Dog Fight Continues: Brinsons to Appeal Dangerous Dog Ruling After Split Decision

By Dave Oedel, March 22, 2015, Macon, Georgia:

This dog fight will go on. On Monday, March 9, 2015, five members of the Macon-Bibb County Board of Health split 3-2 on whether to deem three female pitbull dogs, Cocoa, Pearl and Justice, “dangerous.” As previously reported in the Macon Monitor, those dogs were involved in the death of another dog, Renalto, that was passing by the pitbulls’ home on a walk with Renalto’s owner, Claudio Naranjo, from Miami. The pitbulls are owned by Ryan Brinson and kept at the home of his mother, Veronica Brinson, at 124 Brookefield Drive in the Brookefield subdivision of north Macon off Bowman Road.

Board of Health members Bert Bivins, Ethel Cullinan and David Garrow voted to find the dogs “dangerous” within the meaning of both state law and a Macon-Bibb ordinance. Two other Board members, … Continue Reading

President Barack Obama’s Speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015, Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”

President Barack Obama, Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015

You can watch President Obama’s 32-minute speech here. Below is the text as transcribed by the White House.

It is a rare honor in this life to follow one of your heroes. And John Lewis is one of my heroes.

Now, I have to imagine that when a younger John Lewis woke up that morning 50 years ago and made his way to Brown Chapel, heroics were not on his mind. A day like this was not on his mind. Young folks with bedrolls and backpacks were … Continue Reading

My Reflections on Selma: Jack Ellis Recalls the History, and Surveys Some Present Challenges, of Race and Voting in America

By C. Jack Ellis, former Mayor of Macon, March 14, 2015:

On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced his intention to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, which he did on January 1, 1863. Soon after Lincoln’s announcement, in an October 12, 1862 newspaper article, Karl Marx wrote that Lincoln’s “proclamation, . . . the manifesto abolishing slavery, is the most important document in American history since the establishment of the Union.”

I would have agreed with that sentiment — prior to the … Continue Reading

Selma, a Catalyst for Voting Rights, also Put Protesting and Policing in the Media Glare

By Dave Oedel, Macon Georgia, March 14, 2015:

President Obama visited Selma, Alabama here in the Black Belt a week ago, March 7, 2015, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.” Five decades ago, under orders from Alabama Governor George Wallace, Alabama state patrol officers with unnecessary violence suppressed a peaceful if knowingly confrontational march for voting rights organized by Martin Luther King, Jr.  Alabama Governor George Wallace had advised the chief of the Alabama state highway patrol “to use whatever means are necessary to prevent a march,” which Wallace and the chief had concluded would violate state highway traffic laws. They could also have concluded that most cars were about to violate some highway law or another, but of course cars weren’t being stopped – just the protesters. When the chief officer and the chief protester approached one another that day on the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the county line, the officer declined discussion, saying only that there was nothing left to discuss.

If you need a refresher or an education about what happened next, you might take a look at the first 3 minutes of this newsreel footage.

Seeing the police rush and trample … Continue Reading