Members from Letcher and Knott counties joined the Perry County chapter members Tuesday night in Hazard at the Perry County Public Library for a Holiday feast and screening of I Was There in the Library's theater.  Around 25 people brought family, friends, and food to celebrate the upcoming holidays, another powerful year of grassroots organizing in east Kentucky, and the 79th birthday of the 2011 KFTC Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, McKinley Sumner of Montgomery Creek, Vicco.  

During the party, the Perry Chapter sold two 30th anniversary DVDs, two green KFTC t-shirts, and 5 members renewed their dues to support our final fall fundraising push!  After folks filled their bellies with the spread of fried chicken, sides, and desserts, we filed into the Library theater for a group viewing of  I Was There: The First 30 Years of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth.  For many, this was their first viewing of the film, complete with stove-top popcorn!  

With a group from three counties, ages 4 to 79, and from varying walks of life, this was a great finale to the Perry chapter's work this year, our 30th anniversary of action for justice.  See if you can spot any familiar faces below and see even more pictures on our flickr, here. 

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In delivering the commencement address to 56 Berea College graduates on Sunday, KFTC Executive Director Burt Lauderdale talked about the power of “organizing community” to achieve change.

“Community organizing is essential to the success of our democracy and our economy; it empowers us to participate in the often messy give and take of our system of government. Community organizing changes the world.

“And yet, over the past thirty years, I have borne witness to a deeper, even more profound pursuit of transformative justice when our members and leaders, through their aspiration and their love, have transcended the boundaries of traditional community organizing – and practiced organizing community,” he said.

Burt noted several Berea College graduates who became active KFTC members and made a difference by organizing community.

When Megan Naseman, class of 2007, used her botany skills to help a community in Floyd County protect their land from mountaintop removal mining, she was organizing community.

When Patty Tarquino, class of 2004, arranged for Eastern Kentuckians to travel to her native Colombia to visit coal-impacted communities, she was organizing community.

And when Patty Wallace, class of 1952, successfully prevented a hazardous waste incinerator from locating in her community and then helped a West Virginia neighborhood do the same, she was organizing community.

Though Berea College honored Burt by inviting him to speak and naming him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, he gave the credit for his accomplishments to KFTC members.

“I would not be here were it not for the thousands of members and leaders of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. KFTC is where I learned that, while we don’t accomplish anything as individuals, together anything is possible,” he said.

If you, like Burt, believe in the power of organizing community, you can honor him by making a gift to KFTC during our fall fundraising campaign. Join him in honoring our members – you – who have accomplished so much together.

As Burt said, “Organizing community means contributing instead of acquiring, sharing instead of conquering. It means making a commitment to the most powerful organizing force we’ve ever known – love.”

To give online, click here.

To watch the video of Burt’s speech, click here.

To read the Berea College press release, click here.

On Monday, folks from 24 grassroots organizations in Appalachia, including KFTC, met in Prestonsburg to provide some guidance to the Alliance for Appalachia on ways to advance a just and sustainable economic transition in Appalachia.

The goals of this Economic Summit were:
•    to learn about each other’s work and share strategies
•    to explore what is needed in the region to advance transition
•    to explore what role the Alliance for Appalachia could play in supporting economic transition work

After a day-long discussion, the group came up with recommendations related to continued research, raising grassroots funds, messaging and organizing.

The Alliance steering committee is considering the suggestions as it meets for its quarterly meeting, Tuesday through Thursday of this week. In the coming year, the Alliance plans advance its work promoting a transition to a just and sustainable economy for Appalachia, including looking for opportunities for collaboration with grassroots organizations throughout the region.

Report by Mary Love

This weekend, an estimated 25,000 people took to the streets of New York city  to challenge a host of laws pushed in 34 states to keep people from voting.

Felony disenfranchisement laws, mandatory photo ID laws for voting, and other changes have taken the right to vote away from over 5 million people across the nation since the 2008 election.

You can learn more about the national event on Democracy Now, the Huffington Post, and The Guardian. 

In Kentucky, we've managed to hold the line on this issue and have worked hard to make our democracy stronger and deeper instead or weaker and shallower - through our campaign to restore voting rights to former felons who have served their debt to society.

In solidarity with the national event, we held a rally and march in downtown Lexington in support of voting rights.  A little over thirty people made it out to the event, and several former felons took the microphone to tell their stories.

Thanks to April Browning, Tayna Fogle, Janet Tucker, Richard Mitchell and our other speakers.  

We also passed out resources to help people engage in citizen lobbying starting on January 3rd, where we'll be pushing for HB 70 - legislation that would restore voting rights to most former felons in KY after they've served their debt to society.    

Groups organizing the national demonstration included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League, Service Employees International Union Local 1199, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Locally, the groups that came together included Occupy Lexington, Steppin to a New Beat, and Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. 

KFTC and several of our allies are challenging an agreement the Beshear administration negotiated in secret with Nally & Hamilton coal company to resolve thousands of violations of the Clean Water Act.

“There are so many loopholes in this secretly crafted document, it becomes strikingly offensive to anyone the least bit familiar with Clean Water Act rules” said KFTC member Suzanne Tallichet. “This Agreed Order represents business as usual between cabinet officials and a scofflaw coal company, literally at the expense of citizens’ lives and well-being,"

The case involves incomplete and false water pollution reports Nally & Hamilton filed with the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet over a two-and-a-half-year period. These reports were literally collecting dust in state offices before they were exposed by Appalachian Voices. In March, KFTC, Appalachian Voices, Kentucky Riverkeeper and the Waterkeeper Alliance informed Nally & Hamilton of their intent to sue in order to stop the violations and the related pollution of waterways in eastern Kentucky.

Cabinet officials, who had previously ignored these reports, in May filed an administrative enforcement action against the company, alleging 4,600 violations rather than the 12,000 originally cited. It seems that the cabinet did this in an effort to protect the company by trying to pre-empt a federal lawsuit the groups planned to file. The administrative action had no preemptive effect under the law, however, and the groups filed the federal suit anyway.

We also asked to intervene in the cabinet's administrative proceeding, and in July the hearing officer granted the groups intervenor status, as full parties in the case. However, cabinet officials ignored the hearing officer's strong encouragement to include intervenors in settlement negotiations and negotiated a settlement with Nally & Hamilton without notifying or involving the intervening parties.

"They ignored the hearing officer’s order giving us intervenor status and negotiated a secret agreement that does little to protect our people or prevent future violations,” said Pat Banks of Kentucky Riverkeeper in a press release issued by the groups. “Our people are shocked that the cabinet chooses to protect companies that are polluting our land and water and breaking the laws thousands of times rather than protect the health and well-being of Kentucky’s land and people.“

The petition filed Thursday in Franklin Circuit Court asks that the agreement between Nally & Hamilton Enterprises and the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet be vacated on the grounds that there is “no factual evidence in the record, much less substantial evidence, [that] supports a finding that the Agreed Order is a fair resolution of Nally’s thousands of [Clean Water Act] violations, or that it will be an effective deterrent of future violations.”

Nally & Hamilton Enterprises, based in Bardstown, is one of the largest producers of strip mined coal in Kentucky. Several principal officers and employees of Nally & Hamilton and their spouses contributed $6,000 to Beshear’s re-election campaign on July 21, just two weeks after the citizens groups were allowed to intervene in the case, according to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance.

"Citizens living in coal-impacted communities deserve much better from a taxpayer supported state agency that is supposed to be diligently protecting people over corporate profits,”said Tallichet.

MEDIA COVERAGE

• Ronnie Ellis: Environmental coalition wants agreement vacated
• Lexington Herald-Leader: Environmentalists contest coal company settlement
• Erica Peterson, WFPL-FM: Environmental Groups Petition to Overturn “Inadequate” Coal Settlement
  

KFTC members from the Central Kentucky plugged away tonight calling folks whose KFTC memberships needed to be renewed. Many great conversations were had about the work over 2011 and several folks committed to donating and/or becoming sustaining givers.

There's still time for you to renew your membership and to continue supporting all of our amazing work! Just visit us online at www.kftc.org/donate.

Fifteen KFTC members from across Kentucky, from Bowling Green to Whitesburg and Louisa to Louisville, gathered in Lexington to begin providing leadership for KFTC’s New Energy and Transition work, which includes our rural electric co-op reform, sustainable energy policy and organizing and Appalachian Transition campaigns.

KFTC’s Steering Committee decided earlier this year to more closely align these three projects, which have similar goals of promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy, passing clean energy legislation, transitioning away from our dependence on coal, creating new jobs, and saving money for low-income families.

Most of the folks in the room had been involved with one of the three campaigns. Participants got an overview of all three and will have the chance to choose a workteam that focuses on one of the three.

“It was exciting to see these different areas of KFTC work for a better, more sustainable future brought together so that we could learn from each other and understand how so much of our efforts are interrelated,” said Mimi Pickering, a long-time KFTC member from Whitesburg. “I think this is going to be a great way to organize and build momentum for a transition away from coal mining and burning to renewable energy and a just and sustainable economy in eastern Kentucky.”

Members discussed trends, opportunities and challenges to achieving a clean energy vision. Among the trends was the growing acceptance of energy efficiency, even among utilities and politicians who support the coal industry. Renewable energy, on the other hand, won’t gain a foothold unless it’s connected with economic development, members said.

Among the opportunities discussed was the Clean Energy Opportunity Act, which does connect renewable energy with economic development by proposing a Renewable and Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS) and a feed-in tariff that would create clean energy jobs and industries by requiring the state to meet benchmarks by a certain time. (Introduced in the Kentucky legislature in 2010 and 2011 by the Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance, of which KFTC is a founding member, the bill has not passed but did get a favorable hearing in committee this year and will be re-introduced in 2012 with the hope of getting a vote).

A lack of public understanding of energy issues was listed as a challenge, as were Kentucky’s legislature and congressional delegation, which are reluctant to support anything they perceive might threaten the coal industry. Kentucky is behind surrounding states in passing legislation that encourages clean energy development and the jobs it would bring.

Members worked hard but also had fun getting to know each other and playing a game that focused on the “alphabet soup” of acronyms in the world of energy – such as "EE" for "energy efficiency" and "RE" for "renewable energy."

Last night's Kentucky Tonight program about Voting Rights is already up online on KET's website.  Here's a link to the full program.

Many KFTC members and allies called and emailed in and we've had a good response from people across the state who saw the program. 

We also now have a Voting Rights Rally scheduled for this Saturday, December 10th at 2pm in the park across from the Kentucky Theater in Lexington.   This action is in solidarity with Human Rights Day and a large NAACP / union voting rights rally in New York that same day.  We're also working with friends at Occupy Lexington and they've graciously agreed to allow the rally to take place in the space that they've been camped out in for the last few months. 

December 31st, 2011 is the date by which you must be registered to vote as a member of the political party whose primary election you want to vote in in 2012.

Stick with us on this, it's a little complicated.

Independents and Democrats will not be able to vote in partisan Republican primaries on May 22nd, 2012.  Likewise, Independents and Republicans will not be able to vote in partisan Democratic primaries.

So even though the election isn't until May of 2012, and we won't even have a full list of people running for office until January 31st, everyone who's registered in Kentucky now will need to nail down their political party be the end of this month. 

What's worse is that if someone waits until after the deadline to try to change their party, they can lose the right to vote in their current party's primary too. 

For example, if someone is registered as a Democrat now and decides in March of 2012 that they like some of the Republican candidates running.  If they try to change their party then, they will not only fail to be registered as a Republican for the primary, they will also forfeit their right to vote in Democratic primary. 

Note that people who are registered as part of a third party (Greens, Libertarians, etc.) are effectively in the same category as registered independents in that they will not be able to vote in partisan primary elections unless they change their registration by December 31st.

Note also that none of this applies to people who are not currently registered in Kentucky.  They can pick any party they want to if they register by April 23rd, 2012 and vote in that party's primary.  

To check what party you are currently registered as, visit https://cdcbp.ky.gov/VICWeb/index.jsp

If you wish to change your political party affiliation so that you can vote in partisan primaries, visit your local County Clerk by the end of their business day on December 30th - http://www.elect.ky.gov/countyclerks.htm

You can also print out and mail in a voter registration card by finding the file online at http://www.elect.ky.gov/register.htm and get it postmarked by Dec 31st. 

We recognize that some people might have good reasons to want to remain registered as an Independent or as a member of a third party for this primary and that they might feel that sends a message that is worth fore-fitting their right to vote in the primary.  What KFTC is trying to do is to make the space for people to understand their choices and to make an informed one before the deadline.