Month: January 2019

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News News Blog

Massive Memphis Investment In Electrolux ‘Won’t Pay Off’

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Electrolux site

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said he heard of Electrolux leaving Memphis in a press release and that the news was “disappointing.”

The company said it would move much of the work done here to Springfield, Tennessee Thursday morning. The company got a massive incentive package to build a plant here in 2010 (details below). 

Here’s what Strickland said of the move Thursday afternoon:

“Electrolux may be leaving Memphis, but they aren’t leaving because of Memphis. To hear about this announcement in a press release after being told a month ago that the plant wasn’t closing is disappointing to say the very least,” Strickland said. “There is some consolation that Electrolux has committed to work with employees by allowing them to have time to find other opportunities, and from a community perspective, we will do all we can to help them find other employment.

“In 2010, the state, county and city acted in good faith and made an unprecedented investment in this company and in Memphis.

Just like they are exercising their option to leave, we will exercise our option to vigorously defend our investment. With a tough global economy, rising tariffs and losing a major product retailer, they are making business decisions. This in no way will affect our determination to continue to recruit new companies and jobs to our city. We are meeting with Electrolux officials tomorrow.”

[pullquote-1]
Here’s what U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen said of the move:

“I’m very disappointed that the employees of Electrolux learned today that Memphis’ economic development investment in one company’s future apparently won’t pay off.

The company’s abandonment of Memphis will mean potential financial hardship for its employees and suppliers, and should result in more careful review of promises made by corporations about local job creation in the future.”

Here’s what taxpayers gave the company in 2010:

• Two parcels of free land totaling 800 acres in Pidgeon Industrial Park

• $40 million from city and county

• Additional $2 million from city/county for ancillary costs

• 15 year PILOT abating 90 percent city and 75 percent county property taxes

• $95 million cash grant from state of Tennessee

• $3 million federal grant from Delta Regional Authority

Categories
News News Blog

State Abortion Bill Called ‘Extreme Legislation’

A bill filed in the state legislature would prohibit an abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected and would require fetal heartbeat testing before an abortion, a move Planned Parenthood said that would “make safe abortions illegal in Tennessee.” 

Van Huss

The bill was filed last week by Rep. Micah Van Huss (R- Jonesborough). The bill has 24 co-sponsors in the House. However, no companion bill has yet been filed in the Senate.

Van Huss filed similar legislation before, according to Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi and Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood. The groups said in a statement Wednesday that the legislation filed previously “was not supported from Tennessee Right to Life and the state attorney general due to constitutional concerns.” They called it “extreme legislation.”

“North Dakota and Arkansas both passed similar abortion bans and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending their laws in court, only to have the laws struck down or permanently blocked as unconstitutional,” the groups said.

Categories
News News Blog

Year-End Crime Stats Show Successes, Challenges

Violent crime, gun crime, and robberies were down last year, but charges against youth were up, in a year-end analysis released Thursday.

Leaders with the Memphis and Shelby County Crime Commission and the University of Memphis (U of M) Public Safety Institute said they were encouraged by the figures but one said ”we have a long way to go.”

Here’s the basic breakdown of the figures from 2017 versus 2018 —

Memphis and Shelby County Crime Commission

Violent crime
(The rate is calculated based on the total number of reported murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults per 100,000 residents.)

• Memphis: down 4.2 percent

• Shelby County: down 3.6 percent

Memphis and Shelby County Crime Commission


Gun crime

• Memphis and Shelby County: down 15.8 percent
Memphis and Shelby County Crime Commission

Robberies

• Memphis: down 12.1 percent (3,492 in 2017 to 3,069 in 2018)

• Shelby County: down 11.5 percent (3,626 in 2017 to 3,210 in 2018)

Charges against youth

• Brought to Juvenile Court: up 8.5 percent

• All violent and nonviolent charges: up 16.5 percent

Memphis and Shelby County Crime Commission

“The 2018 crime statistics give us reason to be both encouraged and concerned,” said Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich. “It is encouraging because major violent crime is down overall, especially crimes of rape, domestic violence and robbery.

“What is concerning, however, is the significant increase – 16.5 percent – in delinquent offenses charged against juveniles, including 661 major violent charges. That is a trend we all must work to reverse for the safety of the community.”
[pullquote-1] Bill Gibbons, president of the Crime Commission, said “we can take some encouragement” from the decreasing violent crime rate but that “ we have a long way to go” to reduce it further. In a statement, Gibbons said the violent crime rate was at its lowest in recent years in 2011, in which the Memphis Police Department had its highest complement of police officers.

So, what helped the crime rate drop? Here’s what the Crime Commission says:

• Enactment of tougher state gun laws and stepped up efforts at both the federal and state levels to hold individuals accountable for committing gun crimes;

• A Focused Deterrence Initiative launched by the D.A.’s office to focus on serious offenders and reduce the likelihood that they continue criminal behavior;

• The Safeways crime prevention program in major apartment communities;

• Increased staffing for the Multi-Agency Gang Unit;

• A renewed commitment to data-driven policing coupled with an increase in MPD officers.

“A recent assessment by the U of M’s Public Safety Institute showed immediate reductions in major crime categories on a consistent basis in certain geographic areas identified as ’hot spots’ warranting additional resources through data-driven policing,” reads the report.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

A Disturbance in the Force

So, after 35 days, the longest government shutdown in history ended with a whimper, not a bang. But it was at least a long, whiny, rambling, repetitive whimper, featuring the president’s greatest build-the-wall hits — including his weird kidnapping-and-bondage fetish fantasy, his bizarre “make a left turn or a right turn at the border” riff, and his fanciful statements that the wall is “already being built.” And so we need to build it more!

And, oh, we — not Mexico — will pay for it, by god, or else the president will schedule a national emergency in three weeks. Pelosi is shaking in her boots. Or, more likely, high-fiving Schumer over the prospect of Trump wanting to reenact his recent ignominious defeat.

In the president’s speech announcing the government’s reopening, there was no mention of the pain and suffering government employees and contractors and air travelers and others endured by going without pay or government services for more than a month. That was apparently of no concern. The president ended his speech by threatening to use whatever methods were at his disposal to build the wall, if a deal wasn’t made in three weeks. Because that worked so well last time.

The Five

The next morning, Trump began his day by tweeting that another caravan was on the way! This one had 8,000 people(!) he said, much bigger than the ones that disappeared last fall, the day after the election. The president followed that “news” by tweeting reactively in real time from commentary that was happening on a Fox morning show, presumably as he watched — including a bizarre tweet to institute state Bible studies, in response to a guest who proposed the idea. (I wish some reporter would ask Trump to name his favorite Bible verse.) Fox guests and hosts were literally creating national policy pronouncements in front of our eyes.

Honestly, if your aging father were behaving this irrationally and erratically, you’d probably gather the family to discuss assisted-living arrangements. Instead, the media dutifully report and discuss the president’s impulsive outbursts as though they are policy statements worthy of Winston Churchill’s finest hour. We have normalized this stuff to an astonishing degree. Historians of the future will be reading Trump quotes out loud to each other in disbelief.

Trump’s approval rating is 35 percent as I write this. But in truth, it’s almost always 35 to 40 percent. There is a core group of Americans that will support the president even if he does shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue — even if he shoots one of them, in which case, I have no doubt the wounded MAGA warrior would jump up, limp to the sidewalk, and shout, “Lock her up!”

But that abysmal presidential approval rating has created something of a disturbance in the force, a vacuum that is sucking lots of dust bunnies from under the bed. Democratic candidates are lining up in droves to get a shot at beating Mr. 35 Percent. As many as 24 Democrats have made noises about running in 2020, reviving memories of the 2016 GOP fustercluck of 17 candidates that gave us the current Idiot-in-Chief. At the first Democratic debate, will each candidate get a 14-second opening statement? Who knows?

Adding to the madness was the announcement this week by Starbucks CEO Howard “Venti” Schultz that he was considering running as an “independent centrist,” which raised fears that he would be a hyper-caffeinated Jill Stein and split the anti-Trump vote, which would help the president get re-elected.

Trump, playing his usual three-dimensional chess, quickly insulted Schultz via tweet, and shortly afterward claimed he did so to provoke Schultz to run. Strategery!

All of this political maneuvering could, of course, be short-circuited in the coming weeks by the long-awaited Mueller report. If evidence continues to emerge that all (or most) of the president’s men were engaging with Russian assets and agents to tip the 2016 elections, all bets — and well-laid campaign plans — are off. We can only hope.

Categories
Music Music Features

“Scars” — John Kilzer’s New Record is Homespun and Philosophical

I first encountered singer/songwriter John Kilzer’s name while recording at Ardent Studios over 30 years ago. He had just released a record on Geffen Records, Memory in the Making, produced by the late, great John Hampton. But I knew of him because a tiny plaque had been mounted above the couch in Studio B, with the words “Kilzer’s Spot.” When I mention it to Kilzer today, the air fills with his hearty laughter. “Yeah, it’s still there!” he says. “That’s so funny. I’m sure that little plaque has plenty of verdigris on it by now. It’s probably more green than copper.”

Since then, much more has changed than the plaque’s patina. After releasing another record on Geffen in 1991, Kilzer’s musical career took a 20-year hiatus, as he wrestled with deeper questions of faith and personal growth. “I was going through the ordination process and getting my Masters of Divinity at Memphis Theological Seminary. And then I went straight into the Ph.D program at Middlesex University in England. During that time, I didn’t have time to do much music. But when I got back here and was appointed to the recovery ministry [at St. John’s United Methodist Church], I realized that music was going to be a foundation of that. Resuming that interest naturally prompted me writing. And so the songs came out, and I did the one album, Seven, with Madjack Records.”

John Kilzer

That 2011 release, recorded with Hi Rhythm’s Hodges brothers (Teenie, Charles, and Leroy) came out just a year after Kilzer had begun The Way, a Friday evening ministry at St. John’s that carries on today, featuring some of the city’s best musicians. “Our premise is that everybody’s in recovery. Everybody has experienced trauma, and there’s something about music that just calls out of each person’s spirit, whatever it is that’s keeping them bound. Music is kind of the language of heaven. But we don’t do church music. We do a lot of my material and some gospel standards, but it’s not contemporary Christian music. It’s just good music. And if, say, Jim Spake’s gonna be there, naturally, I’m gonna pick something that would suit him, but it doesn’t matter. They’re all so good, they can play anything from Bach to Chuck Berry.”

A similar appreciation for quality musicianship permeates his discussion of his latest work, Scars, just released on Archer Records. “When you know you’re gonna have Steve Potts, Steve Selvidge, Rick Steff, Dave Smith, George Sluppick, and Matt Ross-Spang, you feel more comfortable. You trust yourself, and you trust those guys.”

Kilzer, who was a college literature instructor before his Geffen days, brings an expansive melodic and lyrical imagination to these songs, which could be about himself or any number of the souls attending The Way, driven more by character and circumstance than any obvious theology. “Some say time’s a riddle/I say time’s a freight train shimmering in the rain,” he sings, before describing scenes in Lawrence, Kansas. And the new songs, effortlessly blending the homespun with the philosophical, are given plenty of space to breathe.

“It’s so understated, and I think a lot of that is because we were cutting live. When you know that you’re live and that’s gonna be it, you don’t try to say so much. It’s like you honor the spaces between the notes. On Scars, I think there’s a lot of creative space in it. It’s not filled with any unneeded stuff.

“Another thing that’s different about it is, I wrote on different instruments. I wrote a couple on a mandolin, a couple on ukulele, and several on the piano. I would have never, ever considered doing that earlier in my career. So that kind of creative tension manifests in the songs. To be real nervous and have all these conflicting emotions, but knowing you’ve got sort of a protective shield around you in these musicians, I think that’s why there’s something on Scars that I can’t quite articulate. You can hear it, but you just don’t know what it is.”

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

On stage: Sweat and Tuck Everlasting.

CREDIT: Carla McDonald

If you really want to understand what went wrong in America, turn off Fox News. Turn off MSNBC and CNN, too. Also, step away from the internet, unless you’re using it to reserve tickets for Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Sweat. Set in a working-class bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, a factory town with little else in the way of opportunity, at the moment when the North American Free Trade Agreement allowed factories to suppress reliable wages, make unions virtually pointless, and move to Mexico if labor demanded too much in pay, benefits, or safety regulations. In the same moment, NAFTA wrecked the Mexican farm economy, pushing more immigrants to cross the U.S. border looking for work and ramping up a whole other set of anxieties.

Sweat introduces us to “the regulars”: good ol’ boys and gals who all work or have worked for the factory. Most of them are second- and third-generation employees and visit their neighborhood watering hole to celebrate little victories and drown defeat. Their nightly conversations and struggles show how easily economic anxieties transform into racial anxieties. Sweat touches on the gutting of American labor unions and the factory floor roots of the opioid crisis as workers combat tedium and both physical and emotional trauma.

Sweat focuses primarily on the lives of three female drinking buddies and two of their sons, all of them legacy factory workers. In a heated moment, something terrible happened, making everyone unrecognizable to one another. Nottage’s play is like a weather forecast. She maps the converging pressure systems, as the storm rages harder and harder.

While “Darkness at the Edge of Town,” might make a good alternative title, with heavy doses of Springsteen and a sample of Billy Joel’s painfully honest 1982 hit “Allentown,” Sweat‘s sound design is sometimes a little too on the nose. Otherwise, director Irene Crist’s production for Circuit Playhouse is as rough and right as rolled up flannel sleeves, showcasing strong performances full of heavy hitters like Greg Boller, Jai Johnson, JS Tate, Tracie Hansom, and Kim Sanders, to name a few.

If you’re the sort of person who only sees a couple of shows a year, make this one of them.

Sweat runs through February 17th at Circuit Playhouse.

A long time ago, every member of the Tuck family drank from a hidden forest spring and became immortal, but each one is forever stuck with all the tropes of their frozen age. The parents manage middle-aged ruts and middle-aged spread and snoring marital monotony. Lost love burns like it can only in youth. Teen angst and pimples also last forever. Neighbors also tend to notice when you never age, so be careful what you wish for, and all that.

Life gets even harder if you’re essentially decent folk who know what could happen if people who aren’t decent folk ever get their hands on a spring of eternal life. People like the mysterious Man in Yellow who blows into town with the carnival, chasing rumors of magic and mystery. So what’s an unkillable clan to do when a charming young runaway like Winnie Foster stumbles into the family’s life and onto its secrets?

Carla McDonald

Tuck Everlasting on stage at Playhouse on the Square

For Tuck Everlasting, Director Dave Landis has brought together a terrific cast, and his design team has outdone itself, building a world of green parsley stalk trees and purple “magic hour” skies, where a big round sun (or moon?) is eternally stuck in the rising — or maybe setting — position.

Gia Welch’s voice has never sounded as rich or full or uniquely hers as it does in Tuck. Even though she’s a little too old to convincingly pass for an 11-year-old, her performance as Winnie is never anything short of winning. Welch leads a tight, talented ensemble of local favorites, including Michael Gravois, Lorraine Cotton, and Kent Fleshman. Even if you don’t emerge from the theater able to remember the words to any of Tuck‘s songs — a distinct possibility — the voices follow you home.

Tuck Everlasting runs through February 9th at Playhouse on the Square.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

TedX at Crosstown Arts Theater

When TED conferences took off in the early 1990s, the conversations the organization hosted tended to be technology forward, with a heavy splash of design. But the organization quickly grew into its motto, “ideas worth sharing,” and today, TED talks and their independently produced regional variant, the TEDx, can be about almost anything. But expect Memphis to weave itself in and out of the narratives when TEDx returns to Memphis for its fourth consecutive year. It’s setting up shop for a pair of sessions in Crosstown Arts Theater Saturday, February 2nd.

“Most of our speakers are local, so the ideas often have a particular relevance to Memphis,” Memphis TEDx organizer and Executive Director Anna Mullins says. “But hopefully they have relevance outside the city limits.”

This year’s TEDx theme is “ideas or the next century,” and it is partly inspired by the city’s bicentennial celebration. Mullins says that’s, “just a big broad tent for forward-thinking talks that look at what’s next for the city.”

Fewer than 20 speakers were selected from more that 250 applicants. This year’s presenters include Hooks Institute director Daphene McFerren, who’ll explore topics of artificial intelligence and automation and how they intersect with poverty and race relations. Other speakers include Alex Castle of Old Dominick Distillery, James Dukes of I Make Mad Beats, Playback Memphis founder Virginia Murphy, and Clayborn Temple director Anasa Troutman.

“We don’t just attract great speakers but also a great crowd of people who are inquisitive and ready to be challenged and inspired,” Mullins says. “We want to make sure we’re inviting everyone into the ideation space.”

For those who can’t attend, the program will be live streamed at tedxmemphis.com.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Shut Out by the Shutdown

On the 35th day of the partial shutdown, airports along the East Coast experienced significant staffing shortages. Air traffic controllers calling in sick put pressure on the shutdown as flights were delayed in major airports including LaGuardia.

A little over a week ago, federal workers had organized actions demanding an end to the government shutdown. In Memphis, workers rallied outside the IRS’ Memphis Service Center and Downtown at the Civic Center Plaza. More than a thousand IRS workers in the city were told to go back to work without pay.

Serenity Towers

With the partial shutdown now over with the passing of the short-term funding bill, federal employees will be expecting their pay soon, but coming back from the effects of the shutdown will take much longer. As we’ve seen and heard, testimonies have demonstrated how the shutdown has impacted the day-to-day lives of people.

For the residents of Serenity Towers, the shutdown has meant the threat of eviction from their homes. Serenity Towers is an independent living apartment complex on Highland for senior citizens and folks with disabilities. Many seniors living in the apartments receive benefits from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that pay most of their rent. With the shutdown and HUD offices closed, these residents weren’t receiving the assistance that they needed. CNN reported that HUD wasn’t able to renew over 1,600 of the contracts that they have with privately owned businesses, and while HUD claimed that the expiration of these contracts would not mean immediate evictions, residents at Serenity have reported that eviction notices for some had already gone out.

Part of this has to do with the immediate effects of the shutdown and part of it with the management of Serenity at Highland that is currently run by Millennia Housing Management. Early in January, the management sent more than 50 notices to senior tenants, claiming that they owed Millennia money. Many were also sent eviction notices.

Unfortunately for the seniors at Serenity, it is not the first time that the state of their housing security has been questionable, to say the least. For years, under the management of Global Ministries, Serenity and other housing options have left vulnerable populations living in deplorable conditions. The relatively new management of Millennia, which came on last year, brought some sense of hope for change, but in the past months, safety and health inspections of Serenity suggest that not much is changing. That, on top of the shutdown, meant residents were threatened with being unhoused, in danger of not even having a roof over their head.

Residents of Serenity will continue their fight, as they were doing well before the shutdown — and during it. We need to stand with them, support them, and amplify their voices. No one should face housing insecurity. Not in our city and not anywhere else, but that is the reality for many folks. We don’t even have accurate numbers of those who currently are unhoused. The recent Point in Time Count, while it offers some understanding as a snapshot of the population of people experiencing homelessness in Memphis, cannot fully account for everyone, especially when held in one of the coldest days in January.

Those articles that show Memphis as one of the most affordable cities to live? That really applies if you have a salaried job. For example, if you are renting a two-bedroom house for $850, and the cost of one month of housing should be a third of your monthly wages, then you should be earning $2,550 a month (that’s $1,275 every biweekly pay day for 80 hours of work). That means that you should be earning about $15.94 per hour (after taxes) just to make rent on a full-time job. Here’s the thing: Tennessee hasn’t changed its minimum wage since 2008. If you have a full-time job at $7.25 (that’s $1,160 a month) … Well, I’ve never even seen a decent room go for under $400, let alone an apartment or house.

Without going further into the math, I think it’s pretty clear how all these problems add up. It’s hard for people today to find housing, much less to save up and secure comfortable, dignified housing for the future, when they aren’t able to work. We’re already seeing how this impacts senior residents. For those who have no support networks, or no family or friends to reach out to, housing insecurity is even more real. Though the end of the shutdown means federal workers will receive their pay and that housing assistance will be delivered, we need to also consider how to address the stack of problems that were added on because of it. That, of course, can get overwhelming, but we know that folks like the senior tenants at Serenity Towers are already doing the work by making themselves heard and not accepting the unjust conditions created by companies like Millennia.

Aylen Mercado is a brown, queer, Latinx chingona and Memphian pursuing an Urban Studies and Latin American and Latinx Studies degree at Rhodes College.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Youth Justice

CREDIT: Countywide Juvenile Justice Consortium

Juvenile justice reform has dominated civic conversation at the beginning of the new year with a high-profile (but still mysterious) incident at the current Juvenile Justice Detention Center (JJDC) and moves to build a new $25 million juvenile facility.

A tweet from the official Shelby County Sheriff’s Office account on January 11th left many with more questions. It said five Shelby County Corrections Officers were relieved of duty (with pay) for “allegations related to on-duty failures” at the JJDC. An investigation is ongoing, the tweet read.

Countywide Juvenile Justice Consortium

Some argue building a new $25 million facility is not enough.

Sheriff Floyd Bonner told WMC-TV a fight involving 14 teens lasted more than 30 minutes at the center and left two injured. Nine of those involved were moved to 201 Poplar. Nearly three weeks later, the public knows little more than that, certainly nothing about the involvement of the five now-relieved officers. Details are protected because of the ongoing investigation.

“Transparency, or the lack thereof, has been the biggest storyline for the last six years,” Just City executive director Josh Spickler wrote in a newsletter last week. “Juvenile Court lacks it; in this instance, the Sheriff’s Office lacks it. Yet, without it, we’ll never see the reforms we need.”

Just a few days before the incident at the JJDC, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris began his pitch for a new $25 million juvenile center that would focus on rehabilitation and education.

“We think we need a better facility if we’re really going to treat these juveniles better and put them on the path to rehabilitation,” Harris told Shelby County Commissioners last week. “In my opinion, the facility we have is not suitable for that purpose. In my opinion, the facility is worse than how we treat and house felons at our penal farm. In my opinion, we should do something about it if we can.”

Jimmy Tucker, a principal with Self+Tucker Architects told commissioners last week that the current building has “major problems.” It does not meet requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act, he said, nor is it optimized to move people in and out in an emergency.

The only place for recreation at the facility now is an outdoor rooftop area that can be used only at certain times during the year, weather permitting. Four classrooms that can each accommodate 15 people at a time pose major issues for the 97 people now detained at the center, Tucker said.

Commissioners pushed forward a plan Monday to replace the building, approving $1.3 million to begin its design work.

Commissioners Tami Sawyer and Edmund Ford Jr. have said, though, that a new building likely won’t fix the larger systemic problems facing juvenile justice here.

“You can have the best-looking building with the most updated technology; however, if you do not have the proper psychological, emotional, and parental counseling available, then you’re not solving the systemic problems,” Ford said on Facebook.

“What happens for the next five years while a new building is built?” Sawyer asked on Twitter. “Who will address the systemic racism and implicit bias of the court?”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1562

Dammit, Gannett

We hate to say we saw it coming, but we saw it coming.

In December of last year, Fly on the Wall predicted layoffs would be forthcoming at Gannett-owned newspapers, including The Commercial Appeal, sometime after the new year. It had seemed like an inevitability since November’s dismal quarterly report and the call for early buyouts that always presages another round of cuts.

Last week it finally happened. On Wednesday, January 23rd, Gannett laid off an estimated 400 newsroom employees at papers across the country.

Via the media watchdogs at Poynter: “Another brutal day for journalism. Gannett began slashing jobs all across the country Wednesday in a cost-cutting move that was anticipated even before the recent news that a hedge-fund company was planning to buy the chain. The cuts were not minor.”

The CA appears to have fared better than many Gannett publications. As of now, only one newsroom layoff has been confirmed, 38-year CA vet William Fason. Four open positions were also eliminated.

Dammit, Autocorrect

At least we hope this is an autocorrect error.

Otherwise, if you live in the Memphis area and are currently in the market to purchase an affordable “Queen-size actress,” there’s one on sale via Facebook Marketplace for the low, low price of $200, “with her own box spring.” But buyer beware; unless she’s one of the greatest actresses who ever lived, we’re pretty sure that’s a mattress in this picture, not an actress.