Category: At Large

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At Large Opinion

Stumped by Ignorance of Covid

And another one bites the dust.

It’s become almost a daily story in the media: Some outspoken anti-vaxxer dies of Covid. Some are repentant in their final days, like conservative radio talker Phil Valentine of Nashville, who, after coming down with the disease, changed his tune and urged his listeners to get vaccinated — before he died on a ventilator. Others have gone to meet their maker still insisting that a) Covid was a hoax, b) the vaccines don’t work, or c) they really just had the flu.

Three conservative radio hosts have died in recent weeks: Valentine and two Florida talk-show mainstays — Marc Bernier and Dick Farrel. All three disparaged the vaccine, masks, and distancing; trashed the CDC; and told listeners not to fear Covid. Bernier tweeted: “Now the government is acting like Nazis, saying ‘get the shot.’” Farrel tweeted: “Why take a vax promoted by people who lied 2u all along about masks, where the virus came from, and the death toll?” He also called Anthony Fauci “a power-tripping lying freak.”

This week, Joe Rogan, aka the “little ball of anger,” the most popular podcaster in America, announced that he’d contracted Covid. Rogan, unsurprisingly, is also an anti-vaxxer. He claims that he is taking a horse dewormer to treat his case. I hope he is as lucky as he is stupid.

But it’s not just radio hosts who are dying from denial of science and common sense, who are losing the ultimate bet, making the deadly choice to pick ideology over science and medicine. It’s evangelical ministers, politicians, anti-mask leaders, and other assorted right-wing spokespeople, now dead because they bought the bilge being spewed by Valentine and their cohorts, and, even worse, by prominent talk-show blatherers with national audiences, like the loathsome and hypocritical Tucker Carlson (who’s been vaccinated) and Laura Ingraham (also vaccinated), to name just two. Their lies are quite literally getting people killed.

Several country music stars and boomer rock heroes like Eric Clapton and Van Morrison are also virulent and outspoken in their anti-vax, anti-mask positions. The latter two have written horrible songs about losing their freedom. To be idiots? Most of Kid Rock’s maskless band caught Covid at the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally last month. (South Dakota’s Covid infection rate went up 700 percent following the gathering.)

Locally and statewide, we are seeing the results of a low vaccination rate and anti-mask sentiment, due mostly to ignorance and ideology. Parents in this county and this state are intentionally sending their children to school, unmasked and unvaccinated, convinced that all these deaths, these ever-rising case numbers, these young people dying in our hospitals, are somehow a Joe Biden/Anthony Fauci plot to take away their freedom. Their own children (and ours) are being sacrificed on the altar of know-nothing ideology, aided and abetted by GOP state governors, including our own absurdly incompetent Bill Lee, who when asked how he planned to deal with the fact that Tennessee now has the highest infection rate in the nation, answered that he didn’t plan to “change strategy.”

“Strategy?” No, Bill. “Strategy” is a plan, a course of action, a way to take on a problem sickening and killing the people in your state. Sitting on your ass and saying that “parents know best” is not a strategy. You are an embarrassment, a wanna-be DeSantis, a mini-Trump with the charisma of a pine-stump.

King Arthur and the Black Knight

All this reminds me of nothing so much as the fight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which the Black Knight refuses to allow King Arthur to pass. In the ensuing sword fight, the knight’s left arm is hacked off. “’Tis but a scratch,” he proclaims, fighting on. When his right arm is severed, he still refuses to surrender.

“Look, you stupid bastard,” says Arthur. “You’ve got no arms left!”

“’Tis but a flesh wound,” says the knight.

Then a leg is sliced off, then the other. Still he persists, shouting insults and threats, a noisy torso on the ground. “The Black Knight never loses!” he shouts.

Empty words. From a stump. Seems familiar.

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At Large Opinion

A Hard Rain in Waverly, Tennessee

Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden

The I-40 exit for Highway 13 is pretty typical, as these things go. There’s a McDonald’s, three gas stations, a couple of chain restaurants, four motels. Numerous signs tout Loretta Lynn’s Ranch and Resort, just up the road. A little north of Loretta’s place, 15 miles from the exit, sits the town of Waverly, Tennessee, home to 4,000 people and the site of a horrific disaster on the weekend of August 20th.

A freak storm hit the mountains to the east of Waverly that night, dumping 17 inches of rain in six hours near the hill town of McEwen, all-time record for the state. The only outlets for the water were five streams: Trace Creek, Blue Creek, Hurricane Creek, Tumbling Creek, and the Piney River. Waverly has the misfortune to be split by Trace Creek, normally a small clear stream, maybe 30 feet wide, three feet deep in its pools. But on this night, the placid little waterway became a deadly funnel for the torrential rain coming out of the highlands. Dozens of houses along the creek in Waverly, mostly modest frame structures, including some public housing — what locals call the “projects” — were inundated by the wave.

Twenty people were killed. Twin seven-month-old babies were ripped from their father’s arms; two teenage sisters were separated in the deluge. One survived; the body of the 15-year-old, last seen clinging to a piece of debris being washed downstream, was later found. Houses, cars, furniture, appliances, and the contents of more than 100 homes were flushed away.

As you enter Waverly, nothing seems amiss in the business district, which is on higher ground a couple blocks from the creek. But the two streets nearest the stream are a nightmarish wasteland: Houses sit in the middle of streets; cars are stacked against trees like ladders; washing machines, boats, fencing, furniture, books, televisions, and other human detritus are strewn everywhere. At a gas station, a house sits near the pumps, as if looking for fuel. An enormous dead wild boar floats belly-up in a backwater pool.

A freak storm leaves Waverly, Tennessee, in a state of catastrophic despair, with 20 people killed. (Photos: Bruce Vanwyngarden)

I wander the area, taking pictures, trying not to bother the National Guard and other salvage and cleanup operations. A Tennessee park ranger pulls up as I survey the trashed but now-tranquil stream.

“Is this your property?” he asks.

“No, I’m from a Memphis newspaper, up here to do a story.”

“Good,” he says. “All this just disappeared from the news in one day, and it’s just unbelievable what happened here. Go ahead, just be careful.”

I approach a man and woman sitting on the porch of a white frame house that looks largely unaffected by the storm. Across the street, a house sits cockeyed on its foundation with a pickup truck standing nearly vertical in the yard. Tricia and Chris Wilcher, mother and son, have stories to tell.

Tricia was home and saw the water rising, which isn’t uncommon in Waverly. Creeks rise. “We’ve lived through lots of flooding here, but nothing like this one,” she says. “People were out looking at the water. At first it looked like a monster crawling around on the ground between the houses, then BOOM, it was like a tsunami — and everything just got swept away.”

How does a tsunami happen in the middle of Tennessee? The current thinking is that a massive amount of water pooled behind a railroad track bed that suddenly gave way. Chris Wilcher says he witnessed it. “I was on my way home from work in Nashville and I stopped in Gorman because the roads were getting flooded. You could see the water building like a huge lake behind the railroad tracks up there. Then it started pouring over the tracks, then the bed gave way, and all that water just rushed out at once. It looked like a dam had broken, or like the levees with Katrina.”

“Chris saw that and texted me and said, ‘Mom, you have to get out. Lots of water is coming,’” says Tricia. “A friend of his came and got me. Water didn’t get into our house, but it came up to the porch. I’m still having nightmares about it. I’m still shaken.”

She’s not alone. A lot of people are shaken in Waverly. A week after the horror, they stand watching bulldozers clear the streets, everything they owned, gone or destroyed.

On my way out of town, I notice a young woman in shorts and tank-top walking in Trace Creek with a wading stick. She pokes at debris, moves tree limbs, then wades on, looking for something, something that’s likely gone forever.

For information on how you can help, call the Red Cross Disaster Health Services in Waverly: 1-800-REDCROSS.

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At Large Opinion

You Got My Name

Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden

Between Manassas and Danny Thomas, just a block from the restored and gilded mansions of Victorian Village, is another village of sorts. It’s the Hospitality Hub, a resource center for those experiencing homelessness in Memphis.

Outside the small office, a line of 10 or 12 men stands, waiting to meet with an outreach advisor, someone who might help them get an ID so they can access their social security checks or a veteran’s pension, someone who can maybe help them find work or shelter or food or medical attention — someone to listen.

As I approach, one of the men asks if I have any work for him. He’s a small, personable fellow, who seems sincere. We chat for a minute. I say I don’t have any work but I might someday, and I start to turn away.

“Well, how you gonna know who I am?” he asks, reasonably enough. He pulls out a photo ID and proudly shows it to me. “Elliot Allen is my name,” he says. “Can you remember it?”

“Yes, I can. I’m gonna record it.” I speak his name into my phone. “Elliot Allen.”

“That’s pretty slick,” he says. “Nice talking to you.”

Kelcey Johnson (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

Hub Director Kelcey Johnson shows me around the place. We walk over to take a look at five mini-homes. “We finished these in early July,” Johnson says, opening the door to one unit. “Four are occupied and we have a possible client for this one.”

The interior is clean and simple and smells of wood. There is a bed, a chair, a picture on the wall, a heater, a small AC unit.

“These are all hardwood inside,” Johnson says. “Walls and floor. Each resident gets a new robe, slippers, sheets. As people are starting this new life journey away from homelessness, we don’t want to put anything old in here.”

I ask Johnson who gets to move into these units.

“The people living here are those who have been chronically homeless, long-time people we’ve known. Their mental and emotional conditions don’t allow them to stay in a shelter. Here, they have their own space, safe from the crowding, safe from the virus. They have a key to their unit and a key to the bathrooms. There is a sense of community in that they are separate but at the same time are together. The case managers are right here for them.”

The Hub provides, as Johnson says, “all the services you need to exit homelessness.” That includes helping clients get a state ID or birth certificate. “It’s something that brings you back into citizenship,” he says. “We do all the navigation with state and federal agencies. We’re also creating income for people through our Warm Welcome program. Every day, up to 22 people go out to work for three or four hours. They get $50 and lunch. It’s great for them and great for the city because it’s a big step in exiting homelessness.”

Johnson says the hardest people to get out of homelessness are those who have aged out of foster care. “These people have nothing, no support, no family to help them. We’re working with a woman now who fled her foster care at 14 and has been on her own ever since. She’s basically homeless because she’s never known how to find an apartment or sign a lease or do applications or get a birth certificate or social security card. She needs someone to guide her through these basic processes.”

This week, the Hub celebrated the start of construction on its new 32-bed women’s shelter. The organization also hopes to increase the number of its mini-units. “If this gets scaled up, it could be a national model,” says Johnson.

There is good work being done here, and it’s palpable.

As I leave, I spot my friend. “See ya, Elliot,” I say.

“There you go,” he says. “You got my name.”

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At Large Opinion

Owned: The MAGAs Have Won

Anthony Fauci

My fellow liberals, it is time to face up to the simple truth: The MAGAs have won. They’ve seen through our charade. The game is up. They have owned the libs.

For 18 months, we’ve attempted to fool them into thinking COVID-19 was real, and for 18 months they’ve resisted. We tried to convince them it was a deadly disease and that only a vaccine would stop it and save all of us from a plague of sickness and death. We reassured them that the vaccine didn’t cause birth defects or contain a microchip, but they were too smart for us. We told them over and over again how important it was to wear a mask, but they saw that scam for what it really was: just another way for us to take away their freedom.

We tried everything: scientific “evidence” from the Centers for Disease Control, terrifying mortality statistics, scary maps of infected areas in red states, tearful and heartfelt testimonies from overworked healthcare providers, and even interviews with dying people saying they wished they’d taken the vaccine. None of it worked. The MAGAs saw through it all like cheap plastic wrap. All that “news” about the vaccine being 90 percent effective, all those crisis actors in nurse uniforms, even “Dr. Fauci” — it was all in vain. (In retrospect, having Fauci rhyme with “ouchy” was a bad move.) 

They didn’t believe us when we told them 35 million unvaccinated (and counting) Americans had gotten COVID. Or when we said more than 625,000 Americans had died from the disease. Or when we pointed out how quickly the disease receded once we started getting millions of Americans vaccinated in January of this year. Or when we tried to explain that there was a new strain that is about to make us go through pandemic hell all over again if we don’t get 70 percent of us vaccinated.

They knew better. Of course, they had help. Republican Party leaders and their friends at Fox News and elsewhere in the right-wing media caught on to the liberal hustle years ago — our secret plan to let Black and brown and queer people take over and turn the country communist and give everybody free healthcare and college tuition. They knew COVID was another liberal hoax, just like climate change, and they raised the alarm.

Now the gory “statistics” on COVID are rising again, but the Republicans and their faithful base are hip to our scam. They’ve figured out it’s just more fake news, another attempt to give the evil communist Democrat Joe Biden more power over the lives of real Americans. 

GOP governors in Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, Florida, and elsewhere in Trumplandia are standing strong, signing executive orders banning schools, businesses, and local governments from issuing mask mandates or vaccine requirements. The courageous Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose state was averaging more new infections a day than the entire country of France last week (if you believe those “statistics”), issued the following statement on Friday while banning mask mandates for schools: “For more than a year our freedom has been under a constant assault by the radical left. Now they’re coming for your freedom again.”

It’s time for liberals to admit defeat. MAGAs and others are not going to take the vaccine or wear masks, and there is simply nothing we can do about it. We tried to take away their freedom but they stopped us. 

Perhaps it would help if we started to accept that the vaccine is like a comfort blanket for us liberals. We get it because it makes us feel safer. And since we’re not hurting anybody by getting that silly jab, let’s keep doing it. In fact, if the Republicans don’t want it, maybe we can start using the country’s remaining vaccine supply for boosters for us snow-flakey creatures who would take some solace from it. 

And I think we liberals should keep wearing masks in public indoor spaces for a while longer. It’ll be a cool way for us to recognize each other. 

That and the fact that we’re not dying on a ventilator. 

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At Large Opinion

The Lion Clean: Learning the Ropes at the Brooks

Bruce VanWyngarden

Tiara Woods and Paul Tracy are cleaning lions this week — namely the fearsome-looking stone creatures that guard the bottom of the stairs leading from Morrie Moss Lane up to the west side of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

The lions have been on duty in this location since at least the early 1980s, when they were moved here from a grand mansion that once stood on Union Avenue. Paul and Tiara have been on duty in this location for seven days, as of last Friday.

Though the lions were unable to protect their former home from the predations of a fast-food franchise developer, they’ve held up nicely here in this shady nook in Overton Park — except for some lichens, moss, soot, forest detritus, and occasional bird poop. They still look fierce, but they’ve never been cleaned and could use a proper spruce-up. Which is where Tiara and Paul come in.

Paul Tracy has been a preparator at the Brooks since 1982, when he was hired fresh out of nearby Southwestern College (now Rhodes). You might say he knows the neighborhood, having grown up in Crosstown and gone to Catholic High School, a couple blocks away.

Tiara graduated from Overton High School and attends the University of Tulsa. She is working at the Brooks this summer through an internship sponsored by Studio Institute, which endeavors to get young people connected to the visual arts and art careers. She wants to be an art conservator.

Tiara Woods, Paul Tracy, and a lion. (Photo: Bruce Vanwyngarden)

For the past week or so, Paul and Tiara have been working side by side. Paul has the lion on the right side of the steps; Tiara, the one on the left. They are using a combination of brushes, headstone-cleaning solution, water, and bamboo skewers. It is tedious, serious detail work. The stone is porous, pocked with nooks and crannies, tiny fossils, and complex carving details.

“You have to wet down an area, then spray it with cleaner and let it sit for a bit.” says Paul. “Then you scrub with brushes and pick at the small crevices and pock-marks with the skewers. Your fingers get kinda numb, so after a couple of hours, you have to stop.”

It’s the kind of work that might test the dedication of some young people, but for Tiara, it’s all part of the learning curve. “I like finding out how all these roles come together,” she says, “how people wear different hats.”

“It’s true,” says Paul. “It’s always something different. One day I’m matting a Rembrandt print, the next day I’m moving a heavy crate to a gallery to unpack.”

The museum began the cleaning of its outside artwork during the pandemic. “A lot of employees could work from home,” says Paul. “But the preparators, not so much, because we work on the objects, the art itself, and we couldn’t work in the museum. So it was decided that we would work on the art objects that were outside. It kept us on the payroll, which was nice, and it’s really spruced things up around here. Before this, we cleaned the seasons statues and they look wonderful — and they were a lot easier than these lions.”

After Paul and Tiara are finished cleaning the kings of Morrie Moss Lane, Tiara will move on to spend some time working on pre-Columbian objects with conservators.

“She wants to be a real conservator,” says Paul, laughing. “I just play one on TV.”

Tiara smiles. “I’m just really interested in art conservation,” she says. “And interested in working in a museum setting — so this is a great opportunity for me to get experience in an actual museum.”

And outside of one.

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At Large Opinion

The True-Life Adventures of Retiree Man

Into the woods. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

People keep asking me how this whole “retirement” thing is going, so I’m going to give y’all a brief summary.

First, I haven’t been in the actual Flyer office for more than five minutes at a time since March 2020, so the transition to pseudo-retirement was made a bit easier. The Flyer Slack channel — which is basically a group text that never ends — was the office. I still monitor Slack, but not as relentlessly.

I’m writing a couple hours a day and also putting together a collection of my stuff for publication at some point. I’ve been taking French classes on Duolingo for about a year, but I’ve ramped that up lately. I do laundry. I water the garden. I mow the yard. I’m living on the edge, basically.

The main change in my life is that I’m now a dog. I’m the alpha of my pack, and why not? I mean, the other two are co-dependent slugs who lack all ambition. They spend the day lying at my feet, waiting for me to move, which, to be honest, is a big responsibility. I get up and walk toward the kitchen and they follow, tails wagging, wide-eyed: “OMG, is he going to eat something??”

Or, if I should casually walk toward the back door, they’re up in a flash, dancing around like idiots. If they had pants, they’d be peeing in them: “Is he gonna grab the leashes? Huh? Huh? HE IS! HE’S GOT THE LEASHES! OH MY GOD, THIS IS AMAZING! WE’RE GOING FOR A WALK!! OH, HAPPY DAY!! HOLY CRAP!!!”

Oh to be a dog and to be able to get that ecstatic over something that happens Every. Damn. Day. It’s a gift, I swear. Lucky dogs.

Sometimes we go to Tobey Dog Park, which has a self-appointed park monitor: “Olive just pooped down in the corner, just past the third tree!” she’ll say, helpfully. Yeah, I saw that, thanks, Pat. She means well, but I’m the alpha here.

Most of the time, I drive them to Overton Bark, where they can hang with other hounds for a bit before we venture off onto one of the countless trails and paths of the Old Forest. I’m still finding new ones. Our walks are quiet, shady, soul-cleansing — and even informational. If I hear an unusual bird sound, I record it on my BirdNET app. When I learn that it’s a great crested flycatcher, I dutifully pass along this knowledge to my pack. I like to keep them updated. I also check plants, so I can let them know that those blue blossoms we’re walking past are American bellflowers.

After 45 minutes of hiking and learning, my girls are panting — bushed and ready for some air-conditioning. Who’s a good alpha? Who’s a good alpha? Me. That’s who.

Back home, as the dogs return to their spots under the table, I check Duolingo. I’ve gone from spending 30 minutes a day when I was working full-time to as much as a couple of hours a day now. Yes, it’s because I want to get better at French, but I must admit it’s also because Duolingo (le batard!) has figured out a way to make language learning a competitive sport. There are “standings” — a league where you get points for how many lessons you take each day and how many points you get on your tests. I like to win, mes amis, and Duolingo knows this — and knows how to suck me back in.

During my walk in the park, for example, I could have gotten an alert (I did) that “Amelie” has moved into first place in our league. You can be sure, now that I’m home, I’m going to be taking an unstoppable hour-long dive into passe imparfait. “Amelie” won’t know what hit her. She may be good at French, but she’s no alpha. She is powerless against Retiree Man.

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At Large Opinion

Pandemic of Ignorance

Tucker Carlson (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

More than 10,000 nearly identical bills have been introduced by Republicans in legislatures around the country to stop what they say is a rampant movement to install Sharia law in our courts, governments, and schools. Muslims, the GOP alleges, are planning to start teaching Sharia law to our children. Local chapters of the Washington, D.C.-based ACT for America, which describes itself as the “NRA of national security,” are encouraging their supporters to show up at school board meetings and legislative hearings and to flood lawmakers’ inboxes and phone lines in support of anti-Sharia law bills. Right-wing media hosts are stirring up their viewers and listeners with a constant drumbeat against the impending peril of Sharia law. …

Wait a minute. … Oooh, shoot. This is embarrassing. Folks, I accidently used some of my notes from 2012 to start this column. Damn. I hate to retype all that. Here’s an idea: Wherever you see “Sharia law” in that first paragraph, substitute “critical race theory.” 

So here we are, once again dealing with a well-organized campaign over a non-issue meant to divert the mouth-breathing GOP base — and the national media — from any substantive debate on real issues. File this with: Liberals will take your guns, gay marriage will destroy society, transgender folks will take over women’s sports and pee in the wrong bathroom, climate change is bogus, and COVID vaccines are a government plot akin to the Holocaust. 

We are in the middle of a full-blown pandemic of ignorance, and it’s an aggressive strain — easily spread by social media campaigns, cynical politicians, and television hosts who prey on human gullibility, naivete, and plain old stupidity. This pandemic is being spread intentionally. You don’t have to be within six feet of another person to get it. A mask won’t save you. The viral ignorance is everywhere, but it’s particularly rampant in red states and among Republicans and other consumers of right-wing media. 

This pandemic is anti-science. It is anti-common-sense. And it is killing people. It is one thing to deny that raging forest fires, record floods, unprecedented droughts, record-setting heat waves and deep freezes, melting ice caps, and rising sea levels are just “weather.” Yes, that’s ignorance, and yes, it is literally killing people, but it is not as clearly ignorant as refusing to take a vaccine that could save your life. That is next-level stupid. And it appears to have infected around 30 percent of the country’s adults. 

Those resisting the vaccine give a number of reasons: Vaccines may have bad side effects. (COVID definitely has bad side effects.) I have powerful T-cells and natural immunity. (No, you don’t.) I don’t trust the government. (But you trust conspiracy websites and Tucker Carlson?) It’s my body and my choice! (You know who doesn’t have a choice? Millions of unvaccinated school children headed back to class in August. Maybe think about them.)

The evidence could not possibly be clearer that the vaccines stop COVID. In one study released just last week, 99.2 percent of those who’d died from the Delta variant were unvaccinated. 

In Arkansas, the Delta variant is spreading rapidly. Just north of there, Missouri has become the poster child for the pandemic of ignorance, a blotch of deep purple on The New York Times’ daily map showing COVID hot spots and high-risk areas. Springfield hospitals have sent out a request for ventilators. Most counties in Southern Missouri have vaccination rates in the 25 percent range. It’s going to get worse there before it gets better, since many are still resisting getting the shot (unlike the Fox News hosts ranting against the vaccine — most of whom got the jab months ago). 

Meanwhile, here in Shelby County, our vaccination rate hovers at around 35 percent. Local officials are urging those who are still unvaccinated to get it done soon. I hope people listen. I mean, if we can stop Sharia law, surely we can stop the pandemic of ignorance.  

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At Large Opinion

Red Summer in Elaine, Arkansas

Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden

Join me today for a trip to Elaine, Arkansas. It’s a long drive, and I could use some company.

As Highway 61 winds its way down the bluffs to the big-sky alluvial plain of the Mississippi Delta, towering clumps of clouds drift on the western horizon, distant rainstorms visible in the morning light. We’ll probably get wet later.

In Tunica County, signs for casinos appear. Some are thriving, others are ghostly shells, losers on the gaming wheel of fortune that began spinning 30 years ago. The outlet mall south of town, once a thriving retail mecca, now features several empty storefronts, the formerly heady thrill of wandering through J.Crew, Victoria’s Secret, and Nautica having been replaced by porch-box fairies in FedEx trucks.

We turn onto Highway 49, a slim two-lane running string-straight to the Helena Bridge, a narrow and rusty looking structure with kudzu and trumpet vines adorning the side rails. It does not inspire confidence. Once across, we take the Great River Road 20 miles south to Elaine, where in 1919, the greatest race massacre in U.S. history occurred. But you knew that. Didn’t you?

Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden

Late winter through early autumn of 1919 has become known as “Red Summer,” a time when white supremacist terrorism and racial riots took place in more than three dozen cities across the U.S. — and in one small town, Elaine, Arkansas — where we are now parked in front of a vacant building with a sign that says “Birdhouse Capital of the World.” There are no people in sight. In 1919, thanks to Jim Crow election laws, Black Americans couldn’t vote, hold office, or serve on juries. At the same time, thousands of African-American soldiers were returning from World War I and were beginning to feel resentment at the racism they came home to. The nascent NAACP had begun to speak out for racial justice.

The reaction to Black activism was swift and brutal. The KKK and other groups began ginning up violence and hate against the “negroes” for “spreading socialism.” Jingoistic newspapers around the country fed the fire with articles about “armed negroes in revolt.” Racial violence soon broke out in Chicago, Omaha, Tulsa, Washington, D.C., and more than 30 other cities. Black communities were destroyed. Hundreds were killed. Lynchings were common.

In Phillips County, Arkansas, 100 residents of Elaine held a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America in a church north of town on September 30, 1919. Three white men monitored the gathering. Shots were fired and returned. A white security officer was killed; a deputy sheriff wounded. The word went out in Helena that there was an “armed negro revolt” underway.

Over the next couple of days, as many as 1,000 vigilantes, soldiers, and police swarmed into Elaine and committed horrific acts of violence. From an eyewitness account:

“Soldiers in Elaine committed one murder after another with all the calm deliberation in the world, either too heartless to realize the enormity of their crimes, or too drunk on moonshine to give a continental darn. … several hundred of them began to hunt negroes and shotting [sic] them as they came to them.”

Accounts of how many Black men, women, and children were killed range from 150 to 800. No one knows for sure, but there is little doubt that it was the worst race massacre in U.S. history. The ensuing kangaroo court trial and imprisonment of 12 Black “rioters” changed U.S. civil rights history and is worth your time to learn about, because like most Americans, you’ve probably never heard about any of it.

Thanks to the folks at the Elaine Legacy Center, that’s changing. They are organized and pushing forward with presentations, lectures, and other programs to restore life to the area and tell its story. On September 30th, there will be a service to honor the victims of the massacre. I’m going to write more about Elaine and the Legacy Center later this summer. I hope you’ll join me for a return trip.

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At Large Opinion

Jobs Not Wanted: Searching for Fulfilling Work

(Photo by Bruce VanWyngarden)

I had a nice conversation with Parnicka Motton last week. You never heard of her? She is the first and only female to hold the position of mechanic with the city of Memphis. And after a recent promotion, she’s now the only female service advisor with the city, managing vehicle maintenance for two police precincts.

Parnicka (par-neek-a), 44, was raised in North Memphis and taught how to work on cars by her grandfather. She was an only child and says she found refuge in books and cars.

At 20, she became a deputy jailer at 201 Poplar but, after seven years, decided the work wasn’t for her and found a job at Wackenhut, where she worked in security for several years. That work didn’t inspire her either. Then she got a break: A manager at Jiffy Lube took a chance on her, and she found herself working on cars, at long last. She moved up to assistant manager but, after six years, again wanted more. “There was no place left to grow there,” she says.

Then she saw an ad for an automotive tech with the city. “I was a 42-year-old Black woman applying for a job that had never been held by a woman,” she says. “I got the job in October 2019. I’ve been promoted twice this year, and I’ve never looked back. This is my passion, and hard work has paid off for me.”

Parnicka Motton (Photo by Bruce VanWyngarden)

It’s a great story. I’m telling it because I think Parnicka Motton’s determination to find fulfilling work can be instructive when we look at the current employment situation. Much has been written about how employers, particularly in the service industry — hotels, restaurants, delivery, etc. — are now unable to fill positions for room service, janitors, servers, dish-washers, and other lower-salaried jobs.

In Tennessee, and in 26 other states, GOP legislatures decided the reason employers can’t find workers is that people are staying home and living off the fat $300-a-week unemployment check that comes from the federal government. Combined with $250 a week in other benefits, an unemployed person can make a magnificent $26,000 a year. No wonder these folks aren’t rushing back to clean hotel rooms or wash dishes, the pols said. We need to cut benefits immediately. So they did.

It’s not working, at least, not so far. In Missouri, where benefits were cut on June 12th, there has been no uptick in job applications. In fact, a June 27th New York Times article reported that in states that have abandoned the federal benefits, responses on job postings were actually below the national average.

So what’s going on? For one thing, I think there are a lot of Parnicka Mottons out there, people driven to find a fulfilling career. And many of them discovered something about themselves while staying home during the pandemic. Namely, they don’t want to spend their lives doing crap work for crap pay at a crappy workplace.

Most of us have moved through lots of shit jobs. Before getting my first journalism gig at 30, I worked as a janitor, night watchman, hay-hauler, shingle-carrier, brick plant worker, seasonal harvest worker, house painter, and school bus driver, to name but a few. I was single, playing in bands, and not particularly career-driven, but I learned a lot about what kinds of jobs I didn’t want to spend my life doing.

I think a lot of people during the pandemic, maybe for the first time in their lives, got the space to think about their jobs, about how they’d been spending 40 hours of their lives each week. And I think many of those folks decided they wanted more control of how they spent their waking hours on this Earth.

If you’re going to try to make it on $12 an hour, why not try doing something on your own? Side hustles became gigs. Food trucks blossomed. Small businesses emerged. People decided they didn’t want a boss. They discovered that controlling your hours cuts down on childcare, commuting, and other expenses.

The pandemic opened a lot of people’s eyes to new possibilities. And chasing possibilities is what life should be all about. Just ask Parnicka Motton.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Mommy, Am I a Racist?

“Mommy, am I a racist?”

The sad tale of a child coming home from school and asking that question was put forth in the Tennessee General Assembly as one of the reasons the state needed to pass a bill forbidding the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) in the state’s schools. Teachers are indoctrinating our children with trauma-inducing leftist bilge, said the legislators. So they passed a law banning the teaching of CRT and anything else that implies that “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.”

Pshew! That was close. Can’t have
our students learning anything about race or privilege.

This concern about CRT isn’t limited to Tennessee. Fourteen other states have passed similar laws. It’s the topic du jour in the right-wing media ecosphere. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Mary Kay) and other GOP camera-sniffers bloviate about it whenever someone puts a microphone in front of them. Their message is always the same: The crazy, leftist, socialist liberals want teachers to tell your kids they’re racists!

Actually, critical race theory is a decades-old, elective, college-level area of study, often taught in law schools, where it’s used to examine how race has historically shaped our current legal system. CRT studies racism as a social construct — as opposed to something tied solely to an individual — and the effects it has upon society.

Those who are demanding that it shouldn’t be taught in our public schools might as well be demanding that teachers quit telling kids the Earth is flat. Little Braxton and Brittney are not being taught that they are racists by their teachers in public schools. The right-wing anger machine is trying to ban something that isn’t even happening. Which, of course, is the whole point. Faux outrage is a feature, not a bug.

Critical race theory is just the latest in a long line of false fear-mongering tactics, what passes for Republican policies these days. Put it up there with “caravans are coming,” “they’re gonna take your guns,” “Obama is a Kenyan,” “Fauci caused COVID,” and, of course, “the election was stolen.” It’s a distraction, something to keep folks riled up against each other.

So what are children actually learning about race these days? If my long-ago junior high education is any indication (hopefully, it is not), they might learn that the Civil War wasn’t just about slavery, that it was also fought for economic reasons (as if the entire economy of the South wasn’t based on slavery). They’ll probably learn there were some great generals: Grant, Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee (and his noble surrender at Appomattox). They’ll learn about the glorious and bloody battles. They might learn about Harriet Tubman.

They probably won’t learn about what it felt like to be sold as livestock at a slave market or about the dozens of “race riots” around the country in the decades after the war — in Tulsa, Memphis, Chicago, Atlanta, Eufaula, Wilmington, and elsewhere — “riots” being a more comfortable word for lynchings, murders, and the wholesale destruction of Black communities. They might learn about segregation and the Civil Rights movement, but they probably won’t read firsthand accounts of what it felt like to be denied voting rights or refused service at restaurants, stores, and lunch counters. They might learn about fire hoses, dogs, burned buses, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but they won’t learn what it was like to have experienced the countless put-downs, slurs, insults, and indignities large and small suffered by Black Americans throughout our history.

Maybe these things aren’t taught because our educators don’t want children to be uncomfortable. More likely they aren’t taught because the entire structure of the American education system was historically created by white people. It’s almost as though we needed a critical theory about our racial history, something that could help all of us understand the fallout from hundreds of years of slavery and oppression of Black Americans, something that could help parents have a calm, informed discussion with their child when she comes home and asks, “Mommy, am I a racist?”