Author: Joshua Cannon

State and local organizations denounced two executive orders on immigration set forth last week by President Donald Trump.

The orders will increase militarization and detention on the Mexico border as well as scale up deportations and immigration enforcement across the United States. The president is expected to issue further orders that will suspend refugee resettlement and ban Muslim migration to the country.

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) fears this is the first of many steps the president will take “that will discriminate against people based on where they are from or how they worship,” said Stephanie Teatro, the co-executive director of the coalition. Tennesseans must ban together, she said, and defend against “an attack on America’s core values.”

Trump would tighten the border.

“After less than a week in office, the president has issued extreme orders that fundamentally challenge who we are as a nation,” Teatro said. “Today’s executive orders and those we are expecting … to ban Muslim migration and suspend refugee resettlement amount to a closing of our doors, a denial of the founding principles of this country and the promises inscribed on our Statue of Liberty.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan estimates Trump’s border wall will cost at least $15 billion. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced last week that President Trump would pay for the U.S. border wall with a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico — a decision that would ultimately hike prices for the American consumer. A little more than an hour later, following criticism, Spicer retracted his statement, saying it was just one example of how to pay for the wall. After saying the country wouldn’t fund the wall, Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto cancelled a meeting with the president scheduled this week.

“Since the election, we have been organizing immigrants, refugees, and their allies,” Teatro said. “We cannot let the president jeopardize who we are as a country.”

According to a circulating draft proposal, President Trump will crack down on those entering the United States. A soon-to-come executive order will temporarily bar entry for citizens of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen — all countries with a majority Muslim population. Trump’s administration aims to cut the number of refugees resettled in the United States from 110,000 to 50,000.

The federal government will again begin working with state and local law enforcement to arrest, detain, and deport undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Trump’s executive order also calls on the Department of Homeland Security to “make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens.” Unauthorized immigrants make up nearly two percent of Tennessee’s population, according to a 2012 report by the Pew Hispanic Center. Unauthorized immigrants paid $109 million in state and local taxes that same year.

“Logistically, humanely, or economically we cannot deport millions of people,” said Mauricio Calvo, the executive director of Latino Memphis. “We do not have the resources, and it would devastate families, business, and communities.”

Calvo said building a wall shifts the focus away from the true economic needs of the country, and halting the issue of new visas is a “nonsense measure” that won’t address the country’s needs in the long run.

“The president has talked about building infrastructure,” Calvo said. “We deserve an immigration system that works. Yes, there are many people unemployed, but there are many job opportunities being unfilled. Let’s find those employment gaps, find the opportunities, and build a work program that makes sense and benefits businesses, communities and strengthens our country’s safety and economy.”

Thousands filled the Memphis streets last week in three separate protests all aimed (in one way or another) at President Donald Trump.

Thursday – Environmentalists against EPA nom

Members of the Sierra Club’s Tennessee Chapter gathered at the Clifford Davis Federal Building last Thursday to protest the nomination of Scott Pruitt, Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We’re calling on [Tennessee Senators] Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker to reject the appointment of Scott Pruitt,” said Scott Banbury, the Sierra Club’s conservation program coordinator. “Pruitt has made a career of suing the agency to stop the implementation of rules that protect our water and air from pollution.”

Sierra Club members feared Pruitt will oppose two air quality rules that Sen. Alexander has previously supported.

Justin Fox Burks

Three protests brought thousands to the Memphis streets.

Friday – Inauguration walk out at universities

It started at the University of Memphis. They then moved to Christian Brothers University. After that, to LeMoyne-Owen College. And, by the time they made it to Rhodes College, a group of nearly 200 amassed and marched down University Street.

Student organizers from four Memphis-area colleges — University of Memphis, Christian Brothers University, LeMoyne-Owen College, Rhodes College — led a walk-out protesting the inauguration of Donald Trump on Friday.

The organizers, primarily women and people of color, issued a list of demands for their respective universities in an effort to spur progress locally during what some said they feared would be four years of regression.

“Our administration does not prioritize faculty of color,” said Lindsey Smith, president of the U of M’s Progressive Student Alliance. “In a city that is primarily black, that is not okay. As students united, we have power, and we can hold our campuses accountable.”

Saturday – Memphis Women’s March

More than 3,000 people marched from the D’Army Bailey Court House to the National Civil Rights Museum Saturday in solidarity with the Women’s March on Washington.

Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and Adrienne Bailey, the former chief executive officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Mid-South, took to the steps of the court house and spoke to a sea of people — parents and their toddlers, teenagers, the elderly — lifting signs and chanting.

“This is the most serious threat to the constitution ever in our lifetime,” Cohen said. “A threat to the environment, a threat to world peace, a threat to women’s rights, a threat to the rights of everyone. This is supposed to be a ‘non-truth’ period — but truth always wins in the long run.”

Bailey said to the women in the audience that it is time to get to work.

“It’s our time to rise up again,” Bailey said. “This is a party. This is a celebration, but it’s time to roll up our sleeves. Our work is just beginning.”

Shelby County’s air quality has improved in the years since Memphis shuttered its vehicle emission testing facilities in 2013, but that’s not because the testing program ended, a county official said.

The city long struggled to comply with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) standards for ozone pollution. During that struggle, the Memphis City Council voted to stop funding vehicle emissions testing stations here, which cost $2.7 million to run annually. Despite that move, the city met the EPA’s air standards last year.

While vehicle emissions did increase air pollution in the years after the city ended the testing program, other factors, like some factory closings, helped improve the county’s overall air quality, said Elizabeth Hart, public information officer with the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD).

“Ending tailpipe testing did not improve overall air quality,” Hart said. “Decreases due to industrial reductions and … removing many of the old, dirtiest vehicles from the street [had a] much greater [effect on air quality] than the small increase from ending the program.”

Congressman Steve Cohen championed the closing of vehicle inspection programs at the time, saying “Memphians shouldn’t have to shoulder an additional burden because of a faulty testing system that discriminates against those who often don’t have the means to afford repairs that have little or no effect on their vehicle’s emissions.” Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell said back then that 2011’s closing of the Cleo manufacturing plant “reduced air pollution enough to prevent the need to continue tailpipe testing.”

The Allen Fossil Plant continues to be Memphis’ greatest polluter. The plant, which burns coal to power the city, generated a total of about 8,978 tons of air pollutants in 2015, according to SCHD figures. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) will soon replace it with a natural gas energy plant, making use of the latest technology to reduce pollutants. Not without criticism, though, as the TVA has garnered protest for its plans to suck up 3.5 million gallons of water per day from the Memphis Sand aquifer to cool the plant.

Shelby County’s quality of air continues to improve. Figures from the Health Department show that the Mid-South’s air quality is below the EPA’s national ambient air quality standard. Ozone, a gas that can provoke health problems such as chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and congestion when at ground level, has steadily decreased in our air over the past few years. Such has been the case with a substance health officials call PM2.5, fine particles less than the width of a human hair, that can get stuck in the lungs and cause more serious health issues.

“Year to year, air quality can vary some — up or down, but the overall trend is in the right direction,” Hart said.

One of the health department’s considerable struggles is raising individual awareness about how citizens can improve the air quality, Hart said. Dennis Lynch, a leader of the local Sierra Club, said there are numerous ways to do this: plant a tree, don’t top off your gas tank, and drive less.

“Trees produce oxygen, as well as clean the existing air,” Lynch said. “A single tree can absorb 2,000 pounds of CO2 in its lifetime. Overfilling wastes gasoline and releases toxic benzene into our air. Every mile you don’t drive saves one pound of CO2, and reduces other pollutants as well.”

The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis has hired a new project manager to oversee the memorialization of Ell Persons, an African-American man burned alive a century ago in Shelby County.

African-American historian John Ashworth will lead a citywide interfaith prayer service May 21st at the site where Persons was murdered, nearly 100 years to the date it occurred. Newspapers in 1917 created a spectacle of Persons’ death for days leading to it, gathering thousands of people to what is now Summer and the Wolf River. After he was set afire, Persons was decapitated and taken to Beale Street, and his head was hurled at a group of black pedestrians.

“What is the effect of the trauma on the African-American community from the terrorism that was placed on them?” Ashworth said. “There is so much hidden pain, and it’s having a tremendous negative effect on the entire country — not just African Americans. I think it’s important that we tell the true story about these things.”

Ashworth, a Vietnam veteran who served 21 years in the Army, worked last year as the chairman for a memorial committee honoring Elbert Williams, an African-American man, who, in 1940, became the first person in the modern civil rights movement to be killed for his work organizing a local chapter of the NAACP.

Along the Hatchie River in Brownsville, Tenn., Ashworth led descendants of Williams back to the site where he was lynched. They collected soil from where the hate crime occurred. It now rests in the Montgomery, Ala. National Lynching Memorial.

Andrea Morales

The Persons lynching site

At least 70 lynchings took place in six West Tennessee counties between 1865 and 1950, according to a report by the Equal Justice Initiative. Persons, joining Williams, will become the second victim of those tragedies to be memorialized. The Shelby County Historical Commission will place a historical marker at the site.

“I think there are a lot of good people in this part of the country who are working very hard to move all of us forward,” Ashworth said. “I think this is a chance for the Mid-South to showcase: ‘We may not be where we need to be, but we are a hell of a lot further down the road than we were 100 years ago.'”

It’s the many wrongful deaths, swept under the rug but woven into the fabric of America’s identity, that ignite racial tensions across the country, Ashworth said.

“How does a young African-American male or female who has grown up in a society that for 348 years was enslaved and for another 150 years was under Jim Crow segregation see themselves?” Ashworth said. “How do they see other people who look like them? There’s internalized pain and shame that’s been passed from generation to generation.”

He points to Joy DeGruy’s book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Through research, DeGruy concludes that for white people to commit hate crimes, they had and have to go through a form of cognitive dissonance to “disassociate themselves from people who they knew were human beings.” Her point is, Ashworth said, that the same thought process is still passed down, the ramifications of violent racism negatively affecting both white and black people.

“We need to find a way to have open and honest conversations with each other about how we feel about race,” Ashworth said. “It’s when we pretend there are no problems that we run into problems.”