Tag: Antonio Parkinson

Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Special Session Day 2: GOP Chairman Clears Public for Clapping, Blasted As “Embarrassing”

State Capitol (Photo: Tennessee State Government)

Applause angered a House sub-committee chairman Tuesday enough that he cleared the room of all members of the public — including mothers of Covenant School students — in a move one leading lawmaker called “petty” and “embarrassing.”

The meeting was one of the first to review legislation in Gov. Bill Lee’s special session on public safety that began Monday. The room was packed for the House Civil Justice Subcommittee hearing, with some in the audience holding protest signs and many wearing red shirts for the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense In America.

Before the meeting began, subcommittee chairman Rep. Lowell Russell (R-Vonore), a retired state trooper, issued a warning to those in the audience holding signs. Signs were banned during the special session under rules approved by the House Republican supermajority Monday, even a standard letter-sized piece of paper with a statement written with a standard pen. 

“I’m still seeing signs,” Russell said before the meeting began. “If there’s an ongoing problem with these signs, we’ll just clear the room.”

Russell then singled out a member of the audience who, presumably, did not drop her sign. She was escorted — with hands on her body — by a Tennessee State Trooper who guided her past the front row, in front of the committee (to which she yelled something unintelligible on the stream of the meeting), and was taken from the room.

Tennessee State Government

A second young, female protestor was similarly sectored by troopers while she held her sign over her head. 

Tennessee State Government

With the removal done, Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis) — the only Democrat on the panel — thanked “the moms in the rooms fighting for the lives of our children.” The statement was met with applause. 

Parkinson drew applause again later when he asked GOP lawmakers to at least hear ideas from Democrats after many of their bills died before even being reviewed. That applause frustrated Russell who stammered that “we’re trying to do business here…” 

When Parkinson said, “it won’t kill us to hear” ideas of Democrats, he drew applause again but Russell seemed to just carry on. However, he didn’t let it go. It chided him enough to issue his warning again a few minutes later. 

“Listen, please,” Russell began. “We’re going to conduct the state’s business or we’re going to clear the room, O.K.? That’s your last warning.”

Later in the hearing, Rep. Jody Barrett (R-Dickson) presented a bill that would have allowed those with an enhanced handgun carry permit to carry a handgun on school property. However, he said the bill was not yet ready for votes and asked for it to be removed from the calendar. This was met with yet another round of applause. Russell was done. 

“Now, are we going to quieten down and listen or are we going to sit there and clap?” Russell asked the audience members. But he immediately made up his mind. “All right, troopers, let’s go ahead and clear the room.”

Someone asked Russell if they could just remove the half of the crowd “causing trouble.” But Russell said that would be hard to determine and, again, told troopers to “clear the room.” Someone in the audience chided Russell yelling “what a strong man you are.” 

The room was cleared in about 10 minutes. Those in audience included Covenant School parents. Katy Dieckhaus, whose child was killed in April shooting, was present according to a tweet from Tennessee Lookout editor Holly McCall. 

WKRN reporter Chris O’Brien said Sarah Shoop Neumann, whose child was at the school during the shooting, was also there.   

Russell’s decision was blasted by Tennessee Democrats, including Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville). 

House Minority Leader Rep. Karen Camper (D-Memphis) said she was “appalled by what occurred” and issued a lengthy statement. 

“Citizens were removed from the room for sitting quietly, and then the entire room was cleared because some people clapped during the meeting. This is outrageous. I cannot believe how petty this was.  

“When the Covenant shooting occurred in March, members of this body poured out their hearts to the community and said they cared. Thousands of Tennesseans came to their house — the People’s House — to urge us to do something about senseless gun tragedies. They literally shouted for us to do something.  

“Now, months later, we are supposedly here to finally do something to protect our children in this state. And what happens? People are removed from the building that they own as they sit quietly and then clap softly for agreeing with a statement. 

“For a committee chairperson to use their position to banish grieving Tennesseans from the committee room is beyond the pale. This needs to be explained as to why people were removed and the room was cleared after citizens took to the time and effort to be present in their government. This is embarrassing.”

Categories
News News Blog

Local Leaders on Vote to Remove Bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest

Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home/Facebook

 

The vote by the Tennessee Historical Commission on whether or not to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee State Capitol has been rescheduled from February 17th to March 9th.


The State Capitol Commission voted in favor of removing the bust from the Capitol in July, and petitioned the Historical Commission to move the bust from the Capitol to the Tennessee State Museum. Forrest was a Confederate general, slave trader, and Ku Klux Klan leader. The sculpture of his likeness has been front and center in the Tennessee State Capitol Building since the late 1970s. The Flyer spoke to three local leaders about the issue.

Michalyn Easter-Thomas of the Memphis City Council

“We should pay close attention to what we choose to memorialize and render as proud history, said Memphis City Council member Michalyn Easter-Thomas. “My hope is that our state legislators vote to remove the bust that symbolizes murder, oppression, and tyranny in this city, region, state, and nation. However, no matter the outcome, it can be assured that the fight for justice will continue no matter whose bust is on the pedestal.” 

“I obviously don’t agree with the statue being in the Capitol and I’ve expressed that. I did a live video talking about that. I continue to disagree with that symbol governing over the most powerful building in the state of Tennessee,” said Tennessee State Representative Antonio Parkinson.

Tennessee State Representative Antonio Parkinson

“This statue sits in the most prominent place when you get off the elevator. I vehemently oppose it. However, it is nowhere near my highest priority in regards to what I think is important for people at this time. We are coming out probably the worst period in most Americans lives, financially, mentally and even educationally. My priorities are the health of our community and the education of our children and how we put money on the table of the people we represent. That statue doesn’t address any of those. The governor’s office and the General Assembly know exactly where I stand on that, they know exactly what to do.”       

Tennessee State Representative London Lamar


“There is no question that the history of Nathan Bedford Forrest is a symbol of hate,” said State Representative London Lamar. “The Confederacy itself symbolized the legalization of slavery where Nathan Bedford became rich from selling slaves on an auction block in Memphis, Tennessee, and served as the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. There is no positive Tennessee history behind Nathan Bedford Forrest, so there is no reason that Tennessee should be honoring him with a bust in our State Capitol. The people that we should be honoring are those who make a positive impact on our State’s history.


“The bust should be moved to the Tennessee State Museum because removing this bust does absolutely nothing to remove Tennessee’s history, it simply removes the fact that Tennessee seems to praise the man who obviously symbolizes white supremacy through his determination to keep slavery legal in this state and led mass murder on African Americans. I hope the commission votes to remove the bust to the museum where the story of Nathan Bedford Forrest can be told in the appropriate context.“ 

Categories
Cover Feature News

Black and Proud

CREDIT: Photographs by Maya Smith

Beyond police brutality and systemic racism, Black people, because of their hairstyles, music of choice, sexual orientation, and culture, often face discrimination, microaggressions, and prejudice in everyday life. Still, a tenacious pride abounds in the Black community. This is the story of five Memphians’ experiences as Black people in America. — Maya Smith

Black and Trans

Five years ago, Kayla Gore was robbed and stabbed in the shoulder with a butcher knife outside of her home in Memphis. With two bloody bath towels wrapped around her hands, which had been ripped open from attempting to grab the knife from her attacker, Gore waited for the police to show up. When they did, the first question the officers asked Gore is if the incident had been related to sex work.

Photographs by Maya Smith

Kayla Gore

“They acted as if I was a suspect instead of the victim,” she says. A week later, Gore found out that the District Attorney would not be pressing charges on the individual who attacked her.

“That was the end of that,” Gore says. “And I know that decision was solely based on me being Black and trans. If I were white and trans, or even just white, they would have prosecuted the case to the fullest extent of the law.”

Gore says this is not an isolated incident for Black trans women in America. “Even when we call the police for protection, the tables can easily turn from us being a victim to a suspect.”

That is just one example of the ways in which trans women of color are treated differently, especially in the South, Gore says. “Being a trans Black woman in the South feels like living in a desert where I don’t have access to a lot of things. It’s a resource desert, a safety desert, a housing desert. This is all because of how I show up with my transness and my Blackness.”

This is the “lived reality” for trans women in the South, Gore says. “I could literally walk out of my house and be killed because I’m Black and because I’m trans. People have their own personal biases about trans folks in the South, so it makes it even more dangerous for us.”

To make matters worse, Gore says there is no trans representation in elected or appointed officials on the local or state level, which makes her community “feel like we don’t have a space or a voice. When we elevate our voices, they’re erased.”

Feeling left out of spaces isn’t new for Gore, who recalls her first adverse experience because of her Blackness and queerness occuring when she was 8 years old. “I went to a very diverse church, but it was predominantly white. That’s when I noticed there was a difference in the way I was treated versus my white counterparts. I would get excluded from summer camps or sleepovers. It could have been because I’m Black or because I was queer, as I was definitely a very queer child.”

After that experience, Gore says her mother had “the talk” with her and she realized “I’m Black, therefore things will be different for me.” But different didn’t have a negative connotation for Gore: “I’ve always been proud of my Blackness because of how I was raised by my mother. I’ve always been super proud of how I show up in the world.” Much of that, she says, is the ability to connect to other people’s Blackness. “I’m fascinated with Black history. It fortified my love for my Blackness.”

It took a little longer for Gore to embrace her queerness though. She says for years she tried to be “stealthy, identifying as a Black gay man.”

But when she transitioned 10 years ago, Gore says she felt “like a whole new person. Pride became more than a day or a month, but a 365-day thing. I’m out and proud every day now. When I show up, people can’t help but see my transness, and I don’t think there’s a better way to show my pride than that.”

That pride led Gore to activism. For 10 years, she’s been advocating for better access and equality for trans women of color. Fully committed to the cause, she’s now the executive director of My Sister’s House, which provides emergency shelter and other resources for trans women of color in Memphis.

Gore’s hope is to make life better for “people like myself,” continuing the work of Black trans women who have come before her. “We have to pick up the baton and keep the marathon going until we reach liberation.”

Black and Preaching

Rev. Earle Fisher has always been going against the grain. When his first grade teacher in Michigan threatened to paddle all of the Black students, Fisher recalls protesting and walking out of the classroom. “I wasn’t going for it then, and I’m not going for it now. I’ve always been critical of racial injustice,” says Fisher, now the senior pastor at Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church in Whitehaven.

Rev. Earle Fisher

As a Black pastor, Fisher says he’s in a “beautiful and complicated position. It’s beautiful because the Black faith has always been something that sustains Black people throughout history, even in Africa. In the United States, it was the impetus for resistance work that led to abolition, the Black Power movement, and the civil rights movement.”

Fisher says his role is also “complicated,” explaining that religion has historically “been co-opted and used as a tool of manipulation, especially in the white Evangelical strand of Christianity. It’s not always easy to embrace a Black pastor in America and especially in the South.”

This concern was at the forefront of Fisher’s mind one Sunday in 2015 when a white couple showed up to attend his predominantly Black church. Nervously reading over his notes, he questioned whether his prepared message would offend the couple and if he needed to change it for their sake.

“I immediately began to skim over my preaching manuscript in my mind, asking myself, ‘Am I going to say anything offensive to them?’ I know I can be a little edgy and unorthodox in my attempts to articulate the gospel on a grassroots and socially conscious level. I had to think about if I needed to dial it back. Do I need to assimilate to a more moderate conservative theology in my own church?”

Ultimately, Fisher says he stuck with his original manuscript and delivered a message with “unadulterated and unapologetic commitment to Black liberation theology, and they actually loved it. But the point is, how many times do you think a white pastor would question his sermon because of Black visitors?”

Fisher says when you grow up Black in America, “the air you breathe informs you of these social constructs that are a part of our reality. But it’s not a reality I was ever ashamed of.”

Fisher says he’s always been proud to be Black. He shows that on the pulpit, as well as on the streets through activism and grassroots involvement.

“I don’t have to apologize for my heritage or my ethnicity,” he says. “I don’t see it as a negative attribute. I thank God I’m Black. I don’t need to be ashamed about it. There are so many times where my Blackness is affirmed. How can you watch Serena Williams and not be Black and proud? How can you listen to Malcolm or Martin speak? Or how can I be in my house with my family playing spades, listening to the newest album, and not be proud? Just thinking about these moments gets me excited. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Black and in Business

As a college student in the Chicago area, Bartholomew Jones frequented many coffee shops. One thing he noticed about the shops was the lack of people who looked like him in the room.

Bartholomew Jones

“I never had a negative encounter,” he says, “but the whole experience was just white, from the people to the music playing over the speakers. So I just assumed coffee was a white people’s thing.”

That began Jones’ multi-year journey to learn about the history of coffee, which culminated last year when he started CxffeeBlack, a coffee company that seeks to “make coffee Black again.”

In his research, he learned that coffee originated in Ethiopia and was later brought to Europe.

“Black people in America don’t understand our cultural ties to coffee,” he says. “So the question was ‘What’s a way for us to provide more education on the history of coffee and also try to provide a way for more Black people to experience coffee?’ That was the inspiration for starting the company. I wanted Black people to feel like coffee was for them.”

Jones’ years in college opened his eyes to more than the lack of diversity in coffee shops. He also saw firsthand “the reality of how unequal society is.”

At Wheaton College, Jones says there were few other Black students on campus — so much so that he knew most by name. Growing up in Whitehaven, a majority-Black neighborhood, for most of his childhood, he says that was a culture shock.

“I noticed how much the white guys would drink and do drugs and there were never any police around. Meanwhile, I grew up in an overpoliced neighborhood. I got to see how the other side was living and what they could get away with.”

That wasn’t the first time Jones says he was made aware of the difference in the way he and his Black peers were treated. He remembers taking a ride with his mentor, who was white, during his senior year in high school. Jones asked if he could play one of his favorite CDs, a Christian hip-hop album by Lecrae.

“I put the CD in and he was immediately like ‘I have to show you something.’ He took me to the school basement where they keep old tracts and handed me a red pamphlet about types of demonic music, which of course included rap and hip-hop. But the reasoning was because they come from the ‘dark continent of Africa.’ I was speechless.”

Jones says he was aware of racism in a historical context, but not in the form of present-day prejudices. “It didn’t matter how many people were kind to me, they still hated my culture,” he says. “It didn’t matter how smart or nice I was, I was still Black in their eyes. Only if I conform and assimilate to their culture and listen to their type of music, am I then okay.”

Today, Jones fully embraces his Blackness, in part by “providing quality coffee for the ‘hood” and also by protecting and uplifting other Black people.

Jones says the most important part of that role is being the father of two young boys. He and his wife want to ensure their sons are prepared for what they might face as Black men in America, he says.

“We want to give them a new narrative, though. We don’t want our boys to think they are destined to be killed by police officers. We have to give them the tools to protect themselves and overcome obstacles they will encounter as Black men. Most importantly, we teach our kids that they are Black and they should be proud of it.”

Black and Non-Binary

When Mia Saine was in preschool, they were bullied because their skin was darker than their classmates’ and their hair was a different texture.

Mia Saine

“This was the first time I remember any form of discrimination,” they say. “I mean, imagine being a 4-year-old and someone pointing out your features that make you different or implying those features make you not desirable to befriend. It was hard.”

Later, Saine remembers seeing Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” on TV for the first time and recalls that being the earliest moment they were proud of their Blackness.

“I got to see Michael Jackson playing this role as a zombie. He was on TV. It was just so magical. My parents introduced me to a lot of Black music, and I started to feel a sense of pride for our culture.”

Saine, born and raised in Arlington, is an illustrator and graphic designer in Memphis. They are also Black and non-binary, which they say “is a protest itself. Every day I’m going against the so-called normal lifestyle and American Dream. But that just doesn’t represent who I am as a person.”

As a high school student in Arlington and then a college student at Memphis College of Arts, Saine says they had to learn how to navigate predominantly white spaces, but there were times “when I was uncomfortable and just couldn’t relate because I didn’t have certain privileges and opportunities.”

Now, a full-time professional artist, Saine says that discomfort continues. Often in meetings, “I’m the token Black person. There have been times where I’ve been like ‘Oh yeah, this conversation is happening because I’m Black.’ It’s infuriating. However, having been on both sides of the coin, I know how to adapt and code switch.”

As an artist of color, Saine says “every time I present something, it’s over 100 percent, to surpass the expectations for that of a Black person. I feel responsible to represent a whole group of people. Being a non-binary Black artist is an empowering thing for me.”

However, Saine says they “feel obligated to go above and beyond to prove myself worthy in a way I shouldn’t have to. I have to overcompensate so often. But at the same time, I’m the type of person who won’t stand for any kind of discrimination. I don’t want to be seen as the angry Black woman, so I have to figure out how to be diplomatic but still stern.”

Despite the challenges over the years, Saine says they’ve come to love their queerness and Blackness, realizing “I should just love myself for me and advocate for all of my qualities instead of trying to seek approval and forgiveness. I can’t wait around for people to understand me. I have to live my life.”

Saine says they’ve felt more hopeful about the future for Black Americans in the past few weeks, seeing more people “accept the reality of people who are like me, my friends, family, and loved ones. Because we matter so much. We just want to be valued. That’s all.”

Black and Elected

Antonio Parkinson’s dreadlocks were below his ears when he had to cut them in order to keep his job at the Shelby County Fire Department.

Antonio Parkinson

“I started to grow dreadlocks,” he says. “There was no policy in place at the time, but they wrote me up, and when I wouldn’t sign the write-up, they were ready to suspend me. They told me I had to cut them or I’d be fired. So I did, and it made me feel terrible. I felt singled out. They didn’t understand my culture and weren’t trying to at the time.”

Parkinson says hair discrimination is just a drop in the bucket of what he experienced during his 25 years working for the fire department. From racial slurs to attempts to thwart the promotion of him and other Black firefighters, Parkinson says the culture was one of “suppression for people that look like me.”

He thought about walking away several times “when it got ugly, but I’m a fighter so I stayed. I simply looked at it as ‘Why not me?’ Why should your child and family have opportunities and not mine? Why can’t I do something that will create generational wealth for my family?”

Now, in his ninth year as a Tennessee state representative, Parkinson says his experiences over the years have only added fuel to the fire, motivating him to create legislation, such as healthy workplace laws to prevent discrimination on jobs and the Tennessee CROWN Act, which would make it illegal to discriminate against natural hair in the workplace.

“I just wanted to get some stuff done,” he says of his decision to run for office in 2011. “I wanted to level the playing field for everyone.” But discrimination and racism is still a reality for Parkinson.

“The Tennessee legislature is rampant with racism,” he says. “There’s overt racism. There’s covert racism. It’s in the racist jokes and slurs to the policies. And if you say something about their racism or racist statues, then they want to kill all of your bills.”

For example, Parkinson says no people of color had any input that made it into the state’s budget this year. “Not one single person of color had something in the budget. What does that say? The budget is a moral document that determined the priorities for the state.”

“Sometimes it gets discouraging,” he says of his role as a legislator in the majority-white General Assembly. “Sometimes they’re practicing discrimination and don’t even realize what they’re doing is racism. They say things that are not necessarily from a place of malice, but a place of ignorance. So part of my job is educating them.”

Despite the discrimination over the years, Parkinson says he has always been proud of being Black.

“I knew I was Black early on. My mother wouldn’t not let me know. She taught me who I was and how proud I should be. I loved and still love being Black. There’s nothing like the culture and everything that comes with it.”

Because of that, Parkinson says he is an “unapologetic, uncut version of myself. We shouldn’t have to compromise who we are, at all. I don’t care if you have gold teeth or weave down your back. We don’t have to compromise our culture. This culture is dynamic with everything from natural hair to 26-inch rims to bass in the music. We should not be ashamed or dumb down who we are for someone else’s comfort.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Juneteenth: Leaders Explain Significance, Why It Should be Recognized

As the Black Lives Matter movement picks up steam around the country, so has the push to make June 19th an official holiday.

June 19th, deemed Juneteenth or Emancipation Day, marks the day in 1865 when the Union Army arrived in Texas and announced the end of the Civil War and slavery.

Though Juneteenth is not designated as a federal holiday, 46 states have made the day either a state holiday or state holiday observance. Here, June 19th is neither.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson is sponsoring a bill in the Tennessee House to change that. The legislation, HB 1626, would make June 19th a state holiday.

“It’s very important for us as African Americans to recognize something that ended the biggest trauma toward black people in the United States,” Parkinson said. “Everyone needs to be educated in all of our history in relation to all people. There’s a rich history in our state and I think when people receive that education in cultural matters and truthful history, it sheds new light and it gives you some glimmer of perspective from people who don’t look like you and haven’t had the same experiences.”

Citing racial division and a “culture of racism” in the Tennessee General Assembly, Parkinson said he is not confident that the bill will pass, but he “will do everything I can to get it to pass.”

“You have to understand the culture we have in the Tennessee legislature,” he said. “There’s a culture of ignorance that exists. And when I say that I don’t mean in a demeaning fashion, but the actual definition of ignorance. There is a need to overcome those things.”

Noelle Trent, director of Interpretation, Collections, and Education for the National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM), said Juneteenth is an “important moment,” because it’s a “moment celebrating black freedom.”

Trent said historically Juneteenth has been largely celebrated in Texas, but it’s evolved into a “national moment to pause and celebrate the end of slavery and bondage.”

[pullquote-1]

“There hasn’t been a national moment of recognition of ‘yes, we enslaved millions of people for hundreds of years,’” Trent said. “We owe it to those people who were so critical to the foundation of this country in a number of different ways. Also, we should celebrate the fact that their descendants are still in this country. It’s worth taking a moment and doing that.”

Trent said that Independence Day and Juneteenth celebrate different milestones in the country, but are equally important from a historical standpoint.


“Both of those dates deserve to be on the national calendar,” Trent said. “As a country we owe it to citizens to take pride and recognize both of those moments.”

This year, the NCRM, in partnership with five other museums and historical institutions around the country, will host a virtual Juneteenth commemoration Friday. The site BLKFREEDOM.org will provide educational content, artistic performances, and discussion prompts in an effort to explore the meaning of freedom, justice, and democracy.

“We’re using this moment to celebrate what we’ve overcome and use that to galvanize and catalyze the next part of the freedom struggle,” she said. “We have a unique opportunity to do so this year considering the current climate of the country.”

Parkinson said he believes you can’t “remove racism from the hearts of people.” That happens through life experience or “divine intervention.” However, he hopes his legislation and the current protests happening around the state will help.

“It’s not like you can turn on a switch with legislation,” Parkinson said. “You can’t legislate people’s hearts. It’s going to take some intervention. And that’s happening right now with everyone expressing themselves related to the killings of unarmed African Americans and these racist symbols and statues. Maybe those things will begin to thaw out some of the hearts that are operating in our capital.”

Read Parkinson’s legislation below.

[pdf-1]

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Sugarmon, Carlisle, Greer, and Logan Battle for Council Seats

Erika Sugarmon resembles her father, the late political and legal eminence Russell Sugarmon, in her determination to set aside initial setbacks as a candidate. The elder Sugarmon ran for a seat on the old Memphis City Commission back in the last days of Jim Crow. He didn’t make it, but persisted until, years later, he won elections for the state legislature and General Sessions Court.

His daughter is 0-for-1 as a candidate, having been a runner-up to Ford Canale last year in a special election for the Super District 9, Position 2, City Council seat. But that loss was a close one, and Erika Sugarmon’s second-place finish in a race where she was having to share an anti-establishment constituency with several other challengers was strong enough to encourage her to make a second try for the council.

This year, instead of taking another shot at Position 2 incumbent Canale, Sugarmon is going for the Position 1 seat in District 9. That’s an open seat, and, instead of six opponents, she has one — developer Chase Carlisle, whom she sees as one more specimen of an elitist constituency that is already over-represented on the council.

Photographs by Jackson Baker

Rhonda Logan (l), Sherman Greer

As she explained to a group of supporters at a fund-raising event at Halle Plantation in Collierville Saturday night, Sugarmon sees herself as a people’s candidate, proud to have several endorsements from labor groups. And, with a nod to her family tradition, she said, “I’m a fighter. I’m for Memphis first.”

She professes to be alarmed at the number of city contracts that go “outside our state” and wants to “keep the money in Memphis.” She talks up affordable housing, a more equitable awarding of city contracts, and the rights of citizens to have a greater say in matters of neighborhood development. These and other issues have a familiar ring in a council race. But Sugarmon has some specialty issues as well. She promises to pay specific heed to the needs of foster parents, the repurposing of the Mid-South Coliseum, and the plight of the hard of hearing, whom she sees as an underserved population.

Her concern for the latter was dramatized at the event Saturday night by a trio of young women who illustrated a musical number, “The Song of Peace,” with choreographed signing gestures, as well as by the fact that the remarks of Sugarmon, a social studies and government teacher at White Station High School, were “interpreted” for the audience in sign language by a White Station colleague Sherry McCrory at her side.

Sugarmon with signer McCrory

The attendees were treated also to offerings from a saxophonist and a ballet dancer and to a formal dinner. The settings may have seemed a bit elaborate, even eccentric, as did the venue, in a relatively remote section of suburban Collierville. But, as Sugarmon explained, “You go where you can.” She is somewhat at the mercy, as was the case on Saturday, of venues offered up as in-kind donations.

That was one reason for the location. Another was, quite simply, that she says she intends to carry her message to all corners of her sprawling super-district — from Idlewild to Raleigh to East Memphis to Hickory Hill. It remains to be seen if opponent Carlisle can match her visibility or chooses instead to run like various other well-funded candidates represented in the past by the Caissa consulting firm — via thickets of yard signs and heavy advertising.

• The council race in District 1, which is based in north Memphis, Frayser, and Raleigh, isn’t exactly a pure one-on-one like that between Sugarmon and Carlisle. There’s a “but” clause to that reality, though.

There are three candidates of record in District 1: Dawn Bonner, Rhonda Logan, and Sherman Greer, and the latter two are considered to be in a de facto one-on-one situation, with the greatest likelihood of ending up in a matchup against each other if the October 3rd vote totals require a runoff.

When it came time last year for the remaining council members to appoint replacements for colleagues who vacated their seats to assume other offices, Logan, it will be remembered, was the preferred candidate for the District 1 seat of various long-term activists in the city’s northern tier — notably state Representative Antonio Parkinson.

There were other applicants, though, and something of a stalemate set in among council members. In the final analysis, after weeks of indecision, the appointment went to Greer, who had a lengthy record of service as an aide to 9th District Congressman Harold Ford Jr., and later to Ford’s successor Steve Cohen.

Both Logan and Greer were on hand Monday for a ceremonial announcement by Parkinson and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland of plans for a new Raleigh Farmers Market on a former storage site for the Tennessee Department of Transportation. The site may also include facilities for organized athletics and other community needs, said Parkinson, who emceed the ceremony and had largely brokered the project.

Logan was there as director of the Raleigh Community Development Corporation, as was Greer as councilman for the affected area. Both spoke at the event, and both were introduced by Parkinson, who noticeably stumbled over Greer’s name and made a point of profusely apologizing.

No harm, no foul — except that later, when Parkinson posted a video of the event on his Facebook page, he did so over the following text: “State Representative Antonio Parkinson, Rhonda Logan for Memphis City Council District 1, Willie Brooks For County Commission, Announce Plans for New Raleigh Farmers Market.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Shelby Democrats to Elect New Chairman; “Bathroom Bill” Peters Out

CREDIT: JB

Shelby County Democrats have a contest on their hands for the chairmanship of the party. In party caucuses at White Station High School last Saturday, members were selected both for the party’s local executive committee and for its grassroots assembly. And four people were nominated for the top job to succeed Corey Strong, who had indicated for some time, largely on account of his military reservist duties, that he would not be seeking re-election.

Jeff Etheridge, Michael Harris, Erica Sugarmon, and Allan Creasy were the nominees, but Sugarmon and Creasy, each of whom made some well-noticed races last year (Sugarmon for a Memphis City Council vacancy, Creasy in a close race against GOP incumbent state Representative Jim Coleh) quickly turned down their nominations. Both are certain to be heard from again.

Meanwhile, it is a two-man race for Democratic chair, to be decided this coming Saturday at noon at Lindenwood Christian Church.

The two contestants: Jeff Etheridge, the former owner of Dilday’s TV Sales and Service, has been running for several months and is essentially using his retirement from business as an opportunity to help revitalize the Shelby County Democratic Party. Michael Harris has been involved in the same process, working in the party’s outreach effort.

• The Tennessee General Assembly’s seemingly annual attempt at passing a “bathroom bill” — construed as an effort to keep transgender individuals out of gender-specific bathroom spaces — has suffered the same fate as all previous versions. This year’s bill, however, is on the way to earning its defeat by the unusual and paradoxical fact of actually being passed.

Which is to say, the bill has now been amended to the point of being moot. It no longer seeks to define “indecent exposure” in the context of a person designated at birth as a member of one gender using a bathroom (or “rest room, locker room, dressing room, or shower”) reserved for members of another gender.

JB

Antonio Parkinson

In fact, an amendment added to the bill (HB1151/SB2097), before scheduled deliberations on it on Tuesday in both House and Senate committees, stripped it of any reference to genders at all. The bill now merely names the aforementioned venues as places where indecent exposure can occur and be properly penalized.

This development underscored previous objections to the bill in the House by Representative Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis), who pointed out in debate that, inasmuch as indecent exposure was illegal everywhere, therefore any and all spaces and places — even, as he put it, a hallway, a janitor’s closet, or the speaker’s chamber — could as easily be named as off limits.

The bill was scheduled for hearing in House Judiciary last Tuesday but was held over until the committee’s Wednesday session by committee chairman Michael Curcio (R-Dickson) on grounds that the Tuesday morning session’s hour-long time limit did not permit proper discussion.

Representative Karen Camper (D-Memphis), the House minority leader, protested that the postponement was unfair to the Rev. Alaina Cobb, a transgender herself, who had traveled all the way from her home in Chattanooga in order to oppose the bill.

Cobb would have that opportunity in the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, which met later Tuesday and heard the bill as its first order of business. To the surprise of some attendees, who were unaware of the new amendment transforming the nature of the bill, the bill passed unanimously on an 8-0 vote and has now been referred to the Senate Calendar Committee, one step away from floor action. The House Judiciary Committee followed suit a day later after Senate Judiciary action.

Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, which had opposed the bill as discriminatory, professed himself as unconcerned about the bill in its amended form, though he wondered aloud, perhaps with tongue in cheek, if the new genderless version might open the way to charges of same-sex indecent exposure in sports teams’ locker rooms.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Clerb May Get a Legislative Windfall; “Bathroom Bill” Redux

NASHVILLE — That old saying about ill winds blowing somebody some good applies to the version of the community oversight bill passed on Monday night by the Tennessee Senate. In this case, it applies to supporters of the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) in Memphis.

CLERB is the Bluff City’s equivalent of Nashville’s Community Oversight Board (C.O.B.), voted into being last November by voters in the state’s Capital city. It is the existence of the Nashville board and, in particular, the power of subpoena it was created with, that prompted the dominant Republican supermajority in the General Assembly to support Senate Bill 1407/House Bill 658, which would limit the powers of the C.O.B. — or of any community oversight board — to the mere advisory function toward the conduct of city law enforcement that CLERB enjoys.

In Memphis, only the Memphis City Council can employ a subpoena in relation to alleged excesses by the Memphis Police Department. CLERB can request one but cannot act on its own.

But SB 1407 contains amendments that would allow a methodology for subpoenas to be issued at the behest of a community oversight board. A Circuit Court or Chancery Court judge would have to approve the request, and it would have to be made by a chief of police, the internal affairs division of a police department, or a special investigator.

It is the provision for a special investigator that could expand the powers of CLERB. That was the conclusion reached by two Democratic Memphis state Senators — Raumesh Akbari and Katrina Robinson — in the wake of their No vote for the Senate measure, taken, as they acknowledged, out of solidarity with Nashville Democrats who resisted the measure. (The other Memphis Democrat in the Senate, Sara Kyle, also voted against the measure.)

But, as Akbari said afterward, almost in the hushed tone of someone who had found money along a walking path and realized she might have to relinquish it to a claimant at some point, “This would allow CLERB to hire a special investigator in Memphis and ask for subpoenas. That’s something they can’t do now.” Robinson concurred with that sentiment.

The “claimant” in Nashville that could nullify this apparent stroke of fortune for CLERB advocates is the other legislative chamber, where HB 658, the House version of the C.O.B. bill would make no allowance for any subpoena power for a civilian oversight board.

At some point, representatives of the two legislative chambers are likely to sit in conference to determine a final agreed-upon version of the oversight measure. Supporters of CLERB will find themselves waiting to see which way the wind blows.

• In the Tennessee General Assembly, legislation on matters of sexual orientation is often introduced in disguise or in Trojan Horse measures designed to conceal the actual purpose of a measure. Such was the case last Wednesday in the House Criminal Justice subcommittee, when HB 1151 by Representative John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) came up for discussion.

In brief, what the bill does is designate a series of places (bathrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms) as “public areas” where laws against indecent exposure would apply.

Candidly enough, Ragan began accounting for the bill’s purpose with a “background” explanation that it was needed to “ensure clarity” because of the Obama administration’s having intervened on behalf of transgender students using facilities other than those for “whatever they were naturally.” Ragan went on to mention rulings that “created a lot of confusion” and threatened the state with a loss of federal funding.

He was about to delve further into those circumstances when Representative Michael Curcio (R-Dickson), evidently alarmed at this fiddling with the lid of a Pandora’s box and the overt disclosure of the transgender issue, interrupted with a challenge that Ragan’s explanation had nothing to do with “the bill that was called.”

Uncomprehending that he had pulled aside what was meant to be a veil, Ragan protested that what he had said was merely the necessary background.

Curcio interrupted again: “I don’t think it is.” And he stressed that the bill merely identified the aforementioned “public places” as areas where strictures against indecent exposure would apply. “And that’s all it does.”

Unavoidably, as discussion of the bill became general, it was acknowlledged that the bill went on to describe these newly identified places as “designated for single-sex, multi-person use, if the offender is a member of the opposite sex designated for use.”

It became obvious, in short, that HB 1151 was a redux version of the infamous “bathroom bill,” scrubbed away in the previous two legislative seasons, due largely to pressure from the state’s business communities.

Alarmed at the unintended forthrightness of the developing discussion, committee chair Andrew Farmer (R-Sevierville) took up the argument for the bill from both Ragan and Curcio, explaining, in effect, that there was nothing to see here. “We’re just making it clear that those are public places.” Indecent exposure, he said, was “already a crime.”

Representative Antonio Parkinson, a Memphis Democrat and this year’s chairman of the Shelby County delegation, wondered in that case why it was necessary to spell out restrooms, locker rooms, and so forth. Farmer replied that too many laws are “vague” and that they should be “tight.”

Parkinson persisted: “If a person walks into anywhere and exposes themselves to someone, that’s criminal already, so why are we adding this to it?”

Farmer repeated: “We don’t need vague laws. We need to be specific so the public understands our intent.” Parkinson threw up his hands. “If that’s true, we don’t have enough room or space in our law library” for the places that could be listed. “We didn’t list this room, and I’m not trying to be funny.”

As for Farmer’s concern that the public understand the intent of the legislation, Representative William Lamberth (R-Portland), the House majority leader, had meanwhile spelled it out:

“Until recent years,” Lamberth said, “it was not envisioned that individuals with anatomical differences would be in the bathrooms of the opposite sex.” The bill, he said, “recognizes that in today’s world there may be individuals biologically of one sex in a bathroom that may be marked for another sex.” A bathroom, he said, was “not actually in the code as a public place, though it may be more of a public place than it once was.”

With all the blinders off and the euphemisms cast aside, the newly revived bathroom bill was passed on this week to the full Judiciary Committee, which is very likely to become a highly public place itself.

…

Paul Rose (R-Covington) was sworn in last week by Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally (top, right) as new state senator for District 32, which covers a part of Memphis.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Fresh Start in Nashville: Criminal Justice Reform on the Docket

CREDIT: Justin Wright, Tennessee State Photographer

Everybody agrees that there was an air of kumbaya to the inauguration of Governor Bill Lee on a rainy January 9th inside War Memorial Auditorium. Part of it derived from the personality of the new chief executive, whose laid-back, inviting demeanor made him the gubernatorial choice last year of Tennesseans who doubtless felt overdosed by the bitter back-and-forthing of his two chief opponents for the Republican gubernatorial nomination — and who have not yet recovered the habit of treating Democratic statewide candidates with full seriousness.

Lee’s acceptance address at his inauguration was in keeping with his campaign persona — uplifting without being confined to specifics, a partial reason for its brevity. On the whole, the speech was not much longer than the bookend prayers of the event — the invocation and benediction. It contained the obligatory tribute to faith, family, and the ancestral virtues of Tennessee and Tennesseans.

And the new governor left no doubt that, for him, as for most prominent Republicans of our clime and time, “[g]overnment is not the answer to our greatest challenges.” As he intoned: “Government’s role is to protect our rights and our liberty and our freedom. I believe in a limited government that provides unlimited opportunity for we the people to address the greatest challenges of our day.”

Justin Wright, Tennessee State Photographer

And yet Lee served notice that there were areas of concern that he intended to move state government to address. Among them were:

Education: “More than a test score — it’s about preparing a child for success in life. A resurgence of vocational, technical, and agricultural education, and the inclusion of civics and character education, combined with reforms, will take Tennessee to the top tier of states.”

Poverty, urban and rural: “[W]e … have 15 counties in poverty, all rural, all Tennesseans. We have some of the most economically distressed ZIP codes in America — right in the heart of our greatest cities.”

Public Safety: “Tennesseans do want good jobs and schools, but they want safe neighborhoods, too. And while most neighborhoods are safe, our violent crime rate is on the rise in every major city. We can be tough on crime and smart on crime at the same time. For violent criminals and traffickers, justice should be swift and certain.”

And, as a necessary corollary to crime control and safety, “But here’s the reality, 95 percent of the people in prison today are coming out. And today in Tennessee, half of them commit crimes again and return to prison within the first three years. We need to help non-violent criminals re-enter society, and not re-enter prison.”

Jackson Baker

Governor Bill Lee addresses the crowd at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville (top); Antonio Parkinson shakes hands with Lang Wiseman (below).

It is that part of the new governor’s commitment that has engendered excitement among his reform-minded constituents, as well as among legislators — many of them hailing from Memphis and Shelby County [see sidebar] — and among movers and shakers at large.

One of the latter is Hedy Weinberg, head of the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who, in a luncheon address to the Rotary Club of Memphis last week, made a point of proclaiming her confidence in Lee’s bona fides on the subject of criminal justice reform.

She pronounced the governor to be “very committed to criminal justice reform” and went so far as to say, “we speak the same language” on that issue.

If Lee lucked out with that endorsement from the ACLU’s Weinberg, he had worse fortune on another occasion. In the immediate wake of the inauguration, the new governor went to a ceremony at Tennessee State University honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There, he delivered a convincing testimony regarding his intention to provide more effective and humane solutions to post-conviction offenders seeking to re-enter society. He did well, but then, as veteran scribe Erik Schelzig chronicled it in The Tennessee Journal:

“… Lee then took a seat behind the lectern [and] Rev. William Barber II, the head of the Poor People’s Campaign, which is a revival of King’s effort that has mounted recent acts of civil disobedience in Nashville. … [Lee] most notably stayed seated when Barber called on anyone opposing President Donald Trump’s border wall and supporting Medicaid expansion to stand. Barber thundered that King would have favored a series of policies opposed by most Republicans, including a living wage, a ban on assault weapons, and universal health care (he denounced it as a “shame and a disgrace” for Tennessee to have failed to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act). “The crowd loved it.” But Lee, meanwhile, sat stoically and uneasily.
Asked about this in an interview with the Flyer, Lee acknowledged his discomfort and took a stab at presenting an alternative view: “The biggest challenge we have in health care is that we have skyrocketing costs that people can’t afford. So my plan focuses on reducing the cost of health care and improving the health of people, which would decrease costs as it improves people’s well-being. It’s about how we can make people healthier. A large percentage of our current health-care needs are associated with preventable chronic disease.”

Jackson Baker

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris (above) and newly elected Tennessee Governor Bill Lee have both made juvenile justice reform an issue in their approaches to government.

Medicaid expansion is not the only subject on which the state’s new governor possesses views that some would find contrary. School vouchers are another. Avowed progressives oppose it on grounds of separating church and state, and the suburban conservatives of Shelby County have soured on it as a threat to the tax-supported municipal school systems they now have a vested interest in. Even state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, the arch-conservative supporter of voucher measures for 16 straight legislative sessions chose last year not to introduce his usual measure to divert public funds selectively on behalf of students at private institutions.

Lee is a resident of Williamson County, an expansive suburban area just south of Nashville, where House Speaker Glen Casada, who has proposed reviving voucher legislation, also hails from and where vouchers are regarded less warily.

The governor prefers to refer to the subject as a matter of school choices. “I think the choices for parents are very important. The most important thing is that every child have access to a good education. We need to strengthen our school system. Part of the way to do that is to allow parents to have choice.

“Education savings accounts, charter schools, public school choices: These are all things that I’m willing to look at to improve the opportunity for education for every kid.

“My interest in school choice — that’s a broad choice for all areas in the state. That’s an interest in elevating the quality and outcomes of our school system all across the state. Vo-tech and agricultural and CTE (that’s career technical education). There’s a lot of phraseology and terms around that, but primarily it is expanding opportunities for kids in our schools, more skills-attainment for our kids, and opportunities for success in life. My real interest there does lie in vocational- technical and agricultural-educational public schools system.”

Courtesy American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee

Hedy Weinberg

Somewhere in there are surely points for possible compromise.

Another controversial view ascribed to Governor Lee is an openness to the idea of “constitutonal carry” or the virtually unlimited (and unlicensed) privilege of citizens to carry firearms — a severe reduction that a neighboring state like Mississippi has already adopted.

Lee is not quite there yet. “All I’ve said is that I would sign a constitutional carry bill if one passed my desk. It’s not an issue that I’m leading on. I try to stay focused on things that we’re trying to present in a legislative package. These are around vocational education, around recidivism, and job development. Those are the things we’re focusing on.”

Other things that Lee focused on in the Flyer interview, which took place last Friday at the beginning of his first weekend as governor:

Possible consequences for state government of a federal government shut-down: “My understanding is that the most recent one is over, at least for some period of time. We won’t have to deal with it for several weeks anyway. But I certainly want to stay on top of things. I’ve had folks in our administration start looking for what effects could come, if a shutdown would resume or continue, but that’s about as far as we’ve got.”

Spending and governmental priorities: “I’ve asked every department to lay out what it would look like to cut two percent from their budgets. We certainly will take some of those cuts. My overall goal is to reduce government spending to the degree that we can — and certainly to minimize potential increases. All of those cuts are on the table to be taken, but even if not, they are valuable in determining priorities and what to do with the resources we have. But we have opportunities to cut in every department. I believe in limited government.”

His first actions as governor: “I put out executive orders that strengthened orders previously in place on ethics, transparency, and discrimination. My first executive order was one strengthening our aid to rural counties — particularly those 15 that are under the poverty line.”

The West Tennessee Megasite: “I actually spent about an hour today with the Economic Development Commissioner, with our deputy governor, and with my senior adviser Brandon Gibson, who is from Jackson. We were assessing the megasite, exactly where the asset is today, what is necessary to get it shovel-ready, what are the options, and what are the prospects. It’s very important to me and to the state, so I’m spending time here in my first week getting up to speed with a complete in-depth understanding of the megasite.

“I don’t have an idea yet of the additional funding required. One of the questions I asked today was how many dollars it would take to get it ready. I want to know what it takes for a tenant to occupy it, in short order.”

Plan to raise Shelby County to the rest of the state: “I met this morning with our senior team, including Deputy Governor Lang Wiseman. He’s from Memphis. We talked about economic opportunities, job creation, and economic incentives to attract industry into West Tennessee. When you think about educational reform, there’s no place more appropriate than Memphis as a place to do that. It’s one of the largest cities in the state, and it has some of the greatest opportunities for improvement in our educational system. The accelerated transformation of Shelby County is important if we want Tennessee to make it to a leading place in the country.”

Summing up: “I believe that Tennesseans are a unique group and that we have a real opportunity. There is more that unites us than divides us. That’s the way I ran my campaign, and it’s  the way I want to govern. Hopefully, that’s absolutely what will happen.

…

Justice  Reform: A Consensus Point

As Hedy Weinberg of the Tennessee ACLU observes, the Tennessee General Assembly has in recent years seen an increasing incidence of cooperation between legislators of the left and right on bills aimed at criminal justice reform. Though in an address last week to members of the Rotary Club of Memphis she noted such remaining stands of potential obstruction as the bail-bond industry, Weinberg hailed what she saw as a dawning era of bipartisan agreement on reform issues.

Governor Lee has singled out criminal justice reform as a major governmental aim and would seem to be actively seeking out partners.

One of the interested parties is Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, who has made juvenile justice reform a major issue in his own approach to government. Harris, who vigorously protested the decision of the U.S. Department of Justice to cease its monitoring activities over Juvenile Court, has called for the demolition of the antiquated existing facilities for housing juvenile offenders, and is attempting to persuade the Shelby County Commission to create a new assessment center for juveniles, and to pony up the sources for an upgraded new detention facility that offers the youth inside it access to fresh air, recreation, and abundant classroom activity. Only this week, he persuaded the commission to authorize the first financial component on what will be a $25 million facility and persuaded commissioners further to give it the working title of Youth Justice and Education Center.

Harris, as a Democratic state senator, pioneered in bipartisan criminal-justice reform efforts, sometimes in tandem with such opposite numbers as Republican state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown. He has also asked newly sworn-in District 33 state Senator Katrina Robinson, among others, to carry a remedial package of legislation on behalf of the county.

Robinson has jumped into the criminal-reform conversation in dramatic fashion, sponsoring a plethora of bills on the subject:

Senate Bill 62 would require the Department of Education to develop rules, to be adopted by the state board of education that include procedures for providing instruction to students incarcerated in juvenile detention centers for a minimum of four hours each instructional day.

SB 63 would expand career and technical education programs in the middle school grades and require the Board of Career and Technical Education to plan facilities for comprehensive career and technical training for middle-school students.

SB 65 and SB 85 would establish a center for driver’s license reinstatement and remove authorization to suspend, restrict, or revoke drivers’ licenses for nonpayment of fines, court costs, and litigation taxes for driving offenses, upon proof of inability to pay.

SB 69 would reduce the sentence a minor who commits first-degree murder is required to serve before becoming eligible for release from 51 years to 25 years. (This is one of several pieces of legislation introduced by the Shelby County delegation that indirectly reference the case of Cyntoia Brown, for whom outgoing Governor Bll Haslam recommended clemency as one of his last acts.)

Other legislative introductions related to criminal justice reform:

House Bill 17 by another first-term Memphis legislator, state Representative London Lamar, also related to the Cyntoia Brown case, would establish the presumption that a minor who is the victim of a sexual offense or who is engaged in prostitution holds a reasonable belief that the use of force is immediately necessary to avoid imminent death or serious bodily injury.

HB 47 by state Representative Antonio Parkinson would allow a person entitled to seek expunction from the record of a crime to pay an additional $250 fee for expedited expunction, to occur within 30 days of a court order granting expedited expunction.

HB 30  by state Representative Barbara Cooper would permit certain incarcerated persons who are allowed to enroll in courses offered by a community college or Tennessee college of applied technology pursuant to an approved release plan to receive a Tennessee reconnect grant.

The legislative session has just begun, with full committee and floor action commencing this week. The signs are clear that other Shelby County legislators and other bills on the subject of justice reform will be heard from before the deadline for introducing new bills.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Echoes of Discord

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As partisan disagreements on pending legislative measures continued to dominate the Washington political scene, there were distinct local echoes.

Even as Democrats in Congress were trying to force open discussion of the Senate’s pending version of an Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill, now being prepared in private by an ad hoc group of Republican Senators, the party faithful across the state held press conferences last Friday protesting the GOP’s close-to-the-vest strategy.

In Memphis, the protest, led by London Lamar, president of the Tennessee Young Democrats and including state Representative Antonio Parkinson, was held in front of the Cliff Davis Federal Building downtown. The group’s call for open discussion of health-care legislation was directed not only at congressional Republicans but at Tennessee Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander and U.S. Rep. David Kustoff specifically.

Though the matter of the federal government’s current direct oversight of mandated improvements in the procedures of Shelby County’s Juvenile Court was not, per se, a partisan issue, local attitudes toward it have tended to cleave along party lines.

Such, at least, was the appearance of things after news accounts surfaced over the weekend detailing recent efforts by three county officials seeking an end to federal oversight of Shelby County Juvenile Court, the result of a 2012 Memorandum of Understanding between the county and the Department of Justice.

The officials — county Mayor Mark Luttrell, Sheriff Bill Oldham, and Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael — were all elected under the Republican electoral banner. 

The three officials discussed the matter of ending the federal oversight with Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his recent visit to Memphis. As attorney general, Sessions has taken a hard-line approach to law enforcement, focusing on what he sees as a need for more stringent enforcement and stricter penalties.

Luttrell, Oldham, and Michael subsequently elaborated on their request in a formal letter to the DOJ, which maintained that the court’s shortcomings — pinpointed in the DOJ investigation and subsequent MOU — have been rectified.

That claim drew negative reaction, much of it from local Democrats. One critic was state Representative Larry Miller, speaking as a panelist Monday morning at the National Civil Rights Museum.

Answering a question from the audience about legislative action on juvenile justice, Miller noted the county officials’ letter to the DOJ and took issue with it: “They’re saying, ‘We’ve done it. … We no longer need oversight.'” Disagreeing, Miller said, “We’re not there yet. The system is based on incarceration of young black men.”

A more reserved response came from former county Commissioner Sidney Chism, now an employee of the Sheriff’s Department and a declared candidate in next year’s race for county mayor. Said Chism, evidently speaking on behalf of Sheriff Oldham: “He has taken the goals seriously and has worked hard to achieve them, and I think he believes they have been achieved.”

Two legislators who were on Monday’s panel at the NCRM — state representatives Joe Towns and John DeBerry — commented afterward that the MOU should remain in effect but acknowledged, like Chism, that Luttrell, Michael, and Oldham seemed to have made good-faith efforts to raise the standards in effect at Juvenile Court.

But another nay vote came from 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, who noted in a prepared statement that he had supported the original intervention by the Justice Department and said, “While progress has been made since 2012, there are still reports of race playing a factor in court hearings and reports of the juvenile detention facilities becoming more dangerous.” 

As of Tuesday, Sessions had not formally responded to the officials’ request.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GOP’s Lee Puts His Hat In

Shelby County got a look on Tuesday at Franklin businessman Bill Lee, who formally announced his run for the 2018 governor’s race over the weekend and embarked on what he called a “95-county, 95-day RV tour” of the state.

Lee had acknowledged the likelihood of his candidacy when he appeared, along with other gubernatorial propects, at the Shelby County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day banquet in February. While in Memphis, he met with reporters and pursued a schedule that included a stop at the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission and a visit with Shelby County Schools superintendent Dorsey Hopson, among other local meetings.

“Basically, I’m on a listening tour,” Lee said. His personal bio includes lifetime residence on a cattle farm and management of a company that deals in heating, air conditioning, plumbing, and home improvements. He says he wants to focus on growing jobs and paying attention to overdue rural needs, all while avoiding the expedient of raising taxes.

So far, only Lee and former state director of economic development Randy Boyd, among Republicans, have made official announcements, but other likely GOP gubernatorial candidates are state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, state House Speaker Beth Harwell of Nashville, and Congresswoman Diane Black of Gallatin.

So far, former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean is the only declared Democratic candidate, though state House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley is considered a probable entry.

• This week’s Flyer editorial, (p. 10), makes reference to a press conference scheduled for Thursday at the National Civil Rights Museum on behalf of the Lynching Sites Project of Memphis, a nonprofit group whose efforts are coordinated with those of the Equal Justice Initiative, a national organization.

In tandem with the press conference, which relates to the project’s plans to create memorials for victims of lynching (numbering in the neighborhood of 40, according to publicist Howard Robertson), the project has announced a memorial event for one of the victims, Ell Persons, “a 49-year-old black man accused without evidence of murdering Antoinette Rappel, a 16-year-old white girl.”

That event, an “interfaith prayer ceremony,” will take place on May 21st at 3 p.m., “near the site of Summer Avenue and the Wolf River,” where the lynching, not a hanging but a burning at the stake, took place exactly 100 years earlier.

Participants will include representatives of white and black churches, the NAACP, and other individuals and institutions. The public is invited, said Robertson.

• The first of six “community forums” scheduled as part of the effort to re-establish an official Shelby County Democratic Party will take place on Saturday at noon at Black Market Strategies at 5146 Stage Road. The host for that event will be state Representative Antonio Parkinson.

A second event, at 6 p.m. on May 3rd, will be held at the Gallery at 1819 Madison, co-hosted by the Shelby County Young Democrats and the College Democrats. There will be a third forum at the Pickering Center in Germantown on Tuesday, May 9th, hosted by the Germantown Democrats, and a final forum will be held at 6 p.m. on May 15th, at Abyssinian Baptist Church, 3890 Millbranch, under the sponsorship of the Democratic Women of Shelby County.