Gleaning Facebook: Burwell On Our Minds

Good morning, Rome! What a great day to get out and exercise your franchise!

From Lexington to Baghdad Americans have died to make it possible.

On the Edmund Pettus bridge Americans risked all for voting rights.

We have a republic, Old Ben Franklin told us, if we can keep it.

Go vote! It is our right. It is our duty.

Today is the last day of early voting and it is so easy. In and out in five minutes.

No police dogs barring your way. No beach fortifications to dodge. No snipers waiting to take your life if you go.

Go to the courthouse at Fourth Ave & First St, show ID, cast your vote with a simple poke of your finger.

Please vote.

And please... Help save our beautiful central park. Vote NO incumbents.

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Dear friends,

Thank you all for your grassroots action to try to affect our City Commission in a positive way. There may be a big NO on our yard signs (like this one between the rivers) but this has been the most positive “negative campaign” ever. We are positively FOR preserving and protecting the beautiful 80 acres smack dab in the center of what should be our Central Park. Unfortunately fate has given us an election where five of those who want to destroy that legacy are up for reelection and only three new candidates stepped forward. The only course of practical action is to press for “NO Incumbents”. If we concentrate our vote JUST on the challengers we have a real chance of electing two or three new voices for our park.

Sheila and I founded this group and have been thrilled with how a grassroots group can blossum. Over 1700 people have supported us on Facebook. Our posts have been “liked” thousands of times and shared hundreds of times. Our 200+ yard signs are almost all out. In neighborhood canvassing and telephone canvassing the response has been overwhelmingly positive. This grassroots effort has struck a nerve with the people. Please keep it up. Message me and I’ll make sure you get materials to help. Four more days!

I know nothing of your financial situation. But we need money to pay for this effort. If each of us will give a little we will have what we need to finish this low-budget bare-bones completely volunteer effort. Please make out a check to “Save Rome’s Central Park Committee” and drop it by. Or mail your donation to Save Rome’s Central Park, 728 Avenue A, Rome GA 30165.

We registered the group as required with the state. I am listed as chair and Sheila as treasurer. We submitted our first legal report today.

Sheila and I have made a donation. We have been given a couple of small individual donations and one in kind donation. We have several promises of moderate donations. Can you please write a check for $5 or $10, or $50, or $100... whatever is right for you. (Donations of more than $100 will be listed by the donor’s name in our public reports as required by law.) If all the Park’s supporters submit a little we’ll be in great shape.

Thank you ALL for what you have and will do.

Sincerely,

Terrell Shaw, Chairman

Save Rome’s Central Park Committee

Love having our signs out in the neighborhoods... even on trash day! I wish I'd printed twice as many. 

Comments:

Jim Curry: Terrell, I'll definitely support financially. This is too imp

ortant not to support. (I'm also praying for an eagle's nest right in the center of the 80 acres.)

Terrell:  I'l join that prayer! Thank you, Jim, not only for this but for all you've done.

Cindy Latimer: Checks to Save Rome's Central Park?

Sheila Matthews Shaw: Yes!

Adair Alis: Hey we're already out of town, but my dad said he'll have a check in your mailbox Sunday

Joan Ledbetter: I'll get you what we can spare tomorrow 

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When we say we want to Save Rome's Central Park, we are talking of all of it. The Burwell Creek Natural Area is 80 acres right in the middle of it. To the west is the Ridge Ferry section, to the east is the Jackson Hill section. Jackson Hill, where you will find this gorgeous flag fying right at the summit and visible through much of downtown, would be greatly affected by the burial of the adjacent lands. What would be the viewscape from Jackson Hill with just an ordinary urban section of strip mall, apartments, and a restaurant or two?

Long may this flag fly over a unified, large, Central park extending from the banks of the Oostanaula all the way to this grand summit!

By the way, a few figures from our page:

1724+ page supporters

10,049+ total post likes

and, perhaps most remarkable: 2734 total shares of posts.

Wow! If you folks put your votes where your online likes are Rome could be in for a wake-up call on Wednesday morning.

Please get out from behind that computer, get to the polls. VOte! (And take a friend or two!)

Comments:

Joan Ledbetter: And, at the candidate's forum last night I heard '88' acres. I had always heard 80 acres before.

Terrell: I noticed that too.

Nina Lovel: And if you don't happen to live in the city limits, call up 10 of your friends who do, and get out the vote!

Terrell: Amen!

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From Abeed Bawa's Facebook page:

Touring the Burwell Creek wetlands with Mr Shaw.

Comments: 

Kelli Singh: Brooke Cushing, didn't you have Mr. Shaw as a teacher?

Kayla Brooke Brooks: YesKelli: Brooke loved him! It's the only teacher of hers that I remember.Terrell: Hello there Brooke!Thomas Wilder: Turn around and pay attentionJennifer Peacock: Best teacher everTerrell: Awww! I had some pretty good kids along the way. Jim Ware: I must've missed you...I was there to from 4 until 6.Sam Burnham: Terrell, did y'all see the blue heron? I saw him earlier today but it kept evading the camera lens.Abeed: We sure did. It was amazing.Terrell: Yes (from above) That heron jumped out of the creek at the beaver dam just as we got there and we were too surprised to catch a picture. He glided back and forth through the woods over the wetland and settled next to the gigantic beaver lodge on the far side.Laurie Craw: Good for Mr. Bawa!Emily Robinson: Impressed that you care and are hands on! Let's put this man to work!!! Vote Abeed Bawa
-------------From Terrell's Facebook page:

Comments: 

Stacy Cates: Love this pic!!! Abeed, you have the cutest boyish smille! We need some young, smart, experienced business people just like you on the commission!

Terrell: Hey! What about MY cute boyish smile?!!!

Stacy: Well that just goes without sayin, Terrell. You Superheros! Geez!

Terrell: That's more like it.

Stacy: :-)

Gleaning Facebook: From Joan Ledbetter (and more)

From Joan Ledbetter:

A Native American proverb goes “The Frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.” This bears some contemplation.

Must we build on every green space?

Should we pave over every habitat?

Is it really wise to fill in every wetland?

Are more retail shops and shiny new (for now) apartments that could be put in a much better location really more important that preserving out ecology, our inner-city beauty, a healthy recreation area, a spectacular outdoor biology lab, and a flood plain that we just may need for holding flood water?

Is selling off 80 acres of City land (citizen land) smack in the middle of Rome, just a few blocks from Broad Street, for a $600K song really a good deal for Rome citizens?

If you think these are matters worth questioning, checkout the Save Rome’s Central Park citizen movement, find out why so many citizens do not want what used to be a wonderful duck pond paved over, get involved, and vote for the future of Rome and Romans!

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From Terrell: Please share these things as much as possible this weekend and always remind folks that the vote is Tuesday, November 3 at your regular city voting place. Many are expecting only a couple of thousand voters out of the 15,000 registered voters in Rome. Let's prove them wrong. 

Our sitting commissioners want to allow private developers to bury our children's lush green legacy you see here under ten to twenty feet of rubble then convert it to just another urban strip mall. How many half empty ones do we have now? We can never get our "Duck Pond", our floodplain, our forest, and our wetland back. Once it's gone, it's gone.

Vote NO incumbents!

Vote for the new voices only: Abeed, Sundai, and Craig!

Stop this senseless destruction.

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Dear Friends,

If you haven't yet put one of our signs in your yard, would you consider putting one up for the final five days of this , perhaps Quixotic, campaign. As someone respected in your neighborhood a sign will declare two things: 1) your support, and 2) the legitimacy of an unusual campaign.

Let's shock the political status quo in Rome by putting three fresh voices in with the six remaining incumbents. It just might save our central park for our kids and grandkids.

If you want a sign message Jeremy Harrison or me.

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Terrell Shaw

Gleaning Facebook: Save Rome's Central Park (in a nutshell)

Gleaning Facebook: Vote for Sundai!

 Sheila and I are proud to have been supporters of Sundai Stevenson from the very first. And in the forums she certainly lived up to our expectations. She is open, straightforward, prepared, optimistic, creative, and has a ready and willing smile. In this particular election there is really only one major issue: will the candidate work to stop the sale and destruction of our park land. Sundai has been up front that she opposes the sale. Of course she will work within in the law and with strong ethics. But those strong ethics include the ethical obligation to pass this community to our children in better shape than we found it.

Save Rome's Central Park! Vote NO INcumbents.

Gleaning Facebook: Addams Family Portrait

 

Here's a Facebook promo for the Rome Little Theatre's production of Addams Family the Musical. You will notice the very serious Wednesday Addams has a striking resemblance to my baby girl, Lillian Shaw.

Gleaning Facebook: Stacy Cates on Burwell Creek

Today my friend Stacy Cates posted her views regarding the effort to sell our city's Burwell wetlands for private development:

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by Stacy Cates

Here are the reasons I think we should protect Burwell Creek Natural Area instead of replacing it with a shopping center and apartments, even though it would create new jobs.

A combination of characteristics makes this property supremely unique, unlike ANY other property. The location in the center of the city and between two other parks means that it can complete one big Central Park.

-- We can't do that with ANY other property, ever. --

It's right next to our tourist and civic centers, so more visitors and residents - and visiting business developers - will notice and enjoy our beautiful and unique city greenspace.

-- There is no comparable adjacent property with which we can replace the lost acreage. --

It's ecologically important, has diverse flora and fauna, has old mature woods, is beautiful, is easily walkable, and is full of potential.

-- That's not replaceable in a center-city location. --

It's near other educational resources - the ECO Center, the library, and Jackson Hill, which makes it all the more a convenient location for learning opportunities for children.

-- That is also not replaceable with an equally eco-educational property. --

CRBI and others have been working on spreading this message a long time. People have started to become informed. They aren't blindly jumping on a bandwagon. There's a movement now because there are overwhelming legitimate reasons that this unique property in it's natural state is extremely valuable to the community, it's children, and future children. Now that our residents know about the value of this treasure, I don't think they will stop until they've protected all of it - the whole property they paid for and still own.

In contrast, there is plenty of other property in sufficiently traveled areas of the city that can be much more easily and inexpensively developed into a shopping center and apartments – places that could still facilitate the creation of jobs. But even if this particular developer lost interest, what kinds of jobs would we be losing? Let's be honest - a majority of non-living-wage, minimum-wage jobs, typical for these kinds of businesses.

We have a great town, I think we can also attract businesses that pay reasonable-wage jobs, especially with all the natural beauty, outdoor activities, and the many other wonderful and diverse things we have to offer.

I don't think anyone wants or intends to do anything to stop the creation of jobs or to impede developers from making a profit. I appreciate the good things developers do for us. If anything, by keeping this property, it seems to me we would be making a developer's job easier. Filling in mountains of dirt, incorporating the diversion of huge amounts of water, and a PR nightmare of a devastated community couldn't be desirable conditions or inexpensive tasks for a developer.

I think we have space for all and can have it all. Let's keep our Burwell Creek Natural Area and Wetlands and work to combine different locations with deals that foster business growth and job creation.

Gleaning Facebook: A Map of Our "Central Park"

With the Burwell Creek Natural Area we have a beautiful Central Park.

Without it we have two unassociated greenspaces separated by typical urban sprawl-- a run-of-the-mill strip mall, out-parcels with a succession of eateries, and an apartment complex plagued by light pollution, noise pollution, horrible traffic and noise on event weekends, pulpwood and coal trains at all hours and the unpleasant knowledge that they are living atop a mound of rubble covering deeply a little bit of paradise, lost.

Shame on the incumbent candidates for City Commission who have supported this outrage.

Vote NO incumbents.

Vote for Abeed Bawa, Sundai Stevenson, and Craig McDaniel.

If you want to walk around the Burwell Creek property you can park in the parking lot that is connected to the shopping center that includes Las Palmas. The parking lot section is the one closest to Ridge Ferry Park and is next to Burwell Creek. Follow the creek toward the Riverside Pkwy bridge. You'll walk into some tall grasses right before you go under the bridge - look for the trail through the grasses. After you go under the bridge, you'll see the wetlands on the right, and on the left will be the trails and open spaces.

Gleaning Facebook: On the Streets for Burwell Creek

This was a busy day downtown and a busy day on Facebook in the effort to Save Rome's Central P{ark!

From Facebook

Jim Curry

Want to be a part of making history today? You can by voting in our Sunday election AND by voting ONLY for the 3 challengers for Rome City Commission, sending a strong message that Rome's Central Park is NOT for sale and commercial development. YOU can make a difference, but you must first decide to make a difference. Please share this message. Support is needed NOW.

Joe Cook

Proud to be Terrell Shaw's friend and inspired by he, Stacy Cates, Laura L Adams, Jim Ware and the host of others working to save Rome's Central Park. This is good old fashioned citizen activism the likes of which Rome has not seen in recent memory. SUPPORT THESE NEIGHBORS AND FELLOW ROMANS! VISIT Save Rome's Central Park on Facebook.

Comments:

Chris Cole: Two pretty cool fellas right there!

Frank Logue: This photo makes me very happy for all kinds of reasons.

Terrell: Hey, Frank! Wish you were here for this battle!

Frank: Me too

David Minich: hold them accountable !

Annie Shields: Get him to talk to your phone camera, Terrel.

Terrell: Alraedy did, Annie!  

BTW my beautiful wife photobombed this while munching on a Schroeder's sandwich.

My Own Page

Ruth Pinson is not only a wonderful teacher, but among grandmothers she is one of the greats in the history of the class. Here her grandson Briggs and his sister Eva, after a fascinating tour of our endangered 80 acres, allowed me to video their comments. Click the picture below to hear them...

Comments:

Amber Clark Ware: I enjoyed meeting and watching Briggs and Eva take part in the tour; they were so interested in everything that Joe and Amos were saying!! Great kids!!

Jane Wood: Good interview

Ruth Pinson: Thank you Terrell!

Nancy Runninger Watson: Those kids are truly informed about our environment!

Beth Cox: Great interview! Good to see you yesterday, Ruth. Wish we could have caught up more!

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Yay, Chad Nash just voted for three new guys for the City Commission. He wants our Central Park preserved!

Comments:

Abeed Bawa: Thank you, sir.

Joan Shaw Turrentine: So did Jim and I!

Terrell: Thank you Joan & Jim!

Craig McDaniel: Thank you all!

Terrell: It's official: More people have liked this picture of two folks who voted for our three challengers than managed to get out today to actually vote. Now I know the folks who are following this are likely the ones who have or will vote, but the apathy of voters is a real drag on our democracy. So keep up the hue and cry folks! Let's get some folks to the polls. Two of our current commissioners were elected by seven and four votes. One received only 1245 votes total out of 35,000 people in the city. That's a shameful turn out. Let's get our neighbors to do better this time! 

The encouraging thing is that in an off-year, one-issue election like this an individual's vote is more powerful than ever!

Ro Rob: Nice to see you doing your thing on Broad Street this afternoon. If you recall, I was wearing a shirt that you seemed to like

Beth Gibbons: Not to nitpick...but "three new people" probably better than "three new guys"...shout out to Sundai and the other two people...bg

Sundai Stevenson: Thank you Joan & Jim. I appreciate your support!

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Annie Shields expresses her reasons for supporting preservation of Rome's park lands. Click the picture to hear Annie:

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Come join me! Let's save our park!

Comments:

Vivian Armstrong: I so enjoyed your story at Cave Spring last nite. Thank you

Terrell: Thanks, Vivian. Christy Davis is my hero. That event is absolutely wonderful. Folks, if you missed Cave Screams this year, put it on your calendar for next year. It's a hoot.

Christy Davis: Lol! Gosh, thanks! I credit my elementary Kaleidoscope teacher for fostering my creativity...

Terrell: Easy voting all this week folks! 8-5 daily, M-F. Just drive right up to park on this block, right up from Jeffersons. Go upstairs in the yellow-brick courthouse, and VOTE. Five minutes tops.

Help us put three new commissioners on the job. We need a new perspective. We'll still have six incumbents, but the vote, assuming no changed opinions, will become 4 anti-park, 4 pro-park, and 1 guy seeking a compromise. And i think with a strong pro-park vote some of the current commissioners may rethink their position. As it stands now we have seven folks who want to sell 80 acres of your land and mine, clear-cut most of it, fill it with hundreds if not thousands of truckloads of fill to get most of it about level with Riverside Parkway, and build for private profit gated apartments, a strip mall, and out-parcel restaurants. 

Seven of our commissioners actually have voted repeatedly to enable this to happen! It is mind-boggling.

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We're even going after the votes of folks admiring our Confederate Roses from the Riverwalk behind our house!

No incumbents! Vote TODAY!

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SUNDAY VOTING TODAY!

Are these eighty acres, that belong to the citizens of Rome, blighted?

No.

The commissioners like to say: "There was only one plan submitted!" They make sound as if there was no choice but to accept the plan that a private company has to make a profit for that private company off of the land that belongs to all the people of Rome from the guy living under the Turner-McCall bridge to the guy in the big house with llamas in the back yard on the Kingston Road. And to our children. And to their children.

Every time there is a vote there is more than one option!

The obvious, always available, other plan is to leave things as they are. In this case to leave this land in the hands of the people whose dreams can one day make it even more than the blessing it is.

And what a blessing it is!

• holding flood waters that would otherwise flood other parts of town

• filtering our sediments (our biggest water pollution problem) and pollutants as the water returns to the river

• slowing the receding waters helping to avoid erosion and scouring of our waterway banks

• sheltering our best mosquito controllers dragonfly nymphs, mosquito fish, etc.

• sheltering abundant wildlife like the beavers (whose new and even ancient, dams participate in the slowing of waters mentioned above) deer, fox, rabbits, salamanders, frogs, butterflies, dragonflies, muskrats, small fish, Great Blue Heron, Great Egrets, ducks, geese, songbirds of all sorts...

* providing a green respite along our busiest thoroughfare, Turner-McCall Blvd.

• providing a green, tranquil backdrop to Jackson Hill, our amphitheater/labyrinth, our events in Ridge Ferry Park.

• providing visual and auditory buffers to the Ridge Ferry Events, pulpwood and coal ash trains from Inland and Plant Hammond.

• providing school kids a place to explore the great outdoors right in our city's heart through school field trips (I am helping with one tomorrow there!) or through activities organized by our fantastic ECO Center right across Riverside Parkway!

• providing space for dreams of a wonderful large beautiful Central Park!

...and more.

I'll bet you can think of even more ways this eighty acres of ours could be great for Rome in the long run... if we preserve it.

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This is SUNDAY VOTING DAY!

Take advatage if it.

This your opportunity to honor little Jemmy Madison the small guy with big dreams whom we call Father of the Constitution. Show that you actually believe in our democratic republic.

Go downtown. Park on Fourth Avenue maybe next to Jefferson's, a name reminding you of that much taller red-headed Virginian and his stirring words about unalienable rights.

Walk up the hill toward the county administration building, feeling the effort of the climb up the sidewalk, up the steps of the yellow-brick building, up the big stairs to the left: what is that effort compared to the struggle of patriots, slaves, immigrants, freedom marchers, soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen over these 240 years to secure your right to vote.

Cast your vote of protest. Say NO to the sale of our park land by voting for only the three challengers.

Actively withhold those last three votes from the incumbents, fine folks in other ways, who have made the grievous error of countenancing the destruction of 80 acres of our floodplain, wetland, pretty pond, mature forest, and parkland dreams.

Go exercise your God-given rights this holy day.

How appropriate: Vote on Sunday!

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You can vote THIS Sunday!

Message us for Ride to the Polls or a Yard Sign - City of Rome addresses only.