Jenny Thacker attended the JC Development Authority meeting regarding data centers in Jefferson County. She reports that the invitees were one-sided in their praise for these centers and largely dismissive of the issues that communities affected by them raise. Jenny posed these questions in a recap of the meetings in a Letter to the Editor in the Spirit of Jefferson.
On December 5, 2024 ICE made one of its raids on two Mexican restaurants in Jefferson County. They tagged along with a US Marshalls team and disrupted a dinner hour for local residents, a raid that including pepper spraying. It didn’t matter to ICE that customers were “in the way.” These kinds of tactics have to be loudly called out as dangerous and very likely illegal, all for the sake of arresting and deporting cooks and wait staff serving our community. Is this insult to our community going to be commonplace in our future?
Everyone agrees that community starts with conversations and grows with more conversation and then eventually cooperation, sharing, and eventually problem solving, Jenny Thacker describes how a project inspired by a friend grew her community in a small out of the way nook of Jefferson County. The secret involved growing food.