Georgia PSC member Tim Echols is a tool

Fact check: I looked up “Tool” in the Urban Dictionary. Echols fits every definition except “Kanye West” by Jonathan Grant @Brambleman On the Georgia Public Service Commission, Tim Echols  functions largely as a cheerleader for Georgia Power Company and Plant Vogtle. Like every other PSC member—and all statewide officeholders—he’s a Republican. He’s also a proud pro-lifer, Trumpist evangelical, and founder of TeenPact, “a hands-on leadership experience for Christian students,” which gives out the Tim Echols Political Involvement Award and sells Frisbee discs for $12 at its online store. I think his goal is to build a next-gen army of Republican politicians. To top off Georgia’s misfortune, he’s also active on social media and seems to be the most outspoken, loquacious, and insufferable…

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Video: Teresa Tomlinson’s virtual town hall on Covid-19 & criminal justice in Georgia

Update You can watch Saturday’s virtual town hall by clicking the link in the tweet In case you missed this provocative and timely virtual panel discussion on the prison community and COVID-19 and prison reform.https://t.co/GTVUcUTu3L — Teresa Tomlinson (@teresatomlinson) March 29, 2020 From the Tomlinson campaign: TERESA TOMLINSON TO HOST VIRTUAL TOWN HALL ON COVID19’S EFFECT ON OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN GEORGIA Columbus, GA – Teresa Tomlinson, two-term mayor of Columbus and candidate for U.S. Senate from Georgia will host a virtual town hall along with attorneys Gerald Griggs and Francys Johnson this Saturday, March 28, at 1:00 p.m EST. To register for today’s town hall, click here “The Coronavirus pandemic has shown a number of weaknesses in our systems and our criminal justice system is…

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Today @ 1 p.m.: Senate candidate Teresa Tomlinson hosts virtual town hall on Covid-19 & criminal justice in Georgia

Update You can watch Saturday’s virtual town hall by clicking the link in the tweet In case you missed this provocative and timely virtual panel discussion on the prison community and COVID-19 and prison reform.https://t.co/GTVUcUTu3L — Teresa Tomlinson (@teresatomlinson) March 29, 2020 From the Tomlinson campaign: TERESA TOMLINSON TO HOST VIRTUAL TOWN HALL ON COVID19’S EFFECT ON OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN GEORGIA Columbus, GA – Teresa Tomlinson, two-term mayor of Columbus and candidate for U.S. Senate from Georgia will host a virtual town hall along with attorneys Gerald Griggs and Francys Johnson this Saturday, March 28, at 1:00 p.m EST. To register for today’s town hall, click here “The Coronavirus pandemic has shown a number of weaknesses in our systems and our criminal justice system is…

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DeKalb offers wide array of early voting locations, longer hours for presidential primary, sheriff’s race

Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry spoke out for expanded early voting hours, locations Early voting: March 2-20, 2020 By Jonathan Grant @Brambleman The DeKalb County Board of Elections stepped up its game for the presidential primary and sheriff’s election, unanimously approving on Thursday a staff plan to open 12 early voting sites across the county, many of them with expanded hours. (DeKalb operates two polling locations at its main office, with one set up for voters with disabilities.) Several polling locations will be open on two Saturdsays, March 7 and 17 and one Sunday, March 15. The big change from the past is keeping three polling locations–main office and Dunwoody Library, and South DeKalb Mall–will have extended hours of operation until 8 pm.…

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Take that, Scarlett O’Hara: The tale of Tunis Campbell is the true story of Georgia Reconstruction

Tunis G. Campbell, Sr. Georgia Black Reconstruction Leader By Jonathan Grant @Brambleman In 1861, a 49-year-old black abolitionist named Tunis G. Campbell, Sr., walked into a recruiter’s office in New York City and attempted to enlist in the Union Army. Like all African-Americans in the war’s early stages, he was rejected as unfit on the basis of his race. Campbell, a well-educated restaurateur, baker, and published author, didn’t give up. He wrote a letter to President Lincoln outlining a self-improvement plan for freed slaves after the war. As a result, he was sent to Union-occupied Hilton Head, S.C., to work with General Rufus Saxton. In 1865, Campbell—a tall, imposing man who dressed formally and wore spectacles—was appointed military governor of five Georgia…

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When my father died, I inherited a huge unfinished manuscript. The rest is history.

By Jonathan Grant @Brambleman The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia was honored as an Editor’s Choice by American Heritage magazine and named Georgia’s nonfiction “Book of the Year” in 1994. I accepted the award on my father’s behalf six years to the day after he died. The last narrative that Dad wrote for The Way It Was covered Hosea Williams’s 1987 marches in Forsyth County, Georgia, the all-white county infamous for its purge of more than 1,000 black residents 75 years previously. My new novel, Brambleman, is a fictional account of that purge–and people’s attempts to come to grips with it. It is very much a story about the burden of Southern history. The Way It Was has been…

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