An LGBTQ leader is calling for accountability from the Memphis City Council after a board member openly threatened and insulted two citizens during public meeting Tuesday [above)].
Council member Edmund Ford Sr. berated Alex Hensley, an aide to Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, and George Boyington, who leads intergovernmental relations and special projects for Shelby County Assessor of Property Melvin Burgess.
He told Hensley, who was representing Harris, “don’t you come back here,” and “you sit your behind down” after they spoke on an ordinance before the council. In commanding Boyington to come before the council, Ford said he did so “to blow you out of the water and back across the street” to the county administration building.
What has raised the ire of LGBTQ leaders, though, is Ford’s treatment of Hensley’s pronouns. She listed “she/they” in their signature on a letter given to council members about the pipeline ordinance. In referencing the letter, Ford called the pronouns “so irrelevant” before sarcastically asking Hensley, “Who is she and they?” Hensley said, “Me. … that’s a letter from me.” Ford did not continue the conversation but called for a vote on the pipeline ordinance.
Boyington came to Hensley’s defense, calling Ford’s conduct “unprofessional.” He was the only person to speak against Ford’s behavior. Not a single city council member spoke up, stepped in, or said a word against Ford’s outbursts.
Ford’s actions were ”bullying, trolling, and abusive” and “unacceptable and unbecoming of a public official,” according to Shahin Samiei, the Shelby County committee chair of the Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ advocacy group. Samiei included those remarks and more in a letter to each city council member.
“Both Memphis city and Shelby County governments have made remarkable strides in the past decade to be inclusive for employees and citizens regardless of who they are or who they love,” Samiei wrote. “This kind of behavior is embarrassing, unprofessional, and discriminatory.
“With all respect to the office, if an elected official finds himself, herself, or themself unable to discharge their representative duties with constituents and/or other public officials who are not like them, they should make room on the council for someone who can.
”Our community is watching, and we expect for this body to take action.”
Council member Martavius Jones, found himself on the business end of a Ford tantrum last year. Ford called him a “short-ass man” and said Jones had “butthole problems” during a public meeting [above]. Jones told The Daily Memphian Thursday he should have intervened in Tuesday’s verbal attack on members of the public.
