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 Sudoku Syndication http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ 1 of 1 10/27/08 1:10 PM 4 8 9 6 9 5 2 5 7 1 3 5 4 1 8 9 7 8 5 4 2 7 9 4 6 8 7 5 © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only. Generate and solve Sudoku, Super Sudoku and Godoku puzzles at sudokusyndication.com! 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For personal use only. Generate and solve Sudoku, Super Sudoku and Godoku puzzles at sudokusyndication.com! PHLEGM puzzle by sudokusyndication.com Senior Video Editors: Ryan O’Connor, Joseph Sim Senior Social Media Editor: Allie Phillips 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