Fresh Loaf

In mid-July, the citizen coalition Campaign for Atlanta held a two-day series of forums with Atlanta mayoral candidates Lisa Borders, Mary Norwood, Kasim Reed and Jesse Spikes at the Carter Center.

Topics covered during the events included Department of Watershed Management issues, creating and maintaining a competent city bureaucracy, and police and fire issues. Candidates were grilled by civil engineer Bob Bunker, Georgia Tech Professor Jim Martin, former Fulton County Manager Sam Brownlee, former Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Lou Arcangeli and former Atlanta Fire Chief David Chamberlin.

All 32 videos of the event, grouped by candidate remarks and responses, were made available today on Campaign for Atlanta’s website. We’ve uploaded each candidate’s opening remarks after the jump.

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In late April, award-winning reporter Odette Yousef of WABE 90.1 FM traveled to Ethiopia with the Carter Center to report on trachoma, an eye illness that can lead to blindness and which has ravaged the African country.

Once a common malady in the United States, trachoma is now concentrated in some of Africa’s most poverty-stricken countries — Ethiopia being one of them. Nearly 85 percent of its population is at risk of acquiring the bacterial illness, which thrives in areas with poor sanitation and hygiene. In Ethiopia, its most common vector is a fly that feeds off ocular and nasal discharges. The lack of clean water for hygiene and large numbers of people living in close quarters only makes trachoma more difficult to tackle.

The Carter Center has launched trachoma control programs in several African countries, but Yousef says Ethiopia has been the biggest challenge. She traveled with the center’s health staff to the country’s northwestern state of Amhara, where the Atlanta-based nonprofit hopes to effectively control the illness by 2012.

Yousef’s five-part series is airing all this week on WABE’s morning newscast. For those of you who might have missed her reports, the station has posted the full series and a large amount of content, including video and photos, on its blogs site.

(Photo by Odette Yousef)

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1) Dosa Kim’s Weight, curated by Beep Beep Gallery, continues at Aurora Coffee in Little Five Points.

2) The Whigs and the Kooks play Variety Playhouse.

3) Read, drink and celebrate childhood literacy with Books, Beer and Bears Oh My! at Sweetwater Brewery.

4) Bob Schieffer discusses his collection of essays, Bob Schieffer’s America, at the Carter Center.

5) Sonia Leigh, Drunk on Crutches and Backrow Baptists play the Earl.

(Image by Dosa Kim)

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The Soviet gulag prison system will be the subject of a panel discussion hosted next week by the Carter Center – or will it?

Actually, here’s how the CC describes the event: “A panel of human rights leaders will discuss its impact on Russia and the world today, as well as offer comparisons to the American Civil Rights Movement.”

Fair enough, but does anyone imagine that the topic of America’s own gulag at Guantanamo Bay won’t come up among a panel that includes Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA; former Gulag prisoner Sergey Kovalev; and Pres. Jimmy himself?

Just yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on the question of just how much access to the judicial process the more than 300 in Cuba should have. Said the Bush administration: not much. Said a lawyer for 37 detainees who’ve been locked away for more than six years without a proper hearing: more than they’ve gotten so far.

According to the NYT, the 83-minute hearing didn’t seem to go so well for the government, which tried to convince the court that being represented by an assigned officer before a military tribunal is all the justice the detainees deserve.

So the Carter Center event should be interesting. Shame you can’t go. Apparently, the program – scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 12 – is already sold out. However, you can listen to a live webcast of the discussion on the CC’s website.

You can also check out an exhibition on the gulags at the Martin Luther King Jr., National Historic Site. It’s billed as the first U.S. retrospective of the Soviet gulag system. Be sure to bring the kids.

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