Events are typically updated at the beginning of each month. See also Local News, Regional News, and Calendar
Our monthly meetings are held via Zoom at present and generally occur every third Tuesday of the month at 7:30 p.m.
There will be no meeting in July. Our next meeting will be Tuesday, August 17th at 7:30 p.m. via Zoom. All are welcome. The Zoom link will be available in the August Update.
We are pleased that Eve Faulkes has agreed to be our speaker for our annual meeting, discussing her forthcoming book reflecting the work that she and her students have done to celebrate the history of Scotts Run. Eve has recently retired from WVU where she taught graphic design with a focus on social justice. This will be a Zoom presentation that we expect to record for our website.
Tim Hairston has volunteered to represent us on the project that Bekah Aranda and Adelheid Schaupp are leading to research, document, and recognize the historically black schools and the people who attended these schools in Monongalia County.
City and county governments in Monongalia County are scheduled to receive a total of over $32 million through the American Rescue Plan. CCSJ has joined the Morgantown-Kingwood Branch of the NAACP in asking that there be opportunities for public input into the use of these funds by following follow federal and state public outreach stipulations in “Best Practices for Local and State Prioritization of American Rescue Plan Act Funds” from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy Fact Sheet (May 2021). The Treasury Department explicitly “urges state, territorial, tribal, and local governments to engage their constituents and communities in developing plans to use these payments, given the scale of funding and its potential to catalyze broader recovery and rebuilding.
We ask that these government bodies create channels to collect public input on their community’s needs prior to crafting spending plans for these funds. This could include public meetings, surveys, and citizen advisory committees. Once an initial proposal is crafted, the public should again have the opportunity to comment on the plans because these funds provide a unique opportunity to help people who have suffered inequitable health and economic consequences from the pandemic.
We will be following and supporting the League of Women Voters’ work focused on the mandatory legislative redistricting that will follow the release of 2020 census date on September 30th. The goal is to draw fair maps. There will be a short time frame to draw boundaries for state races before candidates start to file their papers in early 2022. The national NAACP is focused on this effort, and we will be sharing information from those Zoom calls with the League.
CCSJ has received a grant of $2,000 from the FirstEnergy Foundation to support our work. We thank Elizabeth Durr, who works in the Regional External Affairs office, for her initiative in making this possible and will keep everyone posted as we decide how to use this generous gift.
We have received an allocation of $1500 from the City of Morgantown to reimburse us for expenses for Martin Luther King, Jr., Day 2022 and signed a contract with the Metropolitan Theatre with the hope that we can all gather again there next year. Please let us know if you have ideas as we begin to plan this event.
For several years, the City of Morgantown provided funds for us to purchase library books focused on social justice issues for the Morgantown Public Library on Spruce Street. With funds from the Appalachian Community Foundation, we also purchased books for the Clinton District and Clay-Battelle Branch Libraries. Most of these are books for children. The library has added some of these at the Arnettsville branch.
The lists for have been updated and are available now here. There are two lists. One is exclusively books focused on African Americans. The other list includes our former environmental justice and economic justice lists. There is an index on page 3 of the “catalog” that includes links to the various topics so that you can easily find something that might interest you.The library is now open enough that people can order books and pick them up curbside. For more information on this procedure, please go here.
A video of the September 2020 CCSJ Annual Meeting undertaken via Zoom is available on YouTube. To download and view the 2019-20 CCSJ Annual Report please click here.
Please send your web site suggestions to Mike Attfield at attfield@comcast.net. Please contact any of the steering committee members to volunteer to help and to share your suggestions for our work or e-mail us at ccsjwv@hotmail.com. Please send items to share with our membership to Barb Howe at barbara.howe@mail.wvu.edu.
Please also remember to send your dues - $10 for individuals and $25 for organizations – to CCSJ, PO Box 160, Morgantown, WV 26507-0160. You can join or donate by credit card via PayPal on this web site. Go to Join Us.