Month: November 2011

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Occupying Memphis

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

I write from inside a cold, snug tent with the rattle of the Main Street trolley, yards away, for a nighttime serenade. Winding down my night with the Occupy Memphis protesters, I try to answer three questions:

1) Why camp? We live in a country where the top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent and the top 10 percent more wealth than the bottom 90. Specifically, we live in the poorest large city of said country, a city with one of the widest gaps between rich and poor.

This situation was not some random accident but the result of policies that persisted despite their known consequences.

We let deregulated financial elites speculate the world economy to ruin. We then bailed them out without requiring them to repair the harm their unchecked greed caused and had the nerve to blame “irresponsible” middle-class home borrowers.

We resisted all attempts to make our tax system more progressive. In the midst of a narrowly averted second Depression, when jobs should have been Job One and stimulative spending our laser focus, we became fixated on ways to cut spending so as to trim the deficit and almost defaulted on our debts in the process.

Then a bunch of people in tents, first in Manhattan, then around the world, changed the conversation and forced us to look at the real issues.

Why wouldn’t I camp?

2) What are “they” like? As the name “the 99 percent” might suggest, they — we — are a diverse lot. Young and old, black and white, unemployed and busy professionals.

They include Jack Armstrong, a large, sardonic 40-something restaurant-industry consultant to whom the Occupy Memphis site between City Hall and the county building “feels like home now” after a month in residence. And Dana Wilson, an earnest 20-something youth education coordinator at Bridges who appears regularly but, because of her dog, sleeps at home “so far.”

My favorite bio is that of Tony Newton, a mortgage-investment lawyer and Occupy camper, who describes his political evolution as going “from Goldwater boy to anarchist” and who favors nationalizing the banks and the Federal Reserve.

They are organized. James Mack, a calm, even-tempered, displaced warehouse worker, coordinates PR. Leroy Crawford, a former songwriter, is part of the “peacekeeper” team, charged with security, who take regular classes in nonviolent conflict resolution.

Regular meetings of the “process” team fine-tune such minutiae as how to maximize use of the hand signals used at the “general assembly” meetings to further their culture of consensus decision-making.

“This is a community,” as Jack (first names are de rigueur here) put it simply the night I was there. He’s right. It’s an experimental community, and so far it’s working.

And they are committed. Committed enough to sleep on blanket-strewn wooden pallets indefinitely through freezing rain and violent thunderstorms, as they did the night before I arrived. Committed enough to drive nonstop to Washington, D.C., to join protests there in the expectation of getting arrested, as several did the night I was there.

In short, they’re not how they’ve been caricatured. As occupier Patrick Buttram, an adjunct University of Memphis professor, put it, “First they said we were hippies and stoners. Then they said we were anarchists and communists. Then they said we were dirty or violent. They’ll keep trying till something sticks.”

3) What do “they” want? Many have asked this question, because the occupiers don’t have five-point plans and faxed talking points. But it takes no clairvoyance to figure it out. They want to bring the fat cats who made the mess to justice and to convert those ill-gotten gains into help for the poor. They point to publicly owned buildings that lie vacant when they could be used to house the homeless and to unlimited corporate campaign spending.

Ask any three of them for solutions and you’ll get four answers, but it’s not hard to put together a list of likely candidates: Tougher regulation of the financial sector. Higher taxes on the wealthy. More spending on the poor. Reducing corporate influence over politics, our economy, and our culture.

Most of all, they want everyone to care about these issues the way they care. “I’m here 24 hours,” said Jared, the tent-erector, peacekeeper, and all purpose fixer of the site. “if we don’t win this time, the fascists take over.”

A little apocalyptic for my taste, I’ll admit. But I wish his sense of urgency on all of you.

Why did I camp? That’s the wrong question. The question you should be asking is, why haven’t you?

Steve Mulroy is a University of Memphis law professor and a Shelby County commissioner.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Parlor Game

CREDIT: Danziger

Allegedly one of the big-time Nazis during the coming-to-power of the Third Reich said, “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my revolver.” Notwithstanding the fact that the quote does in fact illuminate some of the mind-set of that infamous regime, it is a little too pat and probably, therefore, apocryphal.

Even so, the statement became the basis, a few years back, for a fill-in-the-blank parlor game in which one was invited to substitute for the word “culture” whatever other term got the dander up. And since the word “revolver,” after all, connotes a sense of violence we’d just as soon do without, different terms were invited for that one, too, along with such other editing as proved necessary. As in: “Whenever I see the word ‘finalize,’ I reach for my white-out.”

We now live in an age in which an entire political party (yes, the Grand Old one) has begun using the term “job creators” for instances that formerly were served by perfectly good, well-established terms. And a major problem is that the people and groups so described — usually to justify cutting their tax bills — have created few or no jobs in at least a decade, unless you count some that were taken overseas. All this while the people in the “job creator” groups received an unprecedented number of tax cuts and tax breaks.

So, here goes: “Whenever we hear the term ‘job creators,’ we reach for a thesaurus” — where we find such better descriptors as “bosses,” “rich  people,” “corporations,” “owners,” “the privileged 1 percent,” and “plutocrats,” among other terms.

A little truth in packaging, please.

Animalhood 

“You can’t legislate morality,” said Shelby County commissioner Terry Roland last week, speaking in opposition to a proposal by the apparently indefatigable Steve Mulroy for a strict county ordinance against the mistreatment of animals.

That some such action is necessary is demonstrated by the fact, as indicated by this week’s Flyer article “Basic Needs,” of some 4,000 cases of animal neglect and cruelty that have been brought before the county’s Environmental Court over the last three years. And regrettably few of the cases have been brought to any kind of full resolution because, as Cindy Sanders of Community Action for Animals stated to the commission, there are no laws specific enough to enforce against these improper actions.

To quote from the article by Bianca Phillips, “The ordinance requires pet owners to feed and provide fresh water for their animals daily, provide them relief from extreme temperatures, pick up pet waste, and groom animals to avoid health risks.”

That such modest common-sense requirements should become controversial is peculiar in itself. And as for the notion that morality cannot be “legislated,” we have pointed out before the obvious fact that most legislation does just that, setting bounds on what is proper conduct — which is to say, “moral” — in an organized society.

“Personhood,” a term employed in some recent would-be morality legislation in Mississippi, proved to be ambiguous as defined. “Animalhood” is easier to describe; it usually walks on four legs and sometimes wags its tail, if treated right.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Backlashing

CREDIT: ©-Yudesign | Dreamstime.com

As previously noted, mid-January — specifically, January 16th, according to Bartlett mayor Keith McDonald — is the deadline for Southern Educational Strategies, a consulting group that has contracted with all six suburban Shelby County municipalities to report to them on the prospects for their forming separate school districts, as permitted by a key provision of the legislature’s Norris-Todd bill.

At a town meeting in Bartlett on November 14th, McDonald reasserted his support for his city to hold a referendum on a separate Bartlett system to be established when merger between Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools occurs in September 2013. “In politics you have to be careful on which sword you are willing to die on. I’m willing to die on this one,” said McDonald, a member of the 21-member merger Planning Commission established by Norris-Todd.

Interestingly, however, a different sort of resolve was issuing from the man who had been the leading figure in the suburbs’ push for special-school-district status in the decade or so leading up to the school-merger developments of the last year.

On November 15th, at a town meeting in Germantown, former SCS chairman David Pickler, now simultaneously a member of the Planning Commission and the interim all-county school board, expressed his support of a merger plan involving “sub-districts” — or, as others normally describe it, a “chancery” model allowing degrees of autonomy within a unified umbrella district. “However we do it,” Pickler said, “we’ve got to do it right. Failure is not an option.”

That came after a statement the week before from former Shelby County commissioner Joyce Avery, also member of the Planning Commission, and a resident of suburban Arlington, that she would support a unified district without insisting on a chancery model.

The statements by Pickler and Avery were signs of what could be seen as a backlash in the suburbs against a separatist movement, simultaneous with that movement’s picking up steam.

One of the major issues for the outer municipalities to consider, along with that of the additional taxation that would be imposed on their residents, is the cost of acquiring the school buildings and other brick-and-mortar infrastructure of their existing facilities.

McDonald, among others, is strongly of the belief that those acquisition costs are manageable, if they exist at all. And Shelby County commissioner Heidi Shafer — who, like Pickler and Avery, favors a school system incorporating the entire county — said in an interview recorded for this week’s edition of the WKNO television program Behind the Headlines that she was convinced that most of the suburban municipalities would attempt to aggregate themselves in a separate school district.

Elaborating later, she said they were likely to attempt some version of eminent domain as a means of claiming the school properties for themselves.

Even so, uncertainty currently reigns among all those charged with handling the complicated issues of the merger. And there was frustration with the open-ended nature of the legislation imposed on the process by the General Assembly.

At the November 17th meeting of the Planning Commission, during a discussion on whether a lawyer should be hired to guide the commission through the complexities of the process, Chairman Barbara Prescott said, “Did Norris-Todd [sic] have any idea what they were doing to us?”



• State senator Jim Kyle of Memphis, the Democrats’ Senate leader whose legislative seat is almost certainly earmarked by the dominant Republicans in Nashville for a serious redistricting, has decided to stay the course there, anyhow.

Late last week, Kyle announced that he would not run next year as a Democratic candidate for district attorney general, thereby saying no to what had the makings of a legitimate draft effort among local Democrats seeking an opponent for incumbent District Attorney General Amy Weirich, who will run as a Republican.

Kyle will, however, run for reelection to the state Senate next year, braving whatever contours his northern Shelby County districts will end up having. Kyle’s announcement of noncandidacy for district attorney general was in epistolary form to media and potential supporters and said in part:

“As you are likely aware, my law partner suddenly passed away earlier this year. Aside from the unexpected loss of a good and dear friend, his passing meant that the future of the business we had spent years building was in question. At that time, I told my lawyers, staff, and clients that if they stuck with me, we would continue to move forward. They did, and we have. It would be unfair of me to tell them six months later that I was leaving the practice that I had promised to keep together. I have always tried to do the right thing, and I know that this is the right decision for both my family and the people close to me.”

Kyle’s announcement leaves local Democrats still looking for a candidate to run against Weirich, who numbers several prominent Democrats among her backers. Another Democratic prospect who has acknowledged considering a race for district attorney is former state representative and city councilwoman Carol Chumney.

Meanwhile, Weirich filed her election petition on Tuesday, and her campaign announced fund-raising receipts of $150,000.

Next year’s election for district attorney is necessitated by the fact that Weirich, an appointee of Governor Bill Haslam, is filling out the term vacated by her former boss, current state safety and Homeland Security director Bill Gibbons. The filing deadline for next year’s county races is only two weeks away, on Thursday, December 8th.


• Most county races — including those for mayor and Shelby County Commission posts — will take place in 2014, at which time a new district map will be in effect.

On November 14th, the commission approved on first reading a plan, designated 1-E, which would divide Shelby County into six dual-member districts and one single-member district. The plan garnered 10 votes from those present, with one abstention, and one “no” vote. The latter came from Commissioner Steve Mulroy, who is holding out for a plan that would feature 13 single-member districts.

Mulroy’s reasoning is that multimember districts support what he considers an “incumbency-protection” system, in which the larger expanses of a district would make it more difficult for newcomers to gain election. He also believes that a single-member system would best jibe with the probable creation, ultimately, of a 13-member system for elected county school-board members.

Whatever plan becomes final must pass by a two-thirds vote of the commission on third reading before December 31st.



• Speaking of backlashes: What began some weeks ago as a whisper in Republican Party and county commission circles is now acquiring considerable volume: This concerns the likelihood that Commissioner Terry Roland of Millington will have well-financed primary opposition in 2014.

The outspoken Roland has famously made himself the bête noire of the commission’s Democrats with public attacks on their actions and motives. More privately, reservations about Roland have developed among his GOP mates on the commission, several of whom have been heard to grumble and sometimes complain publicly about a variety of matters. These range from allegedly broken pledges of support by Roland for their initiatives, to his improperly claiming credit for such matters as the redistricting plans to a general concern about the Millington commissioner’s uninhibited behavior.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Occupy Winter

CREDIT: Andrew Caldwell

“I’m not usually this fat,” said Occupy Memphis member Jack Armstrong, pointing to his multiple layers of clothing.

Over a month into their occupation of Civic Center Plaza, Occupy Memphis is preparing for the holidays and cold weather. The group has gotten a decent amount of financial support from individual donors, which, along with donated food items, clothing, and tents, has helped keep campers warm and fed.

“We are going to be getting a generator and some space heaters,” Armstrong said. “We’ve set up a tent city with all these tents in the front to buffer the wind coming off of the river, and we’re bundling up with lots of layers.”

After city officials banned the group from plugging into light poles for electricity, they’ve turned to U.S. Marine-issued batteries to power electronics, such as space heaters, cell phones, and laptops.

Despite cooling temperatures, spirits seemed high at the Occupy Memphis camp last week. Protesters scattered throughout the campsite played guitars, spoke to curious passersby, and prepared for an early Thanksgiving dinner.

“We’re going to be doing Thanksgiving here on Saturday,” Armstrong said. “We’ll cook a turkey dinner offsite and bring it here. If we cook here, we’ll have to go through the health department.

“And it’ll probably be pretty similar for Christmas,” Armstrong continued. “For New Year’s, we’ll be swinging from the chandeliers and having a good ole time out here. But drinking and drugs aren’t allowed so it’ll have to be fairly tame.”

Numbers have been growing steadily, according to Armstrong. He said around 50 people sleep onsite during the week and up to 115 on weekends.

“Most of the time, we’ll have around 45 people actually staying here and the rest will come and go,” Armstrong said.

“It’s addictive,” said Armstrong, when asked why he chooses to camp onsite. “I have to leave during the day for work, but when I’m off work, I’m back down here. I stay most nights. I’ve been here since October 15th, and [I’ve come to love] the camaraderie. They’re family.”

The Occupy Memphis group plans to remain at Civic Center Plaza indefinitely, which could mean camping straight through the winter. The Memphis Police Department and the city of Memphis have agreed to allow the protesters to stay, so long as they remain peaceful.

Armstrong, who plans to stay as long as the camp is intact, said there’s plenty going on at the Occupy camp to keep his mind off the cold weather.

The occupiers have developed a daily schedule, and while most of the day is spent kicking back, holding meetings, and talking to people who stop by the campsite for more information, some of the members march to the Bank of America every day at 3 p.m. to protest.

“Nothing is ever the same,” Armstrong said. “I’m always learning new things. I’m watching people work together at the [general assemblies], where you get to see civics going on. We’re writing proposals. We’re passing them. It’s really cool watching that interaction. Everyone should come down here and spend a day. What you see on TV, it’s nothing like that.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

About “The Letter” and rapper Don Trip’s rise to stardom:

“Unfortunately, one minor aspect of Mr. Trip’s rags-to-riches story is a stark and disturbing testament to a problem in our society that some chose to minimize or ignore completely. Selling illegal drugs on the streets while waiting for your rap career to take off has become analogous to aspiring actors waiting tables while seeking their breakout role.”

— Bakeman90

About “Occupy Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium”:

“I still think we could plug up all the holes, fill it with water, and stock it with bass.”
— jeff

About “Still Perkin'” and the Tea Party movement:

“The SCS was never the great school system that people claimed, and conversely MCS did have some great programs and some positive outcomes. There is no reason that the best of both systems could not be used to build a solid base for a new and better system.”

— mad_merc

About “Marshall 23, Tigers 22”:

“If we convert to hockey we would have a winning season since we are ahead after three quarters but not after four.”

— Jay Willis

Comment of the Week:

About “Rotary Club Study Points to Big Problems at Animal Shelter”:

“Stop hiring thugs and felons to care for lost dogs and cats. If you hire people who make a living from stealing from others, and people who abuse humans for fun, how then are we to expect anything different when they are put in charge of the care of animals?”

— hauntedmemphis

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Your One Wild and Precious Life

CREDIT: © Marek Uliasz | Dreamstime.com

E.L. Doctorow wrote, “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Doctorow’s metaphor works pretty well as a blueprint for living: Stay focused on the journey — the road we can see ahead.

It’s easy to spend our time worrying about the future, regretting the past, diverting ourselves from what’s directly in front of us. And too often what’s directly in front of us is a computer screen or a television, the ultimate diversions.

There are petunias and impatiens and roses blooming in my yard during Thanksgiving week for the first time in my memory. I joke with a friend that it’s a result of global warming. And maybe it is. But they are beautiful and in my “headlights” and I’m thankful to have them to look at for as long as they can survive.

I am thankful there are people in our midst like those at the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center, who devote long hours for little pay to help the poor and powerless. I’m thankful that there seem to be more and more people — including many of the wealthy — who realize that simply accumulating money is a meaningless way to live and that those whose sole life purpose is avarice are not holy men to be emulated and protected.

I’m even thankful for the Republican debates, the never-ending “Dancing With the Clowns” show that’s demonstrating week after week the shallowness at the core of most of the candidates — the exceptions being Ron Paul, who seems at least sincerely committed to something, and Jon Huntsman, who seems the least interested in joining the absurd pandering to the groundlings.

And I am thankful for the gift of being able to pay attention. The poet Mary Oliver reminds us, “such beauty as the earth offers must hold great meaning.” And she is right. From “The Summer Day”:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters To The Editor

A Serious MATA

Finally! As a regular customer of Memphis’ extremely flawed public transportation system, I was thrilled to read that MATA is undertaking a complete do-over of its routes and will begin utilizing GPS (“What’s the MATA?,” November 17th issue). Welcome to the 21st century, people!

But the most important quote in the article was from MATA’s Tom Fox, who said, “Drivers will be held accountable if they are early or late.” It’s about time, literally. I’m so tired of finding out I’ve “missed” a bus that came by 10 minutes early.

Angela Farmer

Memphis

Effective Teachers

Mike Carpenter (Viewpoint, November 10th issue) is giving out the information that a lot of public school teachers have heard so much of over the last several years. It is true that effective teachers make a difference in the classroom. The fact is that the Memphis City Schools are full of many really effective teachers. They are making a difference in their schools. If they were not effective, the achievement of the students attending Memphis City Schools would be a whole lot lower than it is right now.

Our teachers are making a difference in the classroom. Let’s support our teachers, our students, and our parents to help them make better lives for themselves as they prepare for the journey of their lives.

Andrew Proctor

Somerville, Tennessee

Flouting Regulations

Again and again, large banks flouted banking regulations while paying only small fines for playing high-stakes poker with our money. Nothing has changed. They are still doing it!

What the banks are doing is often illegal and almost always morally wrong. We can send them a message. Cancel your credit card. Move your money to a local credit union. Keep those dollars in Memphis. One small act of defiance against the powerful, when repeated a million times, will create the world we all want to live in.

Bill Stegall

Memphis

Send in the Clowns

That a significant portion of the American people would give even passing consideration to the current field of Republican presidential candidates is as severe an indictment of our education system as could possibly exist.

Apparently, the GOP took Stephen Sondheim literally and, in fact, sent in the clowns! Too bad they can’t “pray away” the wacky!

Jay Sheffield

Germantown

Wrecked

In response to Louis Goggans’ article (“Broken Promise,” November 10th issue), I feel that what the city of Memphis is doing to the former wrecker service employees is very unfair, because only some of the workers were relocated to other jobs while the rest were forgotten.

The city promised all of the workers would be relocated to other jobs within the city, but they failed to make good on their promise. Because of that, their families are going hungry and suffering in tough economic times. Some might even risk losing their homes and other assets. The city claims to want to promote new jobs, but obviously they cannot even relocate a small amount of their own workers within the public sector. “A City in Motion” won’t go very far on broken promises.

Brandon Lutts

Memphis

The Pits

A review of Tennessee state and city symbols will reveal that we honor mockingbirds, irises, and the tulip poplar, among many others. Can consideration be given to making the pit bull the symbol for Memphis?

It’s an animal with a questionable reputation that many believe to be unwarranted. It offers a friendly disposition to those who know the breed — a no-fuss dog with the tenacity to do well in often difficult situations. And it’s dearly loved by its owner. Sounds like Memphis to me.

Ted Norman

Memphis

Trikes

I want to thank Bianca Phillips for the article “Tricycle Travel” (November 3rd issue). As a Memphian, I was unaware that there was now an alternative method to enjoy getting around downtown — and without increasing pollution.

Memphis needs more entrepreneurs who are willing to risk their capital to make a better city and help the environment. This idea — brought from bigger cities — will also help create job opportunities.

Gabriela Quiroz

Memphis

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on The Wall

Avenue Cue

An impatient Washington Post food blogger had a smoky bone to pick with Chris George, the tight-lipped owner of Memphis Barbecue, a soon-to-be-opened rib joint in Crystal City, Virginia. When George, a veteran of various D.C.-area eateries, refused to talk at length about his secret rubs and down-home recipes, the blogger had this to say: “[George] did allow that he will serve wet and dry ribs, which, this being a Memphis-style barbecue restaurant, is a little like the owner of a burger joint saying he will sell burgers.” Snap.

Verbatim

According to an article in USA Today, the young whippersnappers of Occupy Memphis and their cranky-old-man counterparts in the Tea Party saw “eye-to-eye on some issues and clashed on others” at a recent summit. On one hand, both sides agreed that government is unresponsive to voters. On the other, “GET OFF MY LAWN!” Twenty-one-year-old Occupy Memphis speaker Tristan Tran described the meeting as “constructive,” while 68-year-old Tea Partier Pete Dresser said it confirmed his belief that Occupy Memphis is “a ramshackle movement that is not organized.”

Neverending Elvis

Jalopnik.com, a website featuring “daily automobile news and gossip for those obsessed with the cult of cars,” recently featured a bright-yellow 1971 De Tomaso Pantera that Elvis Presley purchased for his girlfriend/Hee Haw honey, Linda Thompson. Blogger Matt Hardigree admired the Pantera’s sleek European profile and its muscular 351 Ford Cleveland V8, but most of all he was impressed by a series of bullet holes that, according to Tom Kenny, collections manager for the Petersen Automotive Museum, where the car is on display, were the result of the Pantera’s failure to start. Jalopnik’s conclusion: “You don’t show up the king, even if you’re made of metal.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Basic Needs

If a pet owner in unincorporated Shelby County doesn’t feed or water his dog every day, he might not be guilty of any crime.

Shelby County commissioner Steve Mulroy hopes to change that with an animal care ordinance aimed at residents living outside city or municipality limits. But he’s hitting roadblocks with other county commissioners.

The ordinance requires pet owners to feed and provide fresh water for their animals daily, provide them relief from extreme temperatures, pick up pet waste, and groom animals to avoid health risks.

“There’s a city ordinance and a state law, but nothing that applies to the county,” Mulroy said. “Although you can enforce state law in the county, the state law only deals with the most extreme forms of cruelty. The point of this ordinance is to do what Memphis and every other metro area in the state has done, which is to put in minimum standards of care so we don’t reach the level of aggravated animal abuse.”

The ordinance was up for its first reading at last week’s commission meeting, but after several commissioners voiced concerns for the need of such an ordinance, it was sent back to committee. They’ll be discussing the ordinance again at a committee meeting on November 30th.

Commissioner Wyatt Bunker expressed concern over the provision that requires pet owners to provide relief from extreme temperatures by either taking the animal indoors or giving them “comparable temperature control measures.”

“Quite frankly, I like dogs and cats, but there’s not one of them going to live in my house, period,” Bunker said.

Commissioner James Harvey said the language of the ordinance is too intrusive, specifically the provision that requires owners provide fresh water daily.

“Changing water isn’t necessary. I drink out of my same water bottle for a couple of days. I leave it on the dresser,” Harvey said.

But Mulroy contends that his ordinance, drafted with the help of local animal welfare advocates, only covers the most basic needs. Although the state law does include a provision that makes it illegal for anyone in the state to fail to provide water, food, or care for a pet, it doesn’t specify how often to provide food or water or what “care” means.

“We’re putting in easily enforceable, clear guidelines as to what the absolute minimum standards of care are,” Mulroy said. “We say feed your animal once a day. Water it once a day. Don’t tie it up in such a way that it will choke itself. Allow it to have enough space to move around so it can defecate in one corner and lie down in another corner.”

Cindy Sanders with Community Action for Animals has sat in on more 4,000 animal neglect and cruelty cases in Environmental Court over the past three years. Out of that number, she’s only witnessed a handful of cases involving pet owners in the unincorporated county, which she said is a result of county officers not having an animal-care ordinance in place.

“I asked one of the county officers about it, and he said they don’t do this type of thing because they don’t have the laws for it,” Sanders said.

Commissioner Terry Roland objected to the proposed county ordinance, which is somewhat stricter than the city ordinance, because he felt it imposed more rules on those in rural areas. He said the ordinance would lead to more disputes between neighbors, if one neighbor alleged another was abusing their animal.

“You can’t legislate morality. Those who are going to take care of their animals are, and the ones who aren’t aren’t,” Roland said. “That’s like telling someone how to treat their kids.”

Mulroy said he’ll be tweaking the language on his ordinance before the next meeting. If passed, he hopes to work with the city to tighten its animal ordinance as well.

“I was very surprised by the reaction of other commissioners,” Mulroy said. “If they want to tinker with the language, I’m open to that. But to question the most basic need for minimum standards of care for animals or to suggest that this isn’t important enough for us to spend time on, I just can’t see how anyone would say that.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Gasoline Grace at Murphy’s

This Saturday night, the relatively new Memphis alt-rock group Gasoline Grace will celebrate the release of its debut full-length album, Hearts on Fire. The band — a trio composed of longtime local music-scene veterans Melanie Isaksen (bass, vocals), Robert Allen Parker (guitar, vocals), and Angela Horton (drums) — came together after a chance meeting at the Delta Girls Rock Camp in 2008, which Horton helps organize and where all three serve as volunteer counselors. After hitting it off at the camp that summer, the trio started regularly jamming on cover songs for fun in Horton’s living room. The band gigged around town and polished its new material for most of 2010 before going into the studio late that year with local producer/engineer Kyle Johnson at his Rocket Science Audio facility. The final results of those sessions became Hearts on Fire, which accurately captures the rootsy, vintage-punk style of the band, which owes several nods to SoCal punk legends X. Gasoline Grace plays Murphy’s Saturday, November 26th, with Whose Army? and Dynaflow. Showtime is 10 p.m. Admission is $5 or $8 with a copy of Hearts on Fire. — J.D. Reager