Month: November 2016

Joshua Cannon

Echoing protests that have sparked across the country in response to the unprecedented presidential election of Donald Trump, nearly 200 people gathered in Overton Park and marched through Overton Square to Cooper Young Friday evening.

Joshua Cannon

“I’m pleased that you are here,” said Congressman Steve Cohen to a growing crown in Overton Park. “This is the worst election result we’ve had in my lifetime and maybe the country’s history. It’s scary the racist and xenophobic statements that were said about people by candidates — and the tolerance of them. It’s really important that people come out and show that they don’t believe in this and they don’t endorse it.”

Wearing a Memphis themed ball cap, Cohen said he wore it because “our city has a soul,” even if the country didn’t represent that on Tuesday. Cohen asked that protesters “not turn violent,” noting damage done by protests — some still ongoing — that began in cities from New York to Los Angeles earlier this week.
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As protestors crossed Poplar Avenue and made their way to Overton Square, Memphis police officers did little to disrupt the protest. Officers blocked traffic with their cars, allowing those marching to cross the street. Officers on foot directed traffic, often asking protests which direction they would be walking next. Protestors, too, stuck to the sidewalk, not blocking traffic for the most part.

Joshua Cannon

Jacqueline Quintanar, 32, helped organize the protest. Quintanar said felt it wasn’t a time where she could stand by and do nothing.

“I saw friends around me crying and their families being torn apart,” she said.

Anne Smith, 33, along with her two children Zoey, 5, and Ezra, 2, said she came to the protest to show them how important it is to vote and use their voice.

“I think it’s important to show our children who is going to represent us as a country,” Smith said. “I don’t think President Trump can represent myself or my country. We’re very open with them, and we try to educate our kids as much as possible.”

Joshua Cannon

Once protestors neared the intersection of Cooper Street and Young Avenue, they formed a circle at the gazebo. Raising high a sign that read “Science is not a hoax: Protect our earth,” Kase Spilman, 22, said she was a staunch supporter of clean energy, saying climate change is the “the least discriminatory force in the world that will affect everyone no matter their race, religion, or where they came from.”

“If we don’t take care of it now it’s going to be too late,” Spilman said. “Trump’s 100-day plan involves directing funds away from climate change. He’s already appointed Myron Ebell, a top climate skeptic, to take over the Environmental Protection Agency. We can’t have people who don’t believe in climate change in charge of what we’re going to do to combat climate change.”

Joshua Cannon

Mark Sturgis, 34, stepped into the middle of the circle amidst chants of “pussy grabs back” and “this is what democracy looks like” and said Friday night’s protest would be the first of many during Trump’s presidency.

“This is an active resistance to an agenda of hate,” Sturgis said. “This is just a warn up.”

There will be another protest on Main Street Saturday from noon to 1:30.

This story will be updated with better photos and videos.

Apple Maps

An aerial view of the Prairie Farms facility on Madison.

Midtown neighbors scored a win Thursday against a development they said would bring more noise and more congestion from the Prairie Farms dairy facility on Madison, though dairy owners said they will carry on with their expansion plans.

Turner Holdings LLC, owner of the milk plant, bought the empty lot behind the 80-year-old dairy a few years ago. The company had used the lot to park large distribution trucks.

Neighbors began to complain to city code enforcement officials about the trucks. City officials found that parking the trucks there was illegal, or was not an approved use of the land under city code.

Turner Holdings

Proposed fencing and landscaping along Madison for the Prairie Farm dairy facility.

Many of those neighbors began to complain only after the dairy was approved last month for a seven-year tax break deal worth more than $1 million to cover a $10 million expansion project there. That project would add three truck bays, 17,000 square feet of space, 25 jobs, and it would increase truck traffic around the site by up to 40 percent.

All of that — and questions on whether or not an industrial site belonged in Midtown at all — was brought to city hall Thursday. Turner Holdings asked members of the Memphis and Shelby County Land Use Control Board (LUCB) for permission to transform the “back lot” into a development that would allow the lot to be used for “vehicle maintenance, repair, warehousing, and temporary parking of trucks and trailers.”

Turner Holdings

Proposed landscaping for the northern border of the Prairie Farms facility.

The company did not get that permission from the LUCB Thursday. Only one member of the board voted for the project. However, the final vote on the matter rests with the Memphis City Council.

Many Midtowners spoke against the project during the LUCB meeting Thursday.

Many said the dairy fit in the neighborhood years ago when it mostly delivered milk to the neighborhood and, then, throughout the city. However, the dairy now serves four states for Prairie Farms Inc., a national dairy corporation, they said.

Michael Gallagher said he’s lived on Court (close to the dairy) for 74 years. He said he slowly watched as the dairy expanded, taking over several small businesses along Madison to grow to its current footprint.

“The noise at my house has grown considerably,” Gallagher said to LUCB members Thursday. “I have trouble inviting people over to my house to eat because I never know what’s going to happen.”

Some complained of the diesel fumes that waft through the neighborhood and into homes. Others complained that the dairy site has been an eyesore for years, with little done about it by the dairy owners. Some worried that the proposed parking lot would bring back flooding issues along Lick Creek. A couple of neighbors noted that the expansion would lower property values in the area.

Perhaps the loudest voice in opposition to the project came from developer Bob Loeb. He called the expansion plans at the dairy a “generational change that will go on forever.” He said the dairy site becomes a hub of activity from 6 p.m. – 6 a.m. but is a “24-7 regional industrial use.”

Apple Maps

An aerial view of the Prairie Farms facility on Madison.

However, Nathan Bicks, attorney for Prairie Farms, called the expansion plan a “marginal change.” He said the expansion would only bring 14 additional round trips for trucks entering and leaving the facility per week. The expansion, also, would only require a “marginal” increase in parking on the site.

He maintained that the dairy really did want to forge better relationships with its neighbors. He said many neighbors supported the project, though they didn’t speak at the LUCB meeting Thursday for fear of what their neighbors would think of them.

Also, Bicks said Loeb has plans to buy the dairy facility and the land. So, he has a business interest in seeing the expansion project fail.

LUCB chairman Jon McCreery noted that the expansion of the plan was not up for a vote. That had already been decided by the company and by the Memphis and Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE). The vote before them was about a planned development on the dairy’s back lot.

Loeb said, however, that the two are linked. He said if Turner did not get approval for the back lot (and the parking it brought), they likely couldn’t manage the expansion.

“I hear the statement from the owners in Springfield, (Mo.) and St. Louis (that say they’ll expand the plant without the back lot) and they’re not members of this community,” Loeb said. “If they cared about this community, we wouldn’t be here discussing the current, deplorable condition (of the plant).”

Still, Bicks maintained that the company would, indeed, build the expansion with or without the development of the back lot.

Micaela Watts

More than 50 people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline peacefully marched to the front of the Clifford Davis Odell Horton Federal Building in Downtown Memphis and were denied access to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with no explanation given.

This afternoon, security guards at the Clifford Davis Odell Horton Federal Building in Downtown Memphis blocked citizens of Memphis and press protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline from entering the building to file their grievances with the Memphis offices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The crowd of roughly 50 people gathered to voice their concerns about the controversial oil pipeline that protestors say threatens sacred burial grounds and sovereign land that was granted by the U.S. government in 1868 under article 11 of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.

Security did let other camera crews into the building, but explained that they were there for “something else”.

“You’re getting a small taste of what we’ve been dealing with for hundreds of years,” explained Caroline Mudbone, a transplant Memphian from California who was there to inform the crowd of the conditions protestors face in the ongoing Standing Rock protests, which have been ongoing for weeks now.

“Our youth are getting shot by rubber bullets, they are spraying us with tear gas, and this is all because we are protecting a water source for millions of Americans,” said Mudbone.

Media coverage of the Standing Rock protest has been almost non-existent explained Mudbone. Speaking to the crowd she explained, “We have seen a widespread media blackout, no one is there to say what is happening.”

Satellite oppositions of the Dakota Access Pipeline have surfaced all over the United States, but today was the first organized protest in Memphis, attended by familiar local environmentalists such as Scott Banbury and dozens more citizens.

Organizer Thomas Wayne Walker was told that the offices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was closed today.

“It’s not a national holiday, and its Thursday in the middle of the afternoon — so, I’m not sure what’s going on.”

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Two Memphis men could pay up to 12 years of their lives for a can of Bud Light and a Dallas Cowboys watch.

Demarcus Kerr and Andrew Debose-Maben, both 21, were convicted of aggravated robbery Thursday for the 2014 robbery of a pedestrian in the Castalia Heights neighborhood, according to Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich.

Google Maps

Pin indicates corner of South Cooper and Lowell.

Both men face eight to 12 years in prison when they are sentenced next month by Criminal Court Judge Chris Craft.

At around 11 a.m. that day in 2014, the 47-year-old victim was walking near the corner of South Cooper and Lowell. The victim said a gold Chevrolet Malibu pulled alongside him. He said the car’s passenger pointed a shotgun at him and demanded his belongings.

“The victim surrendered his Dallas Cowboys watch and a can of Bud Light beer,” reads a statement from Weirich’s office.

When the two men were captured later, police found the shotgun and the Dallas Cowboys watch inside their vehicle. No official word on what happened to the beer.