Month: September 2013

Categories
News The Fly-By

Public Relations

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

The relationship between some Memphis residents and their neighborhood police officers could use a little CPR — literally.

That’s where the Community Police Relations (CPR) campaign, a new effort by the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center, comes in. Through the CPR campaign, community forums, attended by both citizens and police officers, are held in communities across the city.

Residents are asked to share their personal experiences and problems with dealing with law enforcement, and those concerns are taken back to the administration of the Memphis Police Department and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. A number of officers voluntarily attend the forums.

A recent forum in South Memphis was co-led by Memphis police officer Colin Wilson, who facilitated breakout sessions with citizens.

“There’s a severe disconnect where, often, law enforcement is seen as ‘us against them,’ but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Wilson told those gathered at Union Valley Baptist Church in South Memphis for last week’s forum. “We are all in this together.”

So far, CPR forums have been held in Frayser, Orange Mound, and South Memphis. At the South Memphis meeting last week, citizens shared concerns about poor police response time, long hold waits for 911 calls, and racial profiling. One woman, who is white, said police often stop her when she is spotted walking down the street with her African-American friends. She said they assume she must be doing something wrong.

A disclaimer is given in each meeting that names should remain anonymous to make residents feel more comfortable about speaking up.

One man said he often calls police to report drug activity in his neighborhood, but he said police aren’t doing anything to stop the problem.

Another woman, who lives in South Memphis, said her house had been broken into 15 times, and she even removed the steps to her house to make it harder for thieves to gain entry. Yet, she claimed police refused to test her home for fingerprints.

“They said those kits are really expensive, and we can’t afford that,” said the woman.

As each citizen shared their personal stories of dealing with police, the theater troupe Playback Memphis acted out the individual scenarios.

“Watching your stories played out is an icebreaker to help break down the emotion so people won’t be so apprehensive in sharing,” said Melissa Miller-Monie, CPR organizing coordinator.

Miller-Monie and her team record all concerns brought up at CPR forums to share with law enforcement. They also hand out surveys, on which people who may not feel comfortable speaking up can share their problems and suggestions for police.

“We have the Sheriff’s Office and the MPD at the table, and they want to know how they can actively engage the community and make it better for all of us,” Miller-Monie said.

The next CPR forum will be held in Hickory Hill on September 30th. Accommodations are being made to ensure there’s not a language barrier for any of that community’s large Hispanic population who may attend. On October 5th, there will be a CPR forum for the LGBTQ community at Holy Trinity Church on Highland.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Q&A with Brad Martin

After leading the University of Memphis for more than a decade, Shirley Raines retired from her presidency earlier this year. Brad Martin, retired chairman and CEO of high-end department store retailer Saks Incorporated, has stepped in to fill the void.

Martin, a Memphis native, became the U of M’s interim president this July. A week after the university’s fall semester started, he spoke with the Flyer about his thoughts on becoming interim president of his alma mater, the goals he seeks to accomplish while holding the position, and his future plans. — Louis Goggans

Flyer: How did you go from being chairman of a major department store to the U of M’s interim president?

Brad Martin: I’ve led enterprises bigger than the University of Memphis in terms of the scale of the operations, so I think that was probably how my name came up. I care a lot about the university and was willing to do it.

What are some of the things you’ve learned since accepting the position?

I have a greater understanding of the importance of strategic focus for a leader, how effective a collaborative group can be if you invest the time to give people in the group equity with decisions that you’re making, and that people want to hear more about the future than they do about the past.

Your current position is temporary, but do you desire to become the U of M’s permanent president?

Under no set of circumstances will I consider that. I have a lot of other interests in life, and I’m not looking for a job. I’m accepting no compensation for this. I’m doing it very intensely for one year.

You’re a graduate of the U of M. What has changed since your college days?

I think there are many of the same elements that were there decades ago: talented faculty, dedicated staff, [and] students who want to learn. Technology’s a lot bigger component of the learning environment than anything I experienced when I was in college. I’d say the biggest change is all the different ways one can go to class with [regard to] the internet.

You recently introduced a plan consisting of eight initiatives for the 2013-14 school year. Among them was a desire for students across the country to be able to attend the U of M without paying out-of-state tuition.

First, I don’t think that out-of-state [tuition] is a relevant concept in the mobile society that we have today. What’s out-of-state about an online learner? What’s the difference between someone sitting at a computer terminal or on an iPad in Alabama than in Tennessee? Number two: In Memphis, we need a lot of additional talent to make our city grow and succeed, and I would like to go and get energetic, interested, talented people and invite them to come to the University of Memphis and hopefully convince them to stay in our community.

What would you most like to achieve before your time as interim president is over?

I would just like to know that we’ve advanced the strategic significance and contribution of the University of Memphis in this community that is my hometown and that we have a better future in the community as a result.

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

About “Marriage Equality Rally”:

“There is no good reason to deny that we must keep evolving until an adult, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, monogamy or polyamory, race, or religion is free to marry any and all consenting adults. The limited same-gender freedom to marry is a great and historic step, but is NOT full marriage equality, because equality ‘just for some’ is not equality.” — Keith Pullman

About “Children’s Museum to Display Real Children”:

“Finally, my family will get its money’s worth going to the Children’s Museum. (But I’m not paying to buy special feed. Those kids can have whatever crackers my kids can eat.)” — Samson

About “Letter from the Editor” and those international flights to New Mexico:

“It’s not the flight that’s a pain; it’s that strip search in customs once you get to Albuquerque.” — staythirstymyfriends

About “The Onion Was Right About Miley Cyrus” and that whole VMA Awards thing:

“The attempt to put the ‘child’ career behind has been difficult for many artists. We get it, sweetie. You’re all grown up. The sad part is MTV rated this event for 14 and up knowing those as young as 9 would seek their ‘Hannah Montana.'”

— thecatsmeow

“When you have a net worth of 120 million at the age of 20, you can twerk with or without a trunk. It is amazing that so many people feel sorry for her, and they don’t have a crying dime to their name. If this is the way she wants to be, then it is on her to want to change when she gets ready. She can afford it!”

— oldtimeplayer

Comment of the Week:

About “The Rant” and the “unseemly pillaging of the Voting Rights Act”:

“I am personally surprised that the Dear President doesn’t support these photo ID laws, after all, isn’t it easier to find, spy on, and harass those who don’t support you if they have to obtain a government ID?”

— CEBorst

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fast-Food Nation

CREDIT: Chris Shaw

Fifty years after Dr. Martin Luther King led the March on Washington to highlight the need for all Americans to share a decent standard of living, many service workers are still fighting for a living wage.

Fast-food workers and community activists gathered at the AFSCME Local 1733 Union Hall downtown last week before leading a march to the National Civil Rights Museum protesting what they claim are unfair working conditions in service industry jobs.

Chants of “We can’t survive on $7.25” were heard in between speakers making arguments for not only a pay increase from minimum wage to $15 but also the right to unionize without unfair retaliation from upper-level management. 

The nationwide fast-food strike took place the day after the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, which called for a minimum wage of $2 per hour. Adjusted for inflation, that would equal $15.26 an hour today.

According to CNN, the median pay for fast-food workers across the country is just more than $9 an hour or about $18,500 a year. That’s roughly $4,500 lower than the U.S. Census Bureau’s poverty income threshold of $23,000 for a family of four.

Rev. Herbert Lester, chairman of the Workers Interfaith Network, said one of the most common misconceptions of the fast-food industry is that the jobs are stepping stones and not designed for long-term employment.

“The notion that these are entry-level jobs just isn’t true, even though it’s the dominant perception. The average age of a fast-food worker in Memphis is 29, and over one-fourth of all fast-food workers have children,” Lester said.

Fast food is a $200 billion-a-year industry, yet many service workers across the country earn minimum wage or just above and are forced to rely on public assistance programs to provide for their families. Nationally, the median wage for cooks, cashiers, and crew at fast-food restaurants is $8.94 an hour.

Anthony Cathey has worked at the McDonald’s at 905 Union for more than five years and still gets paid $7.40 an hour, 25 cents less than the cost of one Big Mac combo meal.

“They pay us less than one Big Mac meal an hour. How many Big Mac meals are they selling in an hour? At least 30,” Cathey said. “McDonald’s makes enough to pay me for eight hours of work in about 30 minutes, just off of one combo. If they raised one of their meals 10 cents, I think it would be enough to pay us what we need.

“We’re asking for $15 [per hour] and a union because we want health-care benefits, paid vacations, and sick days. No one has helped us get what we want so far, so we decided to come out and do this the right way,” Cathey added.

Lester said that even though this is the first step in a long fight for workers’ rights and wage increases in service-level jobs, he hopes that the strike brought some overdue attention to the plight of fast-food workers.

“We will continue to shed light on these topics and hopefully inspire workers in other industries to stand up for their rights,” Lester said. “We aren’t going to stop until common needs are met across the board and a fair wage for a fair day’s work becomes the law of the land.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Cutting the Cord

Anyone used to listening in to committee meetings of the Shelby County Commission via audio streaming on the commission’s website came a cropper last Wednesday — literally. Workmen on the 11th floor involved in the renovation of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building inadvertently cropped the fiber optics cord that enabled transmission of commission activities.

James Harvey

The unfortunate circumstance wiped out audio records of some lively debate, though recordings survive of the commission’s interviews with 11 candidates for the appointment to a vacancy in District 6 of the Unified School District’s board.

The candidates for the seat vacated by Reginald Porter, now chief of staff for the Unified District, were: Shante Avant, Perry Bond, Tony Braxton, Justin Casey, Cherry Davis, Clara Ford, Rosalyn Nichols, David Page, Joya Smith, Rhoda Stigall, and Sharon Webb.

The commission will vote on a successor to Porter on Monday.

Another matter introduced last Wednesday was that of committee assignments made by chairman-elect James Harvey. Normally, the commission’s approval of such assignments is pro forma, and it may turn out to be that way when the commission holds its next public meeting on Monday.

But Commissioner Walter Bailey, a Democrat, fired a shot last Wednesday across the bow of fellow Democrat Harvey, who on Monday will formally accede to the chairmanship, which he won in large part with Republican votes.

Bailey objected to the appointment of Republican Heidi Shafer as budget committee chairman and sought instead to amend the appointments resolution to reappoint Melvin Burgess as budget chair. Shafer objected, as did GOP commissioners Terry Roland and Chris Thomas, and Bailey’s motion was defeated, with the full commission due to consider the issue next week.

What is involved is something more than mere honorifics. Shafer was a vociferous opponent of the increases in the county budget and tax rate sought by county mayor Mark Luttrell and approved this year after a protracted struggle. She is known for close line-by-line study of budgetary matters and sees herself as a watchdog against overspending.

Burgess, who works as director of internal audit for the Unified School District, is meanwhile still under attack by Roland, who unsuccessfully sought to have Burgess disqualified from voting on the budget and tax rate because of his employment with an agency receiving county funds.

As the interviews with candidates for the school board were being held on Wednesday, Roland apprised the Flyer of his intention to challenge Burgess’ right to vote on the matter on Monday. “Melvin can’t do that,” Roland said. “He’s trying to vote [to select] his own boss.”

• The list of candidates who met last Thursday’s filing deadline for a special election in state House District 91 indicates that name identification may play a major role in determining the winner. The seat was held for some four decades by the late, revered former House speaker pro tem Lois DeBerry, and the surname DeBerry is represented twice in the field of 11 candidates.

Dwight DeBerry, a political newcomer, is a cousin of Lois DeBerry, while Doris A. DeBerry-Bradshaw is the sister of District 90 representative John DeBerry (no relation to Lois). The extended Ford family figures in with the filing of Kemba Ford, daughter of former state senator John Ford, who is making her second electoral effort after running unsuccessfully for the city council in 2011.

Other candidates in a fairly nondescript field are Raumesh Akbari, Joshua R. Forbes, Terica Lamb, Clifford Lewis, Kermit Moore, Gregory Stokes, Mary Taylor Wright, and Jim Tomasik. All except Tomasik, an avowed libertarian and an independent, are running in the October 8th Democratic primary. No Republicans filed in District 91. The general election is November 21st.

• Stephen Fincher, a member in good standing of the congressional Tea Party caucus and an unabashed member of the Republican Party’s right wing, struck some unwontedly moderate-sounding notes last Tuesday night as the featured speaker at the annual Master Meal event of the East Shelby County Republican Club.

Noting that he was “the first Republican to hold this seat,” the 8th District congressman from Frog Jump in Crockett County called for unity among all Republicans of whatever faction. “This is a two-party system. We cannot eat our own. We must stay united if we’re going to beat Barack Obama and the Democrats,” he said.

And Fincher, who spoke before a packed house at the Great Hall of Germantown, urged caution regarding a proposal by some Republicans to force a shutdown of the government rather than allow the funding of Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act).

“If we do a CR [continuing resolution] without Obamacare, [Senate Democratic leader] Harry Reid is going to put it right back in and send it back to the House,” Fincher said.

Then, after asking for a show of hands over the proposition that “the president will be right back on the campaign trail, and IRS scandals and Benghazi and all that will be swept under the rug, and he will use this to keep control of the Senate in 2014,” Fincher said, “I think that’s what’ll happen. … I think he’s baiting us, he’s trying to divide us.” The congressman advocated instead a strategy of delaying the onset of aspects of Obamacare.

But Fincher made it clear that, in proposing discretion, he was not advocating that Republicans surrender their principles. “If we fall, it won’t be because of the Democrats. It’ll be because of the Republicans not standing up.”

Other speakers at the annual East Shelby GOP affair included Luttrell, Shelby County Republican chairman Justin Joy, and state Republican chairman Chris Devaney of Nashville. Devaney defended a decision by the National Republican Committee to keep NBC and CNN out of the GOP’s future televised-debate plans as the penalty for those networks’ pursuing program projects relating to potential Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

• Shelby County chancellor Arnold Goldin, who has figured in several important cases in recent years — notably the challenge by several Democratic losing candidates to the county election of 2010, which he denied — is one of three judges appointed last week by Governor Bill Haslam to fill appellate-court vacancies a year from now.

Goldin will replace Judge Alan Highers, who is retiring, on the Court of Appeals, Western Section.

The other judge-in-waiting appointments are those of Nashville lawyer Neal McBrayer to the Court of Appeals, Middle Section, to succeed Judge Patricia Cottrell, and Criminal Court judge Robert Montgomery of Sullivan County to the Court of Criminal Appeals, Middle Section, to succeed Judge Joseph Tipton.

The unusual situation is the result of the General Assembly’s failure during the 2013 legislative session to renew the state’s Judicial Nominating Commission, which has had the duty of recommending candidates to fill appellate vacancies. Mindful of the situation, Judges Highers, Cottrell, and Tipton gave the governor early notice of their intention not to be on the August 2014 retention ballot.

The Judicial Commission, which expired at midnight on June 30th, did its part to fill the procedural gap, meeting in the two or three days prior to that and making its last recommendations to Haslam for the three positions.

The November 2014 statewide ballot will contain a constitutional amendment empowering the governor to fill such appellate vacancies on his own, subject to the legislature’s confirmation.

Meanwhile, another Memphian, state Supreme Court justice Janice Holder, has also announced that she intends to retire when her term expires on August 31, 2014, and, since the Judicial Commission expired without making recommendations for her successor, Haslam is in something of a quandary as to how to proceed.

 

• Memphis Democrats used to getting emails from the Daily Buzz newsletter, published by Trace Sharp and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike McWherter of Dresden, will be getting a bonus from now on.

The Daily Buzz email, reconfigured as the Crockett Policy Buzz, will now incorporate investigative and analytical efforts of the newly formed Crockett Policy Institute, whose executive director is Sharp.

As she wrote, in a message to subscribers, “It is time for reasonable and educated discussions on policy, reaching out for common sense solutions that can change our state for the better. … The Crockett Policy Buzz which will come to your emails each morning will continue to focus on news of the day as well as looking at how we can problem solve effectively the tests we face in our society right now.”

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Virtual Nonsense

Education is, of course, not the only aspect of Tennessee life which is undergoing substantial change these days, but, as has so often been said by lay and professional folks alike, it is the key to the state’s future. That being the case,

we can only hope that the people who are in charge of Tennessee’s destiny know what they are doing.

We are now in the third year of the educational reforms that will be associated with the tenure of Governor Bill Haslam and his appointee as education commissioner, Kevin Huffman. The jury is still out — or should we say the examination is still under way — on the sweeping educational reforms being officially pursued. These include a plethora of new charter schools and a truly revolutionary and experimental new layer of educational bureaucracy, typified by the statewide Achievement School District being administered by Chris Barbic.

No one who has had any contact with any of the three individuals mentioned above should have any doubt as to their good intentions or their sincerity or the extent to which they believe in what they are doing. All those attributes are much in evidence.

We have our doubts about much of what has been achieved or is being attempted, but we strive to keep an open mind. We do wonder, however, about Barbic’s boast that he does not have to “answer to” any school board in carrying out his particular reform agenda. Yes, there are some questionable boards with some knot-headed school board members in Tennessee, but these boards are, after all, elected, and they do represent the people.

We doubt, too, that the process of education was well served by the action of the legislature in 2011 in abolishing the bargaining rights of Tennessee’s established teaching organizations, but we also know that this drastic step (for drastic is what it is) was the work not so much of Haslam and his appointees but of Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey and the archconservative legislators whom Ramsey apparently can guide to his heart’s content. At least those in the state Senate, of which he is the undisputed master.

Not that there aren’t some blessings to go with that last fact. Because he happened to get involved in a power struggle with his House counterpart, Speaker Beth Harwell of Nashville, last year, Ramsey put the quietus on a House-baked plan for a state “authorizer” empowered to overrule local school boards in their decisions regarding the acceptance or rejection of charter-school proposals.

And, to give Haslam his due, he acted to quash several efforts by his party’s right wing to overreach themselves in the extent to which they were proposing public vouchers for private schools. Haslam also did his best to slow down and to establish more realistic criteria for “virtual” — i.e., online — education. In particular, he tried to rein in and put a term limit on the Tennessee Virtual Academy, an institution whose head testified before a legislative committee last year in an effort to excuse his system’s poor performance, introducing his personnel with non-grammatical sentences such as, “This is so-and-so, which is in control of such-and-such.” Which.

Alas, the poor governor, which was overruled by the legislature. We hopes for the best, but we fears it gets worser and worser.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Not-Bad Lands

I want to like Ain’t Them Bodies Saints a lot more than I do. Arriving at the tail end of summer blockbuster season, David Lowery’s somber, serious new feature contains much that is good. Its look is distinct. Its cast packs plenty of indie-film star power. Its formal strategies and its borrowings from other movies are clever and unusual. In short, it’s a helluva calling card. But Lowery simply isn’t there yet. He might not be great now, but he should be real soon.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints sings the ballad of Ruth (Rooney Mara) and Bob (Casey Affleck), a couple of kids who are on the verge of starting a family when Bob is sent to jail after a bank robbery gone bad. While in prison, Bob vows to reunite with his beloved and live the American dream together. But in his absence, Wheeler (Ben Foster), a lawman shot during the standoff that ended with Bob’s arrest, takes an interest in Ruth’s well-being that appears more than neighborly.

With a couple of notable exceptions, Lowery’s film follows the “lovers on the run” template used by filmmakers like Steven Spielberg (The Sugarland Express) and Terrence Malick (Badlands) early in their careers. Because this template offers simplicity, precision, and flexibility, Lowery has plenty of chances to show off his formal skill. He’s especially good at elliptical editing: the birth and growth of Ruth and Bob’s daughter is shown in three or four cuts that take no more than 30 seconds. The bank robbery isn’t shown at all.

The film’s crepuscular glow is more distinctive still. Whether sunlight, lamplight, or headlight, most of the illumination in any given scene conceals as much as it reveals. This strategy serves to taint the purity of the characters’ intentions; Bob may be a romantic, but he often has to lurk in the shadows like a fugitive. Ruth is frequently shot in profile, her long, black hair concealing her face like a long, black veil.

The dialogue in the film often reaches for a kind of colloquial poetry. Most of the time, though, it works too hard to enlarge the smallness of relationship platitudes. For every scene when Affleck puts over a line like “They don’t know things the way they think they know, ” there are two scenes where he wrestles in his clenched-teeth way with lines from the “I knew yew before yew was even born” school of romantic infatuation.

Unlike Affleck, Ben Foster doesn’t overemphasize the local color of his character. His performance, particularly those scenes that follow his gentle, stumbling, fumbling courtship of Ruth (She: “I’m so goddamned tired.” He: “Then rest.” She: “While you lay with me while I do?”), are the film’s highlights. By emphasizing Wheeler’s sensitivity as a key part of his masculinity, Foster etches one of the year’s most delicate performances.

Imagery, actors, some strangely unstuck-in-time music: everything is there. Lowery’s developing a gentle yet firm voice. But, right now, that voice can make you drowsy.

(Lowery’s last feature, 2009’s St. Nick, screened at Indie Memphis. He was also on the crew of Open Five, a feature from Memphis actor/filmmaker Kentucker Audley, who has a small role in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints.)

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

Opening Friday, September 6th

Malco’s Forest Hill Cinema

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Opening-night highlights of this year’s Outflix Film Festival.

The Outflix International LGBTQ Film Festival celebrates its 16th season with a week-long run at Malco’s Ridgeway Cinema Grill theater beginning on Friday, September 6th, and with an opening night that includes strong documentary and feature titles.

Directed by veteran television producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, Bridegroom (7 p.m.) is a documentary that tells an intensely personal story that illuminates larger issues in gay life. It’s the story of two young men from the Midwest — Shane Bitney Crone and Tom Bridegroom — who find each other and build a life together in Los Angeles before Bridegroom dies in random accident. Told via Crone’s own recollections and those of his family and friends, along with video diary entries from Crone started to document his journey from Montana to California, the story of the two young gay men coming of age in small-town, middle-American environments is sharp, and the story of their budding romance as adults is feature-worthy on its own. When Bridegroom suffers his tragic accident and Crone — who had lived with Bridegroom for six years — is first barred from his hospital room and then from his funeral, the films puts a very personal face on issues of legal protection and marriage equality. Bridegroom was an audience award winner at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Crone will appear at the Memphis screening and conduct a question-and-answer session.

An entertaining high-school comedy in the knowing, satirical vein of Mean Girls or Easy A, G.B.F. (9 p.m.) isn’t quite as sharp as those mainstream antecedents, but it could easily reward audience attention beyond the festival circuit. The film focuses on the plight of two barely closeted teen boys at a moment and in a place where homosexuality is morphing from a subject of scorn to trendy fascination. That’s an improvement, obviously, but the film’s gentle point is that it’s still dehumanizing.

G.B.F. — “gay best friend” — finds ample comedy in this subject. One female student’s attempt to form a gay-straight alliance at the school is stalled by her inability to find a gay student, leading her to grouse, “My future GBF is just dying to come out of the closet and tell me how fierce I am.”

When Tanner (Michael J. Willet) is finally outed, he becomes a status symbol the school’s trio of rival alpha girls compete over and a potential solution to many looming problems — “We’re doing The Wiz and we’re going to need as many minorities as we can get,” one student says, imploring Tanner to try out. He struggles as much to live up to his classmates’ stereotypes (“Thank you. That’s just the kind of bitchy, gay insight I’m looking for!”) as he once did to cloak his sexuality.

The film’s supporting cast is dotted with familiar faces (Natasha Lyonne, Rebecca Gayheart, Harry Potter’s Evanna Lynch), but the casting never feels like a stunt. Particularly good is Megan Mullaly as an understanding-to-a-fault mother who subjects her son to the excruciating bonding of a mother-son Brokeback Mountain movie night.

For more on this year’s Outflix slate, see “Sing All Kinds” at memphisflyer.com/blogs/singallkinds.

Outlfix Film Festival

Ridgeway Cinema Grill

Friday, September 6th – Thursday, September 12th

$10 for individual screenings; $90 for a full festival pass. For more info, see outflixfestival.org.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Richie Lomba | Dreamstime.com

Many people could learn a lot from the woman who works in the entrance and exit booth at Parking Can Be Fun on Union Avenue next door to the Cotton Exchange Building. I am embarrassed that I don’t know her name, but I see her and hand her cash about once every two weeks when I park there to eat lunch downtown.

Although I’m not a regular, she always remembers me and always has a huge smile and we talk briefly about the weather and tell each other to have a wonderful day. I love going to see her and sometimes park there when it would be more convenient to park elsewhere and she just makes me feel like a million bucks. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in that little booth all day long but she gets by just fine with her Kindle and her spirit.

Why is it that all people can’t be that nice? I’ve been trying and trying to figure out what makes some people so mean, and for the life of me I can’t come up with a good answer.

How is it that someone could reach a point in his life where he feels it necessary to spray innocent children with nerve gas and kill them, as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has recently done? What goes through the mind of someone like that? Do you just wake up one day and think, Oh, why not gas some children today?

I know it’s more complicated than that but I really do wonder what could possibly make someone think doing that is okay. These are not rhetorical questions. I genuinely want answers. Same with serial killers, violent gang members, racists, and the three teens in Oklahoma who shot and killed that Australian baseball player not long ago because, as one of them said, they were “bored.” They were “bored” so they decided to commit a murder? My feeble mind simply can’t comprehend that. And when they go to prison and get no kind of rehabilitation because there is none in the American prison system, they will probably become even meaner and kill more people in jail. It makes me wonder what kind of a bizarre experiment Earth is. I’m not a religious person but it does make me wonder if there really is a Satan who invades some people’s psyche.

I think one of the things that is making me wonder about all these unanswerable questions is the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington. I’m thinking about what it must have been like to be captured, separated from family, crammed into a ship with life-threatening conditions, delivered to the United States, stripped naked in front of a crowd of people, and sold to the highest bidder, who had every legal right to kill you if you talked back to him or, God forbid, learned to read. What kind of minds did those slave owners have? What was going through their minds when they were buying people to work and torture? Was it greed? Was it hatred? Was it ignorance? And don’t tell me that’s just the way it was back then and they didn’t know better. I don’t buy that nonsense for a second.

I also find it odd that despite the fact several Republicans were invited to speak in Washington, D.C., during the anniversary ceremony, NONE accepted the invitation. (Despite all of the things he has done with which I disagree, I bet George W. Bush would have been there if not for his recent heart surgery.) Do they hate President Obama so much that not one of them could be there to speak on the anniversary of one of the most important speeches in American history? House majority leader Eric Cantor was invited but declined because he was busy in North Dakota and Ohio looking at energy sites.

How can someone be too busy to speak at a ceremony commemorating King’s “I Have a Dream” speech? You can’t be a little flexible for something like that? You can’t take a break, go make a short speech alongside a sitting American president, two former presidents, and some of the most notable civil rights leaders alive today? And you want to change the Republican Party’s image to get more African American votes? Not such a great strategy to achieve that goal if you ask me. On the flipside of the coin, the organizers of the event didn’t invite Tim Scott — the only African-American serving in the Senate — to participate, which also seems a little strange.

I’ve also been wondering if America will ever have someone like Dr. King again. We still have horrific poverty, which he fought against like a lion. He ultimately died while trying to help Memphis sanitation workers get a decent wage and better working conditions. And now, fast-food restaurant workers who work full-time and still live below the poverty level are striking to get a living wage and the right to unionize, some of them even carrying the famous “I AM A MAN” signs from the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike in 1968.

Will there ever be another person in this country who will be willing to do the kind of work Dr. King did to try to remedy these kinds of situations? Or is that something from a past era that’s just gone. I think Newark mayor and Senate hopeful Cory Booker has it in him and maybe he will be the next equal rights icon. Who knows? All I know is that I am leaving now to go see the woman at Parking Can Be Fun. She is my hero.

Categories
News

The AC is On

John Branston tagged along with Mayor AC Wharton for a day — a very long day — in the life of the Memphis mayor.