By Tirany Reeves | The Savannah Tribune

Each year, the Georgia Municipal Association’s (GMA) Annual Convention draws leaders from across the state to enjoy training, sessions, and a tradeshow featuring products and services to improve city operations and the lives of citizens. This year’s convention was an in-person event held June 24th – 28th, 2022 at the Savannah Convention Center.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) addressed the crowd on Sunday, June 26th a day ahead of his November Election opponent in the governor’s race, Stacey Abrams (DGA), who spoke on Monday, June 27th. Kemp focused on his current record in the state of Georgia, including the upcoming Bryan County Hyundai plant and the allocation of school safety grants. He also mentions plans to bestow more school safety funding efforts, including training for school resource officers.

Georgia Democratic nominee for governor, Stacey Abrams, who is running against incumbent Brian Kemp after a narrowly failed election run in 2018 came prepared for serious campaign questions. With the Supreme Court overturning a major decision in the 1973 Roe vs. Wade case after nearly 50 years on June 24th, Abrams has been vocal about her abortion stance changing from pro-life to pro-choice despite being raised in a very religious household. She also mentioned her excitement to build #OneGeorgia and begin work with local leaders to help people across the entire state of Georgia thrive and succeed.

Both candidates will be hitting the campaign trail with their opinions on the hot-button issues affecting Americans this election cycle. If voting rights, the state of the economy, abortion rights, school safety and education, gun control and crime, immigration and foreign policy, and more are key concerns for you, please show up to the polls this November and Get Out the Vote to #10MillionMoreBlackVoters!

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Savannah Tribune

It gives me great pleasure to introduce and acknowledge Zelasia Boston for her recent accomplishments. Zelasia is 13 years old and attends Coastal Middle School. She is currently in the 7th grade.

Zelasia won 1st place for the District Science and Engineering Fair, then advanced to the Regional level. A panel of three judges conducted her interview virtually and voted for her project to compete at the State level in the 2022 74th Georgia Science and Engineering Fair in Athens, Georgia. The title of her project is ‘Take a Candle for a Spin.’

Zelasia has been an active participant in the Summer Bonanza Program since 2016, when she was seven years old. She always presented very creative projects in our summer competitions, which were judged by Judge Bass, Judge Stokes, and the late Judge Edenfield. The STEM sessions in Summer Bonanza assisted to prepare Zelasia to compete at the district, regional, and state level science fairs.

Zelasia took a brief break last summer to adjust to middle school, but continued her interest in STEM. We are looking forward to her enrollment this summer as she is a joy to work with.

On behalf of Summer Bonanza Partnership, I would like to congratulate Zelasia Boston on all her accomplishments

Zelasia Boston is the daughter of Decola Johnson and Bamari Boston and granddaughter of Deborah Brown and Sherry Johnson.

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By Eric Olson, edited for Publication in The Savannah Tribune

In 2012, Vara Allen Jones’ colleagues surprised her by creating the Vara Allen-Jones Scholarship for Academic Excellence to support first-generation students and honor her service to the Anchorage community. Vara is a 2019 retired University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) tenured faculty member and past Vice Chancellor for Academic and Multicultural Services. She remembered that moment.

Today, Vara is striving to make the scholarship a permanently endowed fund. She’s enlisting the help of friends and colleagues she met in her 28 years at UAA, and a nationwide network to help raise her goal of $28,000 by this summer to enable the fund to provide at least $1,000 in scholarship support annually to students. “Everyone who really knows me knows how passionate I am about providing opportunities for that particular cohort of students to have financial, academic and social support — to be successful in an environment they may know nothing about.”

“I’m a first-generation college student,” said Vara. Her amazing story started as a first-year student at Savannah State College, now University (SSU), Georgia’s oldest historically Black public university. She worried that she was not prepared for the journey being the first in her family to go to college. “I know what it’s like to walk on a college campus and have no idea what’s expected of you. You don’t know what you don’t know. My exposure to academic advising, intentional mentoring and a clear expectation of excellence undergirded by support solidified my awareness of the impact these areas could have on student success. That awareness and passion began at Savannah State and continued throughout my career.”

After earning her bachelor’s at Savannah State, she completed a master’s degree in counseling with an emphasis in higher education counseling at Georgia Southern University. Vara accepted a job at her alma mater, SSU, where she honed her counseling and leadership skills and experiences with high-impact student success programs. Vara had a career plan that led her to UAA, and she moved to Alaska at the age of 29. “I wanted to do something different,” she said.

After joining UAA in 1991 as a tenure track counseling faculty member in the Advising and Counseling Center, she began building programs to yield academic success such as increasing students’ connections and inclusivity, mentoring, advising, and community engagement. She collaborated with colleagues, and revamped the Career Services Center, serving as its director. In 1994, she became the director of Minority Student Services and advocated a name change to better identify its purpose and positively reflect students’ identities. She founded AHAINA Student Programs (African American, Hispanic, Asian/ Pacific Islander, International and Native American) and the UAA Multicultural Center. She was also awarded tenure (1994) as an assistant professor of counseling.

Vara’s contributions to UAA include successfully authoring multimillion-dollar grants to grow programs like Academic Advising Coordinators, TRiO programs, Educational Opportunity Centers, Educational Talent Search, Upward Bound and Student Support Services. She expanded New Student Orientation, broadened the focus of AHAINA and the Multicultural Center, developed the UA Scholars and the UAA retention program, and advocated for improved learning environments and conditions for students with disabilities.

Awards received included a Noel-Levitz National Award for Student Retention and the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence for outstanding contributions to students. Her leadership led to TRiO services being available in targeted middle and high schools in the Anchorage School District.

“From her earliest years at UAA, I admired how Vara brought diverse perspectives together and created a shared vision for supporting students to achieve personal and academic success,” said UAA Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Bruce Schultz. “As she drew from her past personal and professional experiences in the South, Vara showed us how to serve students with grace and a never wavering commitment to excellence.”

She credits the generations of tenacious women, such as her mother, as the impetus to move to Alaska.

Interested in supporting Vara’s vision? Make a gift to the Vara Allen-Jones Scholarship for Academic Excellence at the University of Alaska Anchorage (https://bit.ly/uaaallenjones).

The post Allen-Jones Scholarship Boosts Support For 1st-Generation Students first appeared on The Savannah Tribune.

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

In Georgia, defense attorneys are making the case that the three white men involved in killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, were justified by a Civil War-era law instituted to catch runaway slaves.

Travis McMichael, 35, his father, Gregory McMichael, 65, and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, plans to defend their actions by claiming they were making a citizens’ arrest that went awry only after Arbery resisted.

When the trio killed Arbery on February 23, 2020, Georgia law allowed almost anyone to arrest another citizen if “they had reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion” that a suspect had committed a felony.

The state overturned the statute after Arbery’s murder.

Lawmakers introduced and passed the original code in 1863 to capture slaves who had escaped from plantations in the South.

“They are going to use this law because it wasn’t repealed until after Ahmaud Arbery was killed by the McMichael family, and I am not sure we’re going to have the justice that we should,” said Shirley James, publisher of the Savannah Tribune in Georgia.

James said Georgia also employs the Stand-Your-Ground law that allows citizens to use deadly force when confronted with life-or-death situations.

“The thing that happens a lot, even with George Floyd and a lot of our African Americans who have been unjustly murdered, the victim becomes the criminal,” James remarked. “They are looking at Arbery’s life and he’s deceased and can’t defend himself.”

She added that very few people of color are among the 1,000 prospective jurors, and Glynn County, where the trial will occur, counts as a mostly white area.

“I don’t think in that county that you will find the kind of objectivity that you need,” James demurred. “When you think of the mindset of the things going on now with people so free to speak out in reference to their discriminatory attitudes, they have about us …”

Recent reports suggest that many U.S. states still have laws that allow for citizens to make arrests.

Chris Slobogin, a law professor at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University, told Reuters News Service that citizen’s arrest laws put dangerous powers in untrained hands.

“Things can get out of control quickly,” he said.

Roddy Bryan’s lawyer, Kevin Gough, told reporters earlier this month that the “Citizen’s arrest is a big part of our case, a big part.”

Ira Robbins, a law professor at American University in Washington, wrote in an academic paper that many states’ citizen’s arrest laws are broad.

In California, for example, someone can arrest an individual for a felony if the person has probable cause to believe it was committed.

“While recruiting citizens to aid in eradicating crime is a noble idea,” Robbins wrote, according to Reuters, “strict safeguards are needed to prevent the law being abused.”

New York state has the strictest law, holding residents liable for false arrest if no crime was committed, even if they had a reasonable belief, “leaving no room for mistakes,” Robbins continued.

When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp repealed the law, he said Arbery was “the victim of vigilante-style violence that has no place in Georgia” and that the statute was “ripe for abuse.”

The ACLU’s Georgia chapter said, “the old law was an example of systemic racism and empowered mobs that lynched Black people in more than 500 recorded cases in Georgia between 1882 and 1968.”

The trial of the McMichael family and Bryan is scheduled to begin on February 7, 2022.

Founder Keisha Smith-Jeremie, disrupts the applesauce industry with sanaía, the re-imagination of childhood treats for adults. While the rest of the category was focused on kids, Keisha seized the opportunity to cater to adults who wanted to enjoy applesauce without being subjected to pouches or uninspired flavors.

Growing up in the Bahamas, Keisha fell in love with fruit. While attending University of Virginia, she missed the flavors of home so she created an exotic new spin on a classic snack. Starting with crisp Granny Smith apples, each flavor is blended with plant-based ingredients and island-inspired fruits like Guava, Hibiscus, Tamarind, Ginger, Blackberry, Lavender and Pear.

Currently a $900M market with 99% of the spend focused on children, Keisha believes that applesauce is ready for the kind of disruption that grew yogurt from an 8BN category to 125BN. sanaía is the only applesauce with real apple wedges and has all the makings of the next 1BN entrant to the adult snacking category.

Keisha developed sanaía with the goal of creating a healthy snack. sanaía APPLESAUCE is perfect for vegans and adult palettes that are craving delicious snacks that are organic, low calorie, GMO free, gluten free, dairy free and allergen free: “I created sanaía because I believe that what we eat provides us with the fuel we need to live the life we want.”

Keisha’s entrepreneurial journey has been transformational. Her first time pitching to investors was on ABC’s Shark Tank! Not only did she secure an investment offer from business mogul Mark Cuban, but her episode went viral sparking conversations about ‘the unique sacrifices involved in the entrepreneurial journey for people of color.’ sanaía APPLESAUCE is available at Walmart stores and Amazon Prime with its Unsweetened and Guava flavors. To find a store near you to purchase sanaía, visit tastesanaía. com.

This article originally appeared in The Savannah Tribune.

By Savannah Tribune

Savannah State University (SSU) interim President Kimberly Ballard-Washington has appointed Annette Ogletree McDougal as vice president of Marketing and Communications.

“Annette has worked in various roles in higher education communications, public relations, media, and marketing,” Ballard-Washington said. “She brings a unique blend of experiences that make her an ideal choice for this position and as a member of the executive leadership team at Savannah State.”

Ogletree-McDougal, who assumed her role September 1, comes to SSU from the University System of Georgia, where she served as the executive director of communications, and the director of strategic planning and technology communications. She previously worked as the director of marketing and communications for the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel.

Ogletree-McDougal holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and theatre from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

This article originally appeared in The Savannah Tribune.