Editor, The Times: I went to the Waycross City Auditorium for the meeting Aug. 13 to hear why the board of trustees for the Okefenokee Swamp thinks it’s such a great idea to get in bed with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and their reasoning was that it will drive more tourism to our area. They made it sound so rosy, but I've been around long enough to know there's always a catch.
Well, August 22, I attended a completely different forum at the Exchange Club (with even more people and the house was packed!), and it was all about UNESCO and the evil atrocities the U.N. has perpetrated around the world. If you can get your hands on that video, I highly recommend you watch the presentation on Facebook or You-Tube. Trust me, you do not want the U.N. to have anything to do with our little neck of the woods!
I was very impressed that the people who put all of this together were just local citizens who love their country and community. They invited the public to come and hear special guest, Alex Newman, who literally follows the U.N. around the world to report on them. Everyone I talked to seemed to point to Brooks Strickland, a local UPS driver, as the leader of this south Georgia patriot group. They call themselves “Americans for the Okefenokee'. There were no local Big Wigs running the show. It was truly a grass root effort, and I applaud them for that. Everyone from a UPS driver, a local farmer, a cabinet builder, an asphalt paving guy, a forester, a local pastor, a few retirees (but most of them are younger than 40)...it just goes to show you what a small group of local citizens can do to fight back against a global giant (think David and Goliath). My faith in humanity has been restored. The program started with prayer and ended with prayer. God seemed to be the main focus of the night, and I really felt at home sitting amongst a lot of brothers and sisters in Christ.
The first meeting was totally different. No mention of God, no prayers asking for guidance, nothing. And that's probably because the U.N. does not acknowledge God a single time in any of their documents. They are truly an atheistic organization that fights against the laws of God. I should also point out that not a single member from the board of trustees at the Okefenokee bothered to show up last night. Do they even care what their neighbors have to say? I honestly think that shows you their character. It's a personal lack of integrity when one side of the room is willing to come and hear what you have to present, but when they want to tell you their side of the story, you can't even bother to show up and listen. This is also a slap in the face to the 78% Ware County Republican voters who rejected the idea of UNESCO getting involved in the Okefenokee when they were asked about their opinion on the matter.
Just who do these board members think they are? One of the speakers made the comment that when this was originally proposed, the board of trustees said, 'If the public doesn't want it (UNESCO), then we won't go through with it.' What ever happened to that notion? I guess some people just want to leave their mark on the world, but they don't realize the mark they are leaving behind is a skid mark.
Jimmy Johnson Alma
