Johnson County Community College
Press Release

College Information and Publications
913-469-8500
Julie Haas, Associate Vice President, Marketing Communications, ext. 3120
Peggy Graham, Writer, ext. 3425
Tyler Cundith, Sports Information Director, ext. 3122

12/19/08
Story by Peggy Graham

JCCC designates January to observe sustainability

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. ¬– The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Johnson County Community College has designated January as Sustainability and Green Movement Month. Events are listed in chronological order. All events are free and open to the public unless noted.

Two nationally known green movement speakers will give two free lectures, co-sponsored by ODEI and the JCCC sustainability committee.

• David Cobb, American activist and 2004 Green Party U.S. presidential candidate, will present Making the Promise of Democracy a Reality from 7-9 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 15, in the M.R. and Evelyn Hudson Auditorium, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. Cobb will address the process of democratic decision making and the intersection of corporate power and public policy. A reception precedes the talk at 6-7 p.m. in the Atrium.
  
  Cobb, an attorney,  currently serves as a Fellow with the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution and as an organizer with Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County.
  
  
• David Korten, author and a leading critic of corporate globalization, will give a presentation, Navigating the Great Turning, from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Friday, Jan. 16, in the Hudson Auditorium.
  
  Korten is the author of the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World, sometimes referred to as the bible of the historic Seattle WTO protest, and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, which highlights the significance of this resistance by placing it in the historical context of 5,000 years of empire and the organization of human relationships by dominator hierarchy. He also is writing a new book, Agenda for a New Economy: from Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth.
  
  Korten is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! A Journal of Positive Futures, founder and president of the People-Centered Development Forum and a board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. He is also a founding associate of the International Forum on Globalization.
  
  Korten, who has MBA and PhD degrees from the Stanford Business School, served five years as a Harvard Business School professor, a Ford Foundation project specialist and Asia regional adviser on development management to the U.S. Agency for International Development. After 30 years as a development professional in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Korten became convinced of the devastating consequences of an economic system designed to make rich people richer without regard to the human and environmental consequences.
  
  
• A book discussion of Korten’s book, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, will take place from 2-4 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23,  in the In-Focus Dining Room of the Commons Building.
  
  
• Earth Artists, presented by Allison Smith, assistant professor, art history, JCCC, will be from 1-3 p.m. Friday, Jan. 30, in the Hudson Auditorium. Smith will give a short presentation on artists who create their artwork from natural materials – leaves, ice, the ground, etc. — followed by the film Rivers and Tides about the artist Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist living in Scotland who uses natural and found objects to create temporary and permanent sculptures that draw out the character of their environment. 

For more information about ODEI events, call Susan McGarvey, administrative assistant, ODEI, 913-469-8500, ext. 4327, or mcgarvey@jccc.edu, or Danny Alexander, interim  director, Multicultural Center, JCCC, at 913-469-8500, ext. 3429, dalexand@jccc.edu.