Month: February 2008

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Editor’s note: As a change of pace
from “Letters” this week, we’ve printed some responses to stories posted on
memphisflyer.com.

“Baby Blues” by Bianca Phillips (February 14th):

We fear what we don’t understand, and we can’t understand what we don’t know. This past weekend, I sat at a table of volunteers who gave their Saturday night to prepare a large mail-out for our local Humane Society. The gay couple at my table had put in a hard day’s work in their family’s business and had surely earned an evening of rest and recreation. Yet they came directly from work and devoted several hours to helping homeless animals. As I watched these fine young men work, it occurred to me what excellent parents and role models they would be for any child. I only wish my own father, a fundamentalist preacher, had been half as loving.

I don’t support gay rights because of my beliefs, but I would rather see children being taken care of by a loving couple — gay, straight, or whatever — than having them out on the street becoming criminals. … Being gay doesn’t mean that you are not capable of caring for a child or a loved one. Ask yourself this question: If you were trapped in a burning car, would you care if the firefighter who has the ability to free you was gay?

“Little G’s” by Tony Jones (February 21st):

Law enforcement officials, schools, and many of today’s parents have an incredible task on their hands. As a former classroom educator and coach, I can attest that the recruiting process in all aspects has increased to include younger people. The food, clothing, and sports industries research and market their products toward younger customers. It only makes sense that gang members are targeting younger kids, too. Regardless of where you are socioeconomically, it is only natural to seek the best in any situation. In short, law enforcement officials, schoolteachers, coaches, administrators, and parents want young people to be successful, but, unfortunately, gang members want the same thing.

“Herenton Chimes in on School Violence” by John Branston (February 13th)

Schools in Memphis are unsafe because Memphis is unsafe. How much longer will Memphians accept rampant crime? I hurt for my hometown. Memphis: where Detroit meets New Orleans.

Sara Lewis holding parenting classes? And how much of the taxpayers’ money will pay for that? What a joke. There are some reasons the city schools are having weekly shootings: A) kids being born to parents who don’t want them and don’t have the emotional and intellectual means to parent them; B) poverty caused by teen pregnancy (kids having kids causes never-ending poverty); C) easy access to guns (this town has a gun show almost every month); D) drugs. Until the people of Memphis can figure out how to keep single parenting from happening, this will continue. Kids with no fathers and part-time mothers will get into trouble and cause this city to continue its downward spiral. If you can’t be a responsible parent, don’t have a kid. Period.

“With Friends Like These … :
Cohen’s Advantage Over
Tinker?” by Jackson Baker (February 20th)

I guess this is just [the first of] many in a long line of setups enabling Cohen to play the victim role and draw connections that are tenuous at best. If someone in the public criticizes Cohen, why does Nikki Tinker need to come to his defense and disavow the criticism? Gray and Brooks are only problematic in that the media tries to draw some connection between them and Tinker’s campaign. If some nut comes out and claims that Cohen is from the planet Zambodia and is plotting with Prince Mongo to take over the world, would the Flyer ask, “Where is Nikki Tinker on the subject of space aliens taking over the world?”

Please ignore this mailer sent out by ignorant and morally questionable characters. Go out and vote. That is the best way to get back at them, while doing the right thing for our district. Congressman Cohen has done a great job representing ALL OF US! He will continue to do so in the next term.

“… Nikki Tinker doesn’t play those types of politics.” Nikki stepped in it right there. That statement, as ghetto as it sounds, shows she knew about the brouhaha but she was always unavailable. Weak. “Tinker Time” just hasn’t lived up to its hype. Might as well be naptime.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Still a Struggle

In front of an audience that included museum founders Chuck Scruggs and D’Army Bailey, the National Civil Rights Museum board of directors announced eight new board members at a meeting last week.

The board has been criticized for privileging corporate membership over community activists with experience in the civil rights movement. In November of last year, the state of Tennessee — the museum’s owner — included board membership guidelines in its new lease agreement with the museum board.

Under that agreement, the state mandated that 60 percent of board members be African-American and that the board represent a number of specific special interests. State representative Johnny Shaw from Hardeman County represents the state legislature; local director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Dorothy Crook represents labor; former Martin Luther King Jr. speechwriter Clarence Jones represents civil rights scholarship; while Urban Child Institute member Kenya Bradshaw, Southern Christian Leadership Conference president Dwight Montgomery, and Crichton College’s Darryl Tukufu represent civil rights and community activists. Additional new members include FedEx Express senior vice president Cathy Ross and pastor Gina Stewart.

Following the meeting, the board opened the floor for 20 minutes of public feedback, with two minutes per speaker. A number of civil rights foot soldiers came forward with prayers and calls to support the museum and its mission despite the outside criticism.

“I think it’s time for this city to come together,” said longtime local minister and former civil rights marcher Robert Harris, “with the same mind and the same goals. Until we do that, I don’t think anything will be accomplished.”

Former museum marketing director Judith Black added, “So much of the publicity about this place is negative. It’s hard to get the positive word out if you’re having to fight the negative.”

As the meeting adjourned, however, a protester approached the board members, shouting “This is class-ism.” Another local activist loudly attempted to address the departing members.

For a more complete version of this story, visit memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

British Invasion

Theatre Memphis’ current interpretation of Jane Austen’s seminal romance novel Pride and Prejudice exceeds three hours. That may be the most useful piece of information I can offer, because if devoting the best eighth of your day to a barrage of class- and gender-conscious barbs traded with restraint in a variety of picturesque settings sounds at all like a little slice of heaven, then the play will probably be a delightful experience. If it sounds like a hellish torture ingeniously conceived by your worst enemies, it’s probably that too. Either way, the acting ranges from adequate to excellent, and it’s really something to look at.

Multi-award-winning Bill Short has done some of his best work yet, turning Theatre Memphis’ tiny Next Stage into a magnificent ballroom illuminated by an antique chandelier. It’s a perfect marriage of elegance and practicality that should bring the set dresser yet another Ostrander nomination. Chris Swanson’s lighting design could be more adventurous, but it does a fine job illuminating a parade of detailed period costumes by Andre Bruce Ward, TM’s often astonishing resident designer.

From the famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice, Austen toys with her readers. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” It seems like the very essence of cloying chick-lit. But imagine those words spoken with complete conviction by Daily Show satirist Samantha Bee, and you’ll more easily glean the author’s meaning. Jon Jory, the writer and director most closely associated with the Actors Theatre of Louisville, doesn’t always know how to frame Austen’s wit, and his faithfully wordy adaptation slowly meanders from ill-defined situation to ill-defined situation with little sense of its own shape or purpose.

Director John Rone has assembled a largely first-rate cast that occasionally manages to tame the tasteful unruliness of Jory’s script. Jade Hobbs, recently excellent in TM’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is convincingly charismatic as Elizabeth Bennet, whose stormy love/hate relationship with Mr. Fitzworth Darcy (a handsome and able Steven Brown) is what’s kept Pride and Prejudice in heavy rotation for almost 200 years.

Jason Spitzer is transcendent in his cringe-inducing performance as Mr. Collins, a long-winded clergyman on the make. He’s easily the best thing in a production filled with very good things.

Through March 9th

There’s nothing wrong with the University of Memphis’ production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood that a wholesale transfer to another theater couldn’t fix. The U of M’s Main Stage (aka “Big Red”) is great for directors, because there’s virtually nothing you can’t do there. But it’s not particularly kind to patrons, who can feel very far from the action, especially when there’s an orchestra in the pit. That’s particularly troublesome for Drood, a show that requires total audience engagement.

Director Stephen Hancock and choreographer Jay Rapp have created an energetic and engaging take on Rupert Holmes’ music-hall ode to Charles Dickens. Rapp’s work is perhaps as scholarly, detailed, and complete as anything the celebrated Project: Motion dancer has ever done. David Nofsinger’s sets are beautiful to look at; Janice Lacek’s costumes border on the breathtaking. The orchestra is tight, and the cast is uniformly fine, with standout performances from Shaheerah Farrakhan (the Princess Puffer), Jared Graham (Clive), and Jason Lee Blank (Bazzard). And for all of this, Drood never quite springs off the stage — even when the actors literally come out into the audience and work the room.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is nothing if not a crowd-pleaser, and the U of M’s production aims to please in every way. Still, you want to feel like a part of this show. So for best results, request tickets that are close to the stage.

Through March 1st

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Local Record Reviews

More than 35 years after his debut, Memphis-bred songwriter Bob Frank delivers an official folk-song follow-up.

A product of the Memphis coffeehouse scene of the ’60s, which also helped mold such local music fixtures as Jim Dickinson and Sid Selvidge, singer-songwriter Bob Frank seemed to be on the verge of something big back in 1972, when venerable folk label Vanguard signed him and released his debut album, a collection of original songs titled simply Bob Frank. The label organized a showcase concert at New York’s storied Max’s Kansas City venue, but a stubborn, unsteady Frank defied his benefactors by refusing to perform songs from his album at the event.

After his first shot torpedoed, Frank stopped recording music for nearly 30 years.

He still wrote and occasionally performed, but he’d set aside any notion of a professional music career. That started to change earlier in this decade, when Frank began recording and self-releasing a series of new albums, often with the help of old Memphis friend Dickinson, who would go on to use Frank’s anthemic “Red Neck, Blue Collar” as the lead track of his 2006 album Jungle Jim and the Voodoo Tiger for the local label Memphis International.

With Frank’s reputation suddenly recharged, Memphis International came calling, and on February 19th, it presented the first label-released, widely distributed Bob Frank album since his Vanguard debut more than 35 years ago.

The album, itself called Red Neck, Blue Collar, culls original songs written over the course of Frank’s life, including a new version of “Judas Iscariot,” a jaunty talking blues about events preceding the crucifixion of Jesus, aka Judas’ “Gypsy sidekick,” which first appeared on Bob Frank.

Frank leads off the record with the title track, a steady, resigned, matter-of-fact reading that contrasts with Dickinson’s angry, sardonic version.

Depressing in its seeming timelessness, “Red Neck, Blue Collar” targets widening income gaps and wars that aren’t fought by the men who start them: “Put ’em on the front line/Let ’em take the hit/They’re strong on heart and long on grit,” Frank sings. “Tell ’em it’s for Mama/It’s all that is required/Let ’em be a dog/Walk straight into the fire.”

It’s a strong, unflinching song, but what really makes it work is that there’s nothing condescending or presumptuous about Frank’s “they.” His class-based animus is rooted in his own experience, something that comes across throughout Red Neck, Blue Collar.

“Monroe, Louisiana Pipeliner’s Brawl” is an autobiographical story song that mines Frank’s own stint working on a Mississippi gas pipeline. “One Big Family,” which contains the refrain “Why does their ass ride first class while I’m barely staying afloat?,” was written for a union rally.

But, for all his working-class anthems, Frank doesn’t come off as a predictable modern liberal. On “Pledge of Allegiance,” he baldly states, “If this is a Christian nation, we oughtta heed the words of Christ” en route to the admonishment, “What good is it to put God in the Pledge of Allegiance when you don’t have Jesus in your heart?”

Elsewhere on Red Neck, Blue Collar, Frank pays tribute to the Southern life he left roughly 40 years ago. “Canebrake,” with Dickinson’s sons Luther and Cody offering back-up, is a swampy tribute to Frank’s West Tennessee upbringing. “Holy Ground” is a slice of hillbilly gospel. “Little Ol’ Cabin Home” comes off as a tribute to rural Southern living.

Whether Red Neck, Blue Collar is a start to the next chapter in Frank’s circuitous music “career” remains to be seen. But even as bookend to this onetime Memphis hopeful’s aborted start, it’s welcome. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Well, it happened again. A Memphis police officer left her gun behind after using a Wal-Mart bathroom, where it was found by an employee. Last month, an officer left her weapon in a courthouse bathroom. What disturbs us about the Wal-Mart incident, however, is that the cop didn’t even notice her gun was missing until “it was brought to her attention.”

Greg Cravens

Now we know how the New England Patriots feel. Before a full house at FedExForum, the University of Memphis’ perfect season came to an end at the hands of the Tennessee Vols, who defeated the Tigers 66-62. With one minute left and a one-point lead, we thought we might win this one, but UT managed to pull out a victory. It was certainly one of the scrappiest games we’ve seen in a long time, and the blue-clad Tigers left the court feeling as blue as the fans.

Speaking of basketball, some people take their sports very, very seriously. The volunteer coach at St. Augustine School got upset when his basketball team was kept out of league competition when someone missed the sign-up deadline — by three months. So, this being America and all, he did what any coach would do: He sued the Parochial Athletic Association and the Catholic Diocese of Memphis, claiming the events “demoralized” his team, resulting in their 0-10 season. He’s demanding $50 million, which we think would go a long way toward boosting team morale, even if they never win — or even play — another game.

That old expression about every cloud having a silver lining may be true. The Shelby County Assessor’s Office says that people whose homes were damaged by the recent tornadoes will have their property taxes lowered. Since some homes stripped of roofs and walls were considerably “devalued” by the storms, that policy makes sense.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Burning Love

From the AP: “Make-Believe Elvis Free on Bail for Made-Up Fire Story.” According to the Tampa Tribune, friends of Elvis wannabe Frederick Denmark collected clothes, appliances, and more than $2,000 in cash after Denmark told them his house had burned down.

“Sadly,” according to the Tribune, “as Presley himself crooned, ‘that was just a lie,’ and now the Good Samaritans are saying Denmark ‘ain’t no friend’ of theirs.”

The fire, like the Elvis, was fake. Sadder still, the Tribune‘s quirky “hound dog” allusions were real.

9 to 5 (thirty)

Last Thursday, West Memphis leaders reviewed an ordinance requiring all real-looking toy guns to have an orange tip and restricting the use of orange-tipped guns to the hours between 9 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. The ban, prompted by last year’s accidental shooting of 12-year-old DeAunta Farrow, is being considered to keep adults with real guns from drawing down on children with toy guns and shooting the seemingly dangerous tykes in self-defense. The ordinance would also ban toy knives in the school district but would not impact real guns with orange tips or the toy IEDs that have become popular among patriotic children playing cowboys and suicide bombers.

Golden Years

Nashville Scene recently quoted a representative from National Healthcare ($500 million in profits in 2006) who suggested that without caps on lawsuits more Tennessee nursing homes might close. In other words, a profitable industry is suggesting that costly lawsuits over patient abuse and neglect may be responsible for the abuse and neglect. Besides, those maggots found in the wound of a Memphis patient were actually eating dangerous bacteria. And a lawyer probably put them there. So there.

Categories
News News Feature

Grizzlies Sale?

The Grizzlies were losing to the Dallas Mavericks last week. While Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey and a senior-citizen dance team entertained the crowd during timeouts, a fan in the third row got some cheers when he held up a sign that read, “Sell The Team.”

With a 14-42 record, a five-game losing streak, and a no-name lineup, the Grizzlies aren’t packing FedExForum or making money. Some of the blame is falling on majority owner Michael Heisley, who has made it clear he would sell his share at the right price.

Sell the team? Only Heisley knows. But when the Grizzlies left Vancouver for Memphis in 2001, the possibility that the team would be sold and might leave Memphis someday was not idle speculation. It was discussed at length by all parties because one of the conditions of moving the team here was building a $230 million FedExForum.

A contract was signed by representatives of the Grizzlies (HOOPS, Inc.), the city, and the county. There are provisions for a “shortfall season,” “suite shortfall,” “worst-case scenarios,” “haircuts” (a real estate term for disappointing financial results), “early termination payment,” and “right of first refusal.” The history of professional sports is littered with franchises that abandoned their homes and fans, and Tennessee has landed not only the Grizzlies but Nashville’s NFL Titans (from Houston, via Memphis) as well.

Heisley could sell his share to the local minority owners or an outsider. The local owners would obviously keep the team in Memphis. That might satisfy the fan with the “sell” sign. If a new majority owner wanted to move the team, the contract restrictions would come into play. The relevant section reads as follows:

“During the first 17 NBA full seasons of the initial term, HOOPS shall not relocate the franchise from the city of Memphis, not apply to the NBA to transfer the franchise to another location outside the city of Memphis, [and] have no right to terminate this operating agreement or cease using the arena complex.”

If HOOPS negotiates “with a third party to sell the franchise in whole that includes relocating the franchise,” then the city and county, after being presented with an acceptable offer, have the right of first refusal.

“After exercising its right of first refusal, city/county shall have the right to designate a nominee to complete the acquisition of the franchise, provided that such nominee commits to cause the franchise to continue to play all of its regular season and playoff home games in the arena complex for the remainder of the term.”

That’s what the contract says, but the talk of a sale and relocation is not likely to go away if the team continues to do so poorly on the floor and at the gate next year. The Grizzlies are averaging 12,878 in attendance, second worst in the league and well below the projected 14,900 that was the basis for the arena financing plans. Attendance is dangerously close to the five “worst-case scenarios” used as benchmarks in the contract. The ugly five range from the 1997-98 Los Angeles Clippers (9,968 per game) to the 1999-2000 Golden State Warriors (12,418 per game) to the 2001-02 Charlotte Hornets (11,476 per game). In each case, attendance rebounded to 14,000 or better in a new building. The Grizzlies, of course, are already in a new building.

The “limits on termination” include average attendance falling below 14,900 after the eighth season, including 70 suites and 2,500 club seats. In that case, “the private sector and/or the community of Memphis and Shelby County shall have the right prior to such early termination becoming effective to purchase the required number of suites and season tickets to achieve the ticket sales standard.”

The contract says the termination payment would be $107 million in 2008, $74.6 million in 2018, and $8.4 million in 2027. A $107 million termination payout would cover some but not all of the debt on FedExForum, but the damage to Memphis would be intangible.

Again, quoting from the contract: “The provisions governing the exercise of HOOPS early termination right are unique and absolutely necessary to protect the business and good will of city/county and a material breach of such provisions will absolutely, irreparably, and continually harm city/county, for which money damages may not be adequate or determinable.”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Hillary and the Teflon Opponent

I’m writing this on the day of what will probably be the final debate between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I don’t know how Tuesday’s tussle will play out, and there are a couple of people on the Flyer staff who are better qualified to offer political analysis, but I know what I saw in the last debate — and in the week since — and it doesn’t look good for Clinton.

In her opening statement last week, Clinton said “I” about 60 times. Obama said it five or six times. He mostly said “we.” Obama kept his responses to Clinton’s verbal jabs — accusing him of plagiarism, of offering empty rhetoric, etc. — measured and civil. Clinton tried an obviously preconceived (plagiarized?) bon mot, “That’s change you can Xerox,” to poor effect. (When’s the last time you heard anyone in your office use Xerox as a verb?)

By the end of the debate, Clinton seemed to get it: The audience didn’t want cheap shots. So she closed with a warm smile and gushed that she was “so honored to be on this stage tonight with Barack Obama,” adding that the important thing was that they both do what’s right for the American people. A standing ovation ensued, followed by plaudits for Clinton’s graciousness from the network pundits.

So it seemed odd to me to see Clinton go on the attack the next day, literally shouting, “SHAME ON YOU, BARACK OBAMA,” in response to a flier criticizing her health-care plan. It got even stranger the following day, as Clinton tried the sarcasm route, implying that stupified Obama supporters think “the sky will open, the light will come down” when he speaks. Then the Clinton campaign released a photo to the Drudge Report of Obama in Somalian dress. I read that Clinton had been urged to “throw the kitchen sink at Obama” by her advisers.

These are the actions of a candidate in trouble. They reek of desperation. And the more erratic her strategy appears, the more presidential her opponent looks by default. Obama’s the new Reagan in one regard: He’s Teflon-coated at this point. I don’t have the best record when it comes to predictions, but here’s one, anyway: Hillary is toast.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The Big Game

It came and went — the hurricane that was the UT vs. University of Memphis basketball game last Saturday night. Like the windstorms and hard rains and tornadoes that preceded it in recent years, this latest freak of Memphis history left its residue behind, but, unlike those other prodigious occurrences, the after-effects of the Big Game were entirely positive, consisting of economic benefit, enhanced pride, and good PR. For a change, the word “Memphis,” as a signifier both of the game’s venue and one of its contestants, was without negative connotation. Or almost so: Regrettably, at least one national pundit reportedly waxed cynical at the expense of the spirited ballers wearing Tiger blue.

Tiger blue: There was a veritable tide of it in FedExForum Saturday night, as there has been for most of this season’s Tiger games. That act speaks to the grave disappointment felt by so many when the game ended with the orange-clad Vols from Knoxville ahead by a scant four points. But the Vols had their local supporters, too — a legion of them, in fact. And why shouldn’t they, given the fact of so many prominent and loyal UT alumni here? And many more, fans of the Tigers and the Volunteers, came from elsewhere in the state and beyond just to be part of the event.

It’s over now, but the partisans of both teams and both universities can take pride in a game that was hotly and honestly contested and that proved to be one of the all-time sports thrillers. And who knows? With the NCAA tournament just around the corner, and with both teams destined for top seeds, maybe there’ll be a rematch. Maybe one for all the marbles, in fact.

Billy “Spook” Murphy

A sad preamble to Saturday’s spectacle at FedExForum was the news two days earlier of the death of former University of Memphis football coach Billy “Spook” Murphy. Murphy, who died at age 87, did as much as any other individual to launch the athletic programs of the University of Memphis toward competitiveness at the highest levels.

Murphy’s near-win in 1960 over an Ole Miss football team then ranked number one in the nation was one of the two major preambles to the Tigers’ on-again, off-again flirtations with excellence. (The other early peak was the second-place finish by the basketball Tigers in the 1957 NIT tourney.)

As has been documented many times, it was Spook Murphy who became something of a scourge to the mighty Southeastern Conference, turning the formerly weak-sister Tigers into a true rival to that conference’s powerhouses and beating several of them over the years — including Ole Miss in years when the Rebels were still a football colossus. Considering the outcome of Saturday night’s cage encounter at FedExForum, it is satisfying to remember, too, that Murphy had been present at pre-game practices and at the Liberty Bowl for the Tigers’ incredible 21-17 victory over the Peyton Manning-led Volunteers in 1996.

He will be missed — and fondly remembered.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Learning To Work

CREDIT: Crystal Kirk | dreamstime.com

Under a new proposal, the city’s summer youth job program may be more equally divided between education and employment.

Last week, the City Council’s Public Services and Neighborhoods committee discussed hiring

practices for the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program. Students ages 14 to 21 are eligible, but under a previous council decision, 80 percent of those hired have to be between the ages of 16 and 21.

But councilman and teacher Bill Morrison proposed changing the ratio of hires to more accurately reflect the program’s applicants.

“We have more 14- and 15-year-olds applying. To cap it at 20 percent isn’t fair,” Morrison said.

Of the applicants for this summer’s program, 45 percent of them are students ages 14 and 15.

Because of labor laws, “sometimes it’s more difficult for 14- and 15-year-olds to find legitimate things to do,” said youth services and community affairs head Sara Lewis. “What we want to do — based on the data we have and the pool of students who applied — is hire students based on that percentage.”

Lewis also noted that by the time students are selected for the program, many of the 16- to 21-year-olds have already found other employment on their own.

However, 14- and 15-year-olds hired by the city are placed in a career exploration program through Memphis City Schools and paid $6 an hour for 20 hours a week. Older students are assigned to worksites throughout the city and paid $6.85 an hour for 30 hours a week.

Longtime councilmember Barbara Swearengen Ware said the 20 percent hiring stipulation was meant to direct money to student workers and not staff.

“To say let’s take the bulk of the jobs and pay somebody $25 an hour to give them some skills and pay students $6 to receive it, that’s just not good math to me,” she said. “Think about how many jobs that would be for 16- to 21-year-olds. I don’t think this council can take money that’s designated to help students and do anything other than help students.”

But others argued that the extra training would benefit students.

Lewis said they were trying to address what she called a “pipeline” issue, with students not having the training to work for the companies involved in the program.

One major corporation needed 20 employees. It was told it could get 20 employees. [Four] showed up, and two of those four failed,” she said. “The youngsters have to be taught work-readiness skills. They do not have them.”

Morrison and Lewis said the proposed change would be a step toward a long-term solution. In addition to being a teacher, Morrison has a background in human resources.

“The biggest complaint from people in HR is that young people just don’t have the basic skills. They don’t know what to wear; they don’t know what a resume should look like; they don’t know what questions to ask during a job interview. We need to get them ready,” he said.

He sees the proposed shift as a way to make the program more successful. “I think 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds should already have the skills to get their own jobs,” he said.

As for the younger students, “This is their job, to be students,” he said. “The teachers who do this get $25 an hour, but that investment will pay off for students in the long run. They’ll be able to find a higher-paying job, not just something entry-level.”

The full council is expected to review the change March 4th.

The timing — though Morrison hints that this is just the first change he’d like to see in the program — is appropriate, as recent school shootings have focused the community’s attention on youth violence.

“The most dangerous group we have is our youth,” said Councilman Joe Brown, expressing his support for the change. “We’ve got to keep them from being American gangsters.”

When it comes to urban issues, it is often said that poverty is the problem; education is the answer. The summer youth program, whatever faults it may have, seeks to answer both these charges, giving students both money and knowledge.

“Gangs are recruiting 14- and 15-year-olds. If you don’t show them another option, someone else will,” Morrison said. “We’re in a battle.”