Join us this year for a whole week of events gearing up to I love mountains day. Here's the schedule:

Events:
Wednesday Feb 9 Tune in to 88.1 WRFL at 4 pm for "New Power Hour"

Thursday Feb 10 FREE screening of the award winning documentary "Deep Down: A story from the heart of coal country" 7 pm BCTCS in the Oswald building.

Friday Feb 11 I Love Mountains Oldtime Music Showcase at Al's Bar featuring Clack Mountain String Band, Rich and the Poor Folks, and Julie and Adrian Shepherd Powell. $10 All Ages 9 pm

Saturday Feb 12 Morris Book Shop is hosting a legislative letter writing party starting at 12 pm, featuring authors Jason Howard, Erik Reece, Maurice Manning, Eric Sutherland and Whitney Baker

Sunday Feb 13 from 12pm-3pm Third Street Coffee and Latitude Artist Community are hosting a sign and poster making party to gear up for the I Love Mountains Day Rally

Monday Feb 14 I Love Mountains Day March and Rally. March starts at 11 am in Frankfort at the Kentucky River

Monday Feb 14 Happy Hour For The Mountains 4-7 pm Al's Bar. After the march and rally come celebrate with good food, good music and good friends. Reel World String Band will play 2 sets.

For more information visit www.kftc.org/LexLove

The central Kentucky chapter hosted a lobby training last Saturday at Maxwell Street Presbyterian church in Lexington. Almost 30 people came out to learn about our various lobby priorities in 2011.

 The goals for the training were to 1. familiarize folks with lobbying and lobby related activities and 2. to teach people about our six lobby priorities for this session. We began the training with what for some folks may have been a refresher - how a bill becomes a law and what is the difference between paid lobbyists and ourselves. The discussion was very lively and folks contributed several stories about their own experiences lobbying in Frankfort.

We talked about KFTC's lobby priorities in 2011 and then folks broke out into small groups to learn the specifics about immigrant's rights, clean energy, protecting Kentucky's rivers and streams, tax reform, voting rights and LGBTIQ fairness.

 Finally, folks signed up to come along w/ KFTC to several big lobby days. If you're interested in joining us for any of these you can either show up for the carpools which normally leave from the Versailles Rd. Save-A-Lot at 8:15am, or get in touch with Ondine at ondine@kftc.org

Thursday Feb 3rd - Economic Justice Lobby day

Tuesday Feb 8th - Immigrant's Rights

Thursday Feb. 10th - Clean Energy

Monday Feb 14th - I love mountains day

Wednesday Feb 23rd - Fairness

Thursday Feb 24th - Voting Rights

University of Kentucky and Bluegrass Community and Technical college students were joined by KFTC members to deliver petitions and letters to the Euclid Ave Kroger store in Lexington asking them to support worker's rights in Florida.

This action is one of many across the country being coordinated by the Florida based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).

The CIW is a community-based organization of mainly Latino, Mayan Indian and Haitian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida. They fight for, among other things: a fair wage for the work they do, more respect on the part of their bosses and the industries where they work, better and cheaper housing, stronger laws and stronger enforcement against those who would violate workers' rights, the right to organize on their jobs without fear of retaliation, and an end to involuntary servitude in the fields.

Students on both campuses have spent the last month getting these petitions signed. There is also an online version that you can sign here. 

The letters ask Kroger to support worker's rights by doing the following: