place for the health of staff and customers.” Hours will be reduced, to be from Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. On Sunday the hours will be from noon until 5 p.m. Learning labs and conference rooms will remain closed. Masks will be required for entry.
TODAY’S FOCUS: Background on how Georgia’s hate crimes law got passed
EEB PERSPECTIVE: Wayne Johnson bases Senate campaign on student loan reform
ANOTHER VIEW: Support a proposal to rid our area of illegally dumped tires
SPOTLIGHT: Northside Hospital
FEEDBACK: Government not intended to be all things to all people
UPCOMING: UK firm to bring 100 new jobs to Gwinnett County
NOTABLE: PCOM student-doctors offer free flu shots at Lawrenceville ministry
RECOMMENDED: The Book of Joy by The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu (with Douglas Adams)
GEORGIA TIDBIT: Author Mary Hood is two-time winner of the Townsend Prize
MYSTERY PHOTO: One major clue about this Mystery Photo: no mountains!
LAGNIAPPE: Winn DAR chapter represented at Eutaw Springs ceremony
Background on how Georgia’s hate crimes law got passed
By State Rep. Chuck Efstration
DACULA, Ga. | As a state legislator, I’ve always tried to find ways to bring people together to solve some of the big problems facing Georgia. But the effort to pass the historic Georgia Hate Crimes Act, which was signed into law this year, will always stand out to me as a great achievement for our state.
Efstraton
Before I wrote House Bill 426, the Hate Crimes Act, Georgia was one of only four states without a Hate Crimes law on the books. Such a bill was passed in 2000; however, the law was ruled “unconstitutionally vague” in 2004 by the Georgia Supreme Court. Through the 15 years that followed, no member could pass a Hate Crimes bill out of either chamber of the Georgia legislature.
I was familiar with the issue and that civil rights and law enforcement organizations had called for the law to be fixed. Before the 2019 legislative session, I met with Rep. Calvin Smyre (D-Columbus) to discuss passing a Hate Crimes Bill for Georgia.
Smyre, the longest-serving member in the Georgia General Assembly and a former state chairman of the Democrat Party, and I agreed to do what some might think impossible in these times of politically-polarized hyper-partisanship: we would work together, across party lines, to address a major issue facing our state.
When we introduced the Hate Crimes Act (HB 426), I was so proud of the Republican and Democrat co-sponsors, as well as the public support from the Legislative Black Caucus. Through great effort, we even got HB 426 passed out of the Georgia House of Representatives in 2019.
The bill then went to the State Senate where it sat without a single hearing for over 400 days. At that point, it seemed unlikely that we could pass HB 426. The State Senate wouldn’t even give it a vote.
Then, in 2020, the national attention surrounding the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick led many to question why Georgia didn’t have a Hate Crimes law. Media attention seemed to bring new interest to my legislation which was still frozen in the Senate.
Nonprofit organizations supporting the bill, including the NAACP of Georgia, the Anti-Defamation League, and Georgia Equality, were joined by major business organizations. The Georgia and Metro-Atlanta Chambers of Commerce issued a rare joint-statement supporting the legislation, and Fortune 500 companies expressed public support for passing a Hate Crimes law in Georgia.
On June 14, 2020, an “Open Letter to the People of Georgia” was published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution urging the State Senate to pass HB 426 without any amendments. The letter was signed by many well-known former Georgia governors, senators, mayors, and legislators, both Democrats and Republicans.
When the General Assembly reconvened the following Monday, the question of whether the Senate would pass a Hate Crimes Law was at the top of everyone’s mind. After some legislative back and forth, the Senate finally passed HB 426, sending the Hate Crimes Act to the Governor’s desk. Governor Brian Kemp wasted no time, signing HB 426 into law on June 26, 2020, calling Georgia a “State too Great to Hate” at the signing ceremony.
The pen which the Governor used to sign the bill sits on my desk today. It is a constant reminder to me that anything is possible when public service comes before partisanship. Anything is still possible when leaders are willing to work together and find common ground to address important issues.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Johnson bases Senate campaign on student loan reform
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
SEPT. 11, 2020 | Georgia’s unusual special election this fall for the unexpired two years of Johnny Isakson’s term gives the voters unusual choices. Instead of the political parties picking who will run, individuals decided themselves to run for the post.
What this means is that it gives the people a chance to select between ideas of the candidates, not cast a vote based on a political party’s nominee. That’s good, but such a situation probably won’t be around too long. The Georgia Legislature, governed by parties, will probably close voting choosing an idea to vote for in the next session. Too bad. Picking candidates from ideas is basically sound and sensible.
Those 21 people seeking to become our senator offer some excellent ideas. This week we talked with Wayne Johnson of Macon, an expert on student government loans, who is banking his entire campaign on this subject, since he thinks it is so much of a problem. He worked for Betsy DeVos in the Department of Education, heading the student loan program for this country, overseeing student loans of $1.6 trillion in taxpayer money.
“The full measure of my campaign is focused on the student loan debt in this country,” he said. “The system is terribly broken. It is an abomination, and can destroy the fabric of America. It has only one beneficiary: the colleges and universities. They can charge whatever tuition they want to, since they get the money essentially from the students, debt free and without a credit check.
“There is an unlimited insatiable appetite on the part of the colleges to encourage students to take out loans.”
He emphasizes that 44 million people owe student debt. “And more than 85 percent of these loans will never get repaid. It’s a poison students don’t recognize they are getting into when they take out loans. They don’t realize until later in life that it will eat their life away. ”
Johnson feels like student loans were good as long as students borrowed from banks, and that loan was guaranteed by the government. “Then you had some balance. But 20 years go, the government started to make direct loans to the students. The government said it wanted to capture those profits, and changed the rules.
“If a student was going to graduate school, it was unlimited what the student could borrow. And today some of those students owe $2 million to the government in student debt, and lots more owe $1 million. No matter how much they owe, the repayment is figured as a percent of debt. Many will never get out of this debt, and our country suffers.” He maintains that 85 percent of the loans will never be repaid.
Johnson, a graduate of Mercer, with an MBA from Emory, and Ph.D. from Mercer in higher education leadership, concentrated his research on student loans. He may know more about student debt than anyone in the country.
What’s Johnson’s solution? One part of the solution would be to let every high school graduate have $50,000 for free to finance their undergraduate or vocational education. And he has a way to pay for that. The idea is a little involved. But he has a solution. We invite readers to go to his web page, www.johnsonsenate.com, to learn more.
While on that site, you’ll be learning more about ideas, rather than concentrating on one of the political parties. That can be a good way to determine how you will vote.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Support a proposal to rid our area of illegally dumped tires
By Emory Morsberger,
President, Gateway85 CID
NORCROSS, Ga. | Illegally dumped tires are both an eyesore and hazard. They not only create blight but also contribute to harmful vector-borne illnesses like West Nile and Zika viruses and dengue fever. Tires can also become an ignition source for environmentally harmful fires resulting in added air pollution. Illegally dumped tires are Atlanta’s “broken windows.” The businesses that fund community improvements are not only working on this problem, yet also want to see a change.
Morsberger
For more than 10 years, Georgia government has diverted more than $200 million in fees and assessments collected for environmental cleanups to other issues they deemed more important. Now this November, we have an option to change that.
The Trust Fund Honesty Amendment, also known as the “anti-bait-and-switch” amendment, is a proposed statewide Constitutional amendment with bi-partisan support that would have positive outcomes for Georgia’s environmental health. HR 164 would allow the General Assembly to earmark funds from certain taxes and fees to the causes they promised the money would go to when they approved the levies. What does this mean? If I purchase four new tires and pay a tire disposal tax, that money would be dedicated to tire cleanup, including illegally dumped tires.
I manage three Community Improvement Districts, where commercial property owners pay added taxes to improve the district where their properties are located. Metro South CID, located in south DeKalb County, has shelled out more than $20,000 from their small budget to have thousands and thousands of illegal tires removed from their properties or from nearby wooded areas.
In Gateway85 and Tucker Summit CIDs – the amount is less, but still is in the thousands of dollars. Those funds would be better spent on curb and area improvements, landscaping and maintenance upgrades, wayfinding projects, mobility studies, enhanced street lighting, increased security and interchange modifications. HR 164 would be a step in the right direction to not only help our environment but also attract new businesses, create job opportunities, and improve economic development. When New York City fixed the broken windows in Times Square the area began to thrive — and look at it now. It is one of the most popular spots in all of Manhattan. The same principle works here in Atlanta.
The amendment will be on the November 3 ballot, and my Community Improvement Districts, along with District 83 Georgia House Representative Becky Evans, Fairburn Councilwoman Hattie Portis Jones and the Coalition of South Metro Elected Officials are in full support of this amendment.
According to Rep. Evans, “A yes vote supports the Georgia Legislature to dedicate tax or fee revenue to the public purpose for which the taxes or fees were imposed. This means that the money paid when we buy new tires will actually go to cleaning up tire dumps!”
Let me encourage voters to read up on the HR164 Trust Fund Honesty Amendment and be sure to vote on November 3 or by early voting or absentee ballot. We only have one incredible Earth to live on, and it is up to us to take care of it.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Northside Hospital
The public spiritedness of our sponsors allows us to bring GwinnettForum.com to you at no cost to readers. The Northside Hospital health care system is one of Georgia’s leading health care providers with five acute-care hospitals in Atlanta, Canton, Cumming, Duluth and Lawrenceville and more than 250 outpatient locations across the state. Northside Hospital leads the U.S. in newborn deliveries and is among the state’s top providers of cancer care, sports medicine, cardiovascular and surgical services. For more information, visit: northside.com.
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Government not intended to be all things to all people
Editor, the Forum:
With the possible exception of this Forum, I feel the press has lost its objectivity in this and other countries.
Reporters seem to have forgotten that they are to state the facts and leave their personal views out of the story. Too many so-called reporters are interjecting themselves and their personality into their “reporting.” Too many news sources are slanting their stories to make someone appear better or worse, depending on their agenda.
Our Constitution guarantees “Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press,” but does not guarantee hearsay, libel, slander or outright lies. To report some things as fact when unverified is at best poor reporting, and at worst placing lies before truth. There are many things wrong with our information systems, but the most egregious assault on truth and fact are perhaps the worst.
My opinions are my own and stated as such. I am not a seer or all-knowing being. I cannot predict what the future will bring, but hope for the best. I believe that should socialism, as some are advocating in our government, will spell the doom of America.
We cannot allow government to control our daily lives and dictate our living conditions and standards. Socialism, no matter in what form, means the many are controlled by the few, from cradle to grave. That is not American. We must be allowed our choices and succeed or fail on our own without government intervention.
Government has no business other than smoothing the path for all, foreign relations, administering the laws and protecting its citizens. In many cases they are now failing miserably because of socialist tendencies.
Government cannot and was not intended to be “All things to All People”.
— Scott Lawrence Sr., Grayson
Send us your thoughts: We encourage you to send us your letters and thoughts on issues raised in GwinnettForum. Please limit comments to 300 words. We reserve the right to edit for clarity and length. Send feedback and letters to: elliott@brack.net
UK firm to bring 100 new jobs to Gwinnett County
Gwinnett County is getting 100 new jobs as UK-based Moneypenny sets up two of its own firms in Duluth. The announcement represents $860,000 capital investment for the county.
VoiceNation and Ninja Number, part of the Moneypenny family, are answering service firms, offering call answering services 24 hours a day to companies across the U.S. VoiceNation is a bilingual telephone answering provider. Ninja Number is a business phone app which provides a virtual phone system for entrepreneurs. Moneypenny’s American headquarters is in Charleston, S.C.
Moneypenny’s new space will be located at 2915 Premiere Parkway, in unincorporated Duluth, located within the Sugarloaf CID. The company is expected to hire more than 100 employees in 2020-2021.
Swash
Joanna Swash, CEO of Moneypenny, says: “We are delighted that VoiceNation and Ninja Number are moving into new state-of-the-art offices in Georgia. We are looking forward to having new offices which can accommodate a growing team to manage our call answering and live chat on behalf of thousands of businesses. We have ambitious growth plans and will be launching new technology products and services.”
The new offices will be twice the size of the current office at 27,000 square feet and will serve as a new headquarters for the growing business.
VoiceNation has been recognized in the Inc 500 America’s fastest growing private companies. To learn more about Moneypenny, visit www.moneypenny.com.
PCOM student-doctors offer free flu shots in Lawrenceville
Student doctors Andrew Morrissey (left) and Moon Su Kang help promote the shots with this banner
A team of dedicated student-doctors from PCOM Georgia, the state’s only osteopathic medical school in Suwanee, is working with local establishments to offer free flu shots for uninsured adults. The student-run organization, known as the PCOM Georgia HEARTS Club, formed in 2019 by Andrew Morrissey (DO ‘23), aims to offer healthcare services to those who need them most.
The clinic will take place on Wednesday, September 16, 2020 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Lawrenceville Cooperative Ministry. Appointments are available and walk-in patients will also receive services.
Morrissey says: “As medical students we feel that it is our calling to help those in need during these difficult times and we have tried our best to do so in the safest way we can.”
He adds: “The need for us at PCOM Georgia to support our community has never been greater. I honestly cannot imagine a better opportunity to show our community, through leadership and service, that we are committed to their well-being.”
The flu clinic is the result of relationships formed between Walgreens, the Lawrenceville Co-Op, and members of the PCOM Georgia HEARTS Club. With a desire to help the underserved, Morrissey, originally from Orlando, Florida, and the team plan to expand the clinic to the Neighborhood Cooperative Ministry located in Norcross.
Tom Balog, executive director of the Lawrenceville Cooperative Ministry, says: “We are so blessed to be working with the students at PCOM to set up this free flu clinic to benefit those in need in our community. It truly takes a community coming together to make a real difference.”
Part of Pleasant Hill Rd. to be widened by 1 westbound lane
More road widening: Pleasant Hill Road from the Chattahoochee River to Peachtree Industrial Boulevard will be widened soon, after County Commissioners awarded a $1.2 million contract to Summit Construction and Development, LLC, the lowest of four responsive bidders. This project includes a boardwalk and multi-use path. It will add a third westbound travel lane with a multi-use path from west of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard to the Chattahoochee River. The work also includes curb and gutter installation and associated drainage improvements, with funding from SPLOST funds.
Puicar to be write-in candidate for Gwinnett School Board
The possibility that Gwinnett may have a write-in candidate for a School Board seat has arisen. George Puicar, who lives in unincorporated Norcross, told GwinnettForum that he will be a write-in candidate for the District 5 seat on the Board of Education. In the summer primary, Democrat Tarece Johnson, an educational consultant who owns a home daycare firm, won that nomination. She defeated long-time School Board Member Louise Radloff for that position. There is no Republican candidate for that office.
Puicar
Puicar says that he is an immigrant citizen from Romania, and has lived in the district for 15 years. He is a heating and air conditioning specialist for CBRE Group, a commercial real estate services and investment firm. Mr. Puicar describes himself as a “working-class, blue-collar person.” His wife is from Mexico. He adds: “Our family has experienced the current changing environment with our children alongside each of you. This lends me a perspective to understand where the issues exist in our District 5 community, and a desire to help be your voice. Our children are enrolled in the Gwinnett school system.
“I am an open-minded person that will leverage facts, data, and the voice of our community when making decisions. I will listen and speak up on your behalf.” For more details, visit his campaign site at www.writeingeorge.com.
The Book of Joy by The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu (with Douglas Adams)
From John Titus, Peachtree Corners: In April 2015, Archbishop Desmond Tutu traveled to India to celebrate the 80th birthday of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. These two Nobel Peace Prize laureates took the opportunity to meet for a week to discuss the finding of happiness and the nature of joy. Drawing on their personal experiences with oppression and separate religious traditions, they examined the obstacles to joy – fear, stress, anxiety, frustration, anger, sadness, grief, despair, loneliness, envy, suffering, adversity, illness and fear of death. To overcome these obstacles, they proposed and explained eight pillars of joy – perspective, humility, humor, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity. In this book, the two religious leaders offer practices to help cultivate these eight pillars. All this is offered from a deep sense of modesty exhibited by these to exceptional individuals. Thanks to Author Douglas Adams for compiling this valuable explanation for us all.
- An invitation: what b ooks, restaurants, movies or web sites have you enjoyed recently? Send us your recent selection, along with a short paragraph (150 words) as to why you liked this, plus what you plan to visit or read next. Send to: elliott@brack.net
Hood is two-time winner of the Townsend Prize
Mary Hood, a two-time winner of the Townsend Prize for Fiction, is acknowledged as one of the finest writers of fiction today. Her stories, which appear in numerous anthologies and textbooks, are set in her native Georgia, a terrain she knows from the southeastern coast to the northern Blue Ridge Mountains.
Hood
Mary Hood was born on September 16, 1946, in Brunswick to Mary Adella Katherine Rogers, a Latin teacher and native of Cherokee County, and William Charles Hood, an aircraft worker who hailed from New York City. When Hood was two years old her family moved to Bartow County. They lived in the Methodist parsonage in the town of White, where her maternal grandfather was a Methodist minister. They later built a house in Douglas County, and lived at various times in Worth and Dougherty counties.
Hood attended Georgia State University in Atlanta, earning a degree in Spanish, and began graduate work in chemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology before commencing a full-time writing career. In 1976 she settled in Victoria, a small community in Cherokee County outside Woodstock, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She remained there for 30 years before moving to Commerce, in Jackson County.
Hood’s first collection of stories, How Far She Went, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction (named for Georgia writer Flannery O’Connor) and was published in 1984 by the University of Georgia Press. The collection also received the Southern Review / Louisiana State University Short Fiction Award.
Hood expands on her first collection’s theme of isolation in her second volume of stories, And Venus is Blue (1986). But in her art Hood preserves the old folk who are disappearing, being taxed off their land, and she honors the people who worked with their hands. And Venus is Blue won the Townsend Prize for Fiction, the Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists Author-of-the-Year Award, and the Lillian Smith Book Award (named for Georgia writer Lillian Smith and administered by the Southern Regional Council, University of Georgia Libraries, DeKalb County Public Library / Georgia Center for the Book, and Piedmont College).
In 1995 Hood published her first novel, Familiar Heat. A new collection of stories, A Clear View of the Southern Sky, appeared in 2015 as part of Pat Conroy‘s Story River Books series, published with the University of South Carolina Press. The collection was awarded the Townsend Prize the following year. A novella, Seam Busters (2015), was also published in Conroy’s series.
In addition to the literary awards garnered by her fiction, Hood served in 1996 as the John and Renee Grisham Southern Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. She was also the first writer-in-residence at Berry College in Rome (1997-98) and at Reinhardt College (later Reinhardt University) in Cherokee County (2001), and was the first Southern Writer-in-Residence at Oxford College of Emory University in Atlanta (2009). During the winter short term of 1999 she was visiting writer at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, and that same year Kennesaw State University named Hood the Writer of the Decade in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Contemporary Literature and Writing Conference.
Hood was honored in 2013 by the Georgia Review with a special collection of articles, and she was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2014.
- To view the Georgia Encyclopedia article online, go to http://georgiaencyclopedia.org
One major clue about this Mystery Photo: No mountains!
There are not many clues for today’s Mystery Photo, except one big one: you note that there are no mountains around! Tell us where it’s located by sending to elliott@brack.net, including your hometown.
The last Mystery Photo proved easy for lots of people. Butchart Gardens, Brentwood Bay, British Columbia, Canada. The photo came from Molly Titus of Peachtree Corners.
George Graf of Palmyra, Va. immediately recognized the scene. He wrote: “Coming from Ontario in 1904, husband and wife, Robert and Jennie Butchart moved to Vancouver Island to build a cement plant on a rich limestone deposit at Tod Inlet. In 1912, as cement production exhausted the limestone deposits, Jennie Butchart envisioned a grand garden in its place and began transferring topsoil by horse and cart. Little by little, the quarry blossomed into today’s Sunken Garden. The result of her vision is The Gardens, which are still family run to this day.”
Tea at Butchart Gardens
Susan McBrayer of Sugar Hill said: “This is the Sunken Garden at Butchart Gardens in Brentwood Bay, British Columbia, Canada, just outside Victoria. I have toured the gardens and found them to be par excellence! I also loved the afternoon tea in The Dining Room, part of the original Butchart family residence. See attached photo.”
Jim Savadelis of Duluth added: “In 1907,a sixty-five-year-old garden designer, Isaburo Kishida of Yokohama, came to Victoria, at the request of his son, to build a tea garden for Esquimalt Gorge Park. This garden was wildly popular. Several prominent citizens, Jennie Butchart among them, commissioned Japanese gardens from Kishida for their estates. In 1909, when the limestone quarry was exhausted, Jennie set about turning it into the Sunken Garden, which was completed in 1921. In 1939, the Butcharts gave the Gardens to their grandson Ian Ross (1918–1997) on his 21st birthday. Ross was involved in the operation and promotion of the gardens until his death 58 years later.”
Allen Peel of San Antonio, Tex. wrote: “I assume that the mystery photo may only be a year or two old, and if so, it is amazing just how little has changed to this scene in almost 15 years! It blew my mind!
“Consider these facts about the Gardens:
- There are 151 flower beds in the sunken garden of Butchart Gardens;
- They plant 65,000 bulbs there each spring;
- Legend has it that the gardens are actually haunted by “Jennie”, so if you do visit the site … be forewarned … don’t pick the flowers!”
Others getting the identification right included Mike Tennant, Duluth; Bob Foreman, Grayson; Kay Montgomery, Duluth; Lou Camiero, Lilburn; Ross Lenhart, Stone Mountain; Hoyt Tuggle, Buford; and Virginia Klaer, Duluth.
Winn DAR chapter represented at Eutaw Springs ceremony
As Revolutionary War Patriots represented 13 colonies, it is common for Gwinnettians to participate in commemorative events outside of their county or state. This was the case when the Goodwin family participated in the 239th Anniversary Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., on September 5. Laura Goodwin McAulay (left) and Dr. Claire Goodwin Bingham (right), both members of the Philadelphia Winn chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, present a ceremonial wreath at the Eutaw Springs battle anniversary event, on behalf of the chapter. Their father, John Goodwin of Suwanee, is past president of the Button Gwinnett chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution.
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