Gainesville, Georgia needs your support

The School Board voted to adopt comprehensive sex education.  A few vocal parents are complaining that the information is inappropriate for elementary students.

Please add your comments to the article in the newspaper that was published December 8th in support of comprehensive sex ed.

http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/article/26934/

This past weekend G-CAPP hosted a mind-blowing training about “Creating a Youth Movement with New Media” with eight Georgia Advocates.

We invited Civil Rights Activist and Icon Lonnie King to speak about creating a youth movement.  It was unbelievable to be sitting across the table with living history!! Mr. King talked about his role in the youth civil rights movement and how he and others orchestrated sit-ins to desegregate Rich’s. 

He was friends with Martin Luther King (M.L.—as he would call him!!).  He talked about how during the 1960 presidential election between Kennedy and Nixon there was no national dialogue about all the civil rights activism going on.  He called MLK and told him he needed to get involved in the sit in at Rich’s and get arrested in order to get the movement in the national conversation.  MLK agreed and then his father shot down the idea.  Lonnie King got on the phone with MLK, Sr and implored him to let his son get arrested.  Everyone was finally in agreement.  The arrest did happen, and the Civil Rights became part of the national debate.  And the rest is history, as they say.

Mr. Lonnie King is so impressive—beyond words.  I cannot believe I had the opportunity to meet him and listen to his experience.  It gave me goose bumps. He is now 73 and completing a PhD in History.  Can you imagine??? He IS history!

James Andrews followed Mr. King with an equally mind-blowing presentation in a completely different way.  Rather than looking back in history, we were looking forward into the future. James Andrews is a new media GURU.  (Twitter: @keyinfluencer  web: www.beeverywhere.tv ) We couldn’t keep up with him.  His stuff is way beyond the basic FB and Twitter that we all doodle with. He talked about using Twitter and Facebook to create a movement and gave powerful examples. 

James Andrews and his crew hold the Guiness Book of Records for most tweets on a trending topic in 24 hours for #BEATCANCER.  He and his posse decided to see if they could create a movement in support of cancer over a weekend in October 2009 while at the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. For every tweet, Facebook status update, or blog post containing the #beatcancer eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors donated 1 cent to cancer research.

The #beatcancer was retweeted  by celebrities and regular folks alike to the tune of over 209,771 people posting messages.  The organizers of the #BeatCancer campaign believe this number correlated to over 100 million impressions during the 24-hour period. It was the number one trending topic on Twitter—beating out even Balloon Boy!

Quotable Quotes from the weekend:

Lonnie King:

• “You live in the present. My life is lived in the future.  My present is 2014. My life is where the hockey puck is going.”

The fine folks of Athens Clarke County, Georgia have passed the first comprehensive sex education school policy in the state!   They have selected 2 curricula to implement. Last night the school board was to vote to adopt the curriculum. They decided to give the public one more week to comment on the curriculum selection.

Please take the time to write to the newspaper and let young people's voices be heard as to why the school board should adopt the comprehensive sex ed curriculum.

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/020609/new_385181927.shtml#mdw-comments

We are so proud of Athens Clarke County for doing the right thing for their young people.  Let them know you feel the same.