Michigan’s Global CO2 Initiative

On April 11th of this year, the University of Michigan’s Global CO2 Initiative met for the first time, hosting a two-day workshop on developing CO2-based products. The 
initiative aims to create solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and create carbon negative technologies, while gauging public interest in the new technologies. 
Some of the solutions include: 

U-M scientists are developing 
ways to convert carbon into 
Polyurethene and 
Polycarbonate materials.

U-M researchers are working to 
convert excess carbon into micro 
and macro-algae fuels.

Technologies are being created 
to use carbon to create cement, 
asphalt, and super hardwood for 
construction purposes.

Carbon into Materials: 
Carbon into Concrete: 
Carbon into Fuels 
and Chemicals: 
The central goal of the initiative 
is to create solutions that boost 
the economy without harming 
the environment.

Carbon Negative, 
Dollar Positive: 

CARE E R CE NTE R INTE RNS HIP L AB

2 — Tuesday, October 1, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News

KELSEY PEASE/Daily
The University Career Center hosts an Internship Lab in the Student Activities Building Monday afternoon. The lab provides a space for first and 
second year students to explore Handshake, and to learn about other tools they can use to build an internship strategy.

TUESDAY:
By Design 

THURSDAY:
Twitter Talk
FRIDAY:
Behind the Story
WEDNESDAY:
This Week in History 

MONDAY:
Looking at the Numbers

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Alexander began working with 
prisoners in the state of Michigan 
in 1990, according to PCAP’s tribute 
on their website. He conducted 
his first theater workshop at the 
Florence 
Crane 
Correctional 
Facility, which led him to create his 
Theater and Social Change class, 
Janie said. This became PCAP, a 
program which brings volunteers 
from the University into prisons 
to lead art education workshops, 
including creative writing, theater, 
painting and more. 
Today, PCAP has an expansive 
reach, with volunteers entering 
27 adult correctional facilities, 
several youth facilities, the Forensic 
Psychiatric Center and a public 
housing community each year. The 
program grew from Alexander’s 
determination to give incarcerated 
people the opportunity to learn, 
PCAP Associate Director Vanessa 
Mayesky said. 
“Buzz was really bringing up 
this issue and demanding that 
people talk about it and think about 
it, and really think about the people 

inside prisons as people, not as 
mere problems to be swept under 
the rug or perpetrators of crime,” 
Mayesky said. 
One of PCAP’s most notable 
programs is the Annual Exhibition 
of Art by Michigan Prisoners, 
which 
Janie 
and 
Alexander 
created in 1996. Ari said he vividly 
remembers his uncle driving to 
numerous prisons in Michigan over 
spring break to collect prisoners’ 
art. 
“Buzz would get in a pickup 
truck on his week off, and he would 
drive to correctional facilities all 
around Michigan, this huge state 
in the middle of February in the 
coldest darkest time of the year, 
when he could have very easily 
gone south to someplace warm, 
could kick back and relax,” Ari 
said. “He could have read books, 
he could have done anything. But 
this was his calling, and he sort of 
had this feeling that because these 
people are behind bars, if he didn’t 
do this, no one else would.”
Stephen Hartnett, editor of 
“Challenging the Prison-Industrial 
Complex: 
Activism, 
Arts 
and 
Educational 
Alternatives,” 
said 
people in the prison education field 

looked up to Buzz. 
“I think for most of us who 
worked with him, not only was he a 
mentor and a positive example, but 
he was really kind of like a spiritual 
example,” Hartnett said. “I mean, 
all of us wanted to be more like 
Buzz.”
Through PCAP and his classes, 
Alexander inspired thousands of 
students. Mayesky was one of those 
students, and said many alumni 
have been emailing about how 
Alexander forever changed their 
lives. 
“Many of us have been writing 
and talking about how Buzz 
changed the course of our lives, and 
how we would not be the people we 
are today or doing the work that we 
do if it weren’t for his teaching, if it 
weren’t for his example, if it weren’t 
for the questions he asked us,” 
Mayesky said. 
Sara 
Falls, 
a 
high 
school 
English teacher in California, took 
Alexander’s “What is Literature?” 
and “Theater and Social Change” 
classes at the University, the latter 
involving improvisational theater 
in prisons. Alexander’s readings 
and discussions on prison justice 
got her thinking more deeply about 
how the education system can 
create a pipeline to prison, 
eventually compelling her to 
become a teacher herself. 
“He started to get me to 
think about what it means to 
be a teacher,” Falls said. “This 
is my 20th year teaching, and 
I don’t think I’d be a teacher if 
it wasn’t for him. It’s my life’s 
work, and I feel deeply called 
to it, because it’s about finding 
the power in young people and 
helping them to use their voices 
and helping them feel powerful 
in themselves to make change.”
Melissa Palma, director of 
curriculum 
and 
instruction 
at Network Charter School 
in Oregon, became deeply 
involved 
with 
PCAP 
for 
six years while getting her 
teaching 
certificate 
at 
the 
University. She had taken a 
class with Alexander her senior 
year, where she said Alexander 
asked students to consider their 
place in a system with a prison-
industrial complex. Palma said 
though this was uncomfortable, 
it was important in pushing 
students to learn. 
“He would always make it 

go back to like, ‘What’s your part 
in this? What’s your place? How 
do you contribute to it or dismantle 
this?’” Palma said. “He was always 
asking us to personalize the 
political really, and it was really 
uncomfortable many times, and 
students would be upset or crying 
sometimes, but from, like, a very 
vulnerable and safe space.”
David 
Enders, 
a 
freelance 
journalist, said he recalled moments 
in Alexander’s class where students 
had powerful realizations about 
themselves and the privileges they 
had.
“I remember more students kind 
of having these ‘aha’ moments, 
in Buzz’s courses than, like, any 
other professor I had at Michigan,” 
Enders said. 
Alexander 
inspired 
Emily 
Harris, who works at the Ella 
Baker Center for Human Rights 
in California, to pursue a career in 
criminal justice and prison reform.
“PCAP and Buzz and his ability 
to see what I was capable of has 
pushed me to spend my life to get 
people free,” Harris said. “It’s really 
the most profound work, and I am 
so lucky that my path intersected 
with him and has given me a deep 
level of meaning.”
Alexander’s efforts weren’t only 
meant for student growth, however. 
Through his workshops, he uplifted 
thousands of Michigan prisoners. 
Danny Valentine, an artist who 
worked with Janie and Alexander 
while still in prison, said Alexander 
saved his life. 
When 
Alexander 
entered 
Valentine’s life, he was serving out 
a 30-year sentence and could not 
afford an attorney, Valentine said.
“I had made plans to kill myself,” 
Valentine said. “I was going to 
make my move when they called 
the evening meal. But they passed 
out mail right before evening chow. 
I got this letter from this guy called 
Buzz Alexander.”
Alexander wrote that he’d heard 
Valentine was an artist, and asked 
if he wanted to participate in an art 
show he was putting on. Valentine 
said he participated in the art show 
for 20 years, each year giving him 
an incentive to stay alive, as well 
as giving him an income. When 
he eventually got out of prison, 
Alexander brought him to his home 
and fed him blueberry pancakes. 

BUZZ
From Page 1

See BUZZ, Page 3

