Quick update on action around Highlander Center. I got to visit on the day of their Homecoming celebration. It’s a stunning setting built atop rolling hills of eastern Tennessee, just east of Knoxville. Highlander is a venerable institution that has been in the work of social justice and popular education since the last Great Depression. A group of neighboring residents formed Jefferson County Tomorrow to organize against plans for an intermodal transport center that Norfolk Southern wants to site off of I-40 at New Market. The transport center would be built next to a school on farm/bog land. Jefferson County Tomorrow has many concerns including the state’s use of eminent domain, the air pollution from another 300,000 trucks to a place that already has some air quality problems, and the lack of transparency on the part of Jefferson County officials. Not only did the officials sign a non-disclosure agreement with Norfolk Southern, but they’re also failing to tell area residents where the access road may be located. One potential site would cut through Highlander Center property.
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