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Fresh and local and all grown-up: a look at a movement with staying power
You hear about the local food movement and buy fresh buy local, but can you put a figure on the local food economy in our area? Nearly all of the restaurants in downtown Harrisonburg source locally grown food for ingredients on their menus. Harrisonburg City Schools have a $100,000 budget for locally purchased foods for school meals that come from within 100 miles of the city. Andrea Early, executive director of school nutrition for Harrisonburg’s schools, says that serving local foods helps kids make that connection between the food and who grows it. She hopes that by educating kids about healthy eating they will make healthier choices as adults.
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Council candidates offer different philosophies in ways they should – and can – help immigrants
Saturday’s city council immigrant forum revealed a philosophical gap between the five candidates – not necessarily over political ideology – but more broadly in how they view the relationship between government and citizens. The candidates, who are vying for two seats in the Nov. 6 election, also differed over the council’s ability to actually affect certain issues, including access to health care and federal immigration policy.
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In traveling town hall, candidates seek to appeal to JMU students – an untapped well of mid-term voters
Instead of only hoping JMU students show up to vote in the Nov. 6 Election, many of the candidates in the biggest races affecting Harrisonburg will bring their campaigns to JMU students on Wednesday, Oct. 10.
Candidates or representatives from Virginia’s U.S. Senate race, the open 6th Congressional District contest and those running for the two spots on Harrisonburg city council will embark on an old fashion barnstorming tour by bus – bus-storming? – to three JMU residence hall areas. It’s being billed as a Traveling Town Hall complete with free pizza and the candidates’ best talking points. Each candidate will have between five and seven minutes to address the audience of first-time or relatively new voters.
Wave or ripple? Voter registration numbers in Harrisonburg on an ordinary path to the mid-terms.
By Jeremiah Knupp, contributor With the upcoming midterm elections dominating the national news cycle, voter registration numbers around the country are soaring. Over 800,000 people signed up on National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 25, according to Nonprofit VOTE, who sponsored the event. State election officials have said that registrations are up this year over …
Independent council candidates are running from the right and left in this fall’s election
This November, Harrisonburg voters will choose two candidates for city council out of a field of five: two Democrats, three independents but, for the second straight election, no Republican. A Republican last ran for city council seat in 2014.
Still, two of the independent candidates – Frank McMillan and Carolyn Frank – have embraced certain conservative philosophies, such as wanting to reduce the tax burden. A third independent, Paloma Saucedo, is running on a progressive platform.
That has the Democratic candidates – Chris Jones and Sal Romero – facing independent opposition from both ends of the political spectrum.
Hello Harrisonburg, we’re here to inform you
To those of us who live here, Harrisonburg is a lot of things – growing, increasingly diverse, quirky. But above all, it’s home.
Earlier this year, several of us who have an interest in news and have chosen to live in Harrisonburg – or to return here – began discussing ways we could help our community.
What emerged was the foundation for The Citizen: an online news organization that will provide, without a paywall, in-depth coverage of community issues and information we need to know to be active and informed participants in this democracy. We are driven by curiosity, not any political philosophy. And our goal is to not just explain what happened, but to provide a clearer picture of why and how using any and all tools available to us.
