Note - Meeting Date Change!
Because of potential harsh weather Thursday evening (April 18), and possible hazardous driving conditions, Auburn-Montgomery personnel have asked us to postpone our meeting scheduled for that date. The meeting, with Catherine Coleman Flowers as our speaker, will be on the following Thursday evening, April 25, at 7:00 PM. However, Ms. Flowers has agreed to arrive by about 6:30 for anyone who would like to to come early to meet and talk with her before the presentation.
We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, but weather has been especially strange and uncooperative this year.
Bob Hastings, Sierra Club Montgomery Group Chair
The Sierra Club Montgomery Group will have a special speaker at its April 18 meeting. Catherine Coleman Flowers, a nationally known leader in the campaign for Equal Justice and Environmental Justice will speak to the Group on the subject of: “Environmental Justice: What Are We Leaving Our Children?”
Ms. Flowers has an impressive resume of accomplishments, only a few of which we can list here. She is currently the Rural Development Manager for the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, working primarily in Lowndes County for the Race and Poverty Initiative. She was born in Birmingham but grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, and attended Alabama State University, and the University of Nebraska where she earned the Master of Arts Degree in History. For several years, she taught high school in Detroit, Michigan, before returning to Lowndes County to fight for social justice and climate solutions, especially in poor and rural areas of the United States. She is the founder and executive director of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise Community Development Corporation (ACRE). She is a Senior Fellow for Environmental Justice and Civic Engagement at the Center for Earth Ethics, combining environmental justice with caring for the earth. She is Practitioner in Residence at Duke University’s Franklin Humanities Institute. She has worked with the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations to form the Renew Alabama Coalition, addressing Issues of Clean Air and Water, Clean Energy, Economic Development, Government Transparency, Sustainable Agriculture, and Sustainable Infrastructure. She helped organize the first climate conference in Alabama for Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, which has named her one of its Women Climate Champions. She is nationally and internationally known for her work, and considers herself “a teacher by profession but an activist at heart.”
The meeting will be at Auburn University-Montgomery, Thursday, April 18, at 7:00 PM in Room 112 of Goodwyn Hall (just north of the tall Library Tower on the south side of campus). Parking is available in any white-lined space.