Tag: Berlin Boyd

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Activist Group Wants to See Text of “Mystery Memo”

UNDER CHALLENGE — Wade (left) and Boyd

Final voting for the county general election ballot is still four weeks away, on Thursday, August 2nd, but a serious battle is raging about the possible aftermath, as it affects three Memphis City Council seats.

Those are the seats now held by council members Edmund Ford, Bill Morrison, and Janis Fullilove, candidates for Position 9 on the County Commission, Probate Court Clerk, and Juvenile Court Clerk, respectively. If any or all of the three win should win, the question then becomes one of how long the winning members will hold on to their council seats before resigning them.

Activists involved in the struggle to defeat a council-mandated referendum that would call off a scheduled trial of Ranked Choice Voting (aka Instant Runoff Voting) in the 2019 city election are taking on this issue as well: They want the three mentioned candidates to declare in advance their intent to vacate their council seats fairly immediately should they win their races.

The activists, all members of Save IRV Memphis, fear that whichever seats are held onto by the winning council members for the full 90 days permitted by law before a resignation would then have to be replaced via appointment from the remaining members of the council.

That, as Save IRV Memphis sees it, would prevent a possible vote to fill the seat or seats on this year’s regular November election ballot.

An ambivalence on the point by the three council members in question is one problem confronting the activists seeking an early-resignation pledge by the three candidates; another problem has been the insistence by council chair Berlin Boyd, backed by council attorney Allan Wade, that scheduling a vote on any vacant council seat in November is precluded by the city charter, that such a vote would instead have to be held during the next regularly scheduled August election.

In effect, the Boyd/Wade formula would require any council seat made vacant as a result of this year’s county election to be filled by the aforementioned option of council appointment and to be voted on only during the regular city election of 2019. As the Save IRV Memphis activists see it, that would circumvent the people’s will and further overload the council with new members appointed by, and loyal to, a dominant council faction already too answerable to the Memphis Chamber of Commerce and the city’s business elite.

In a press release circulated Thursday by Save IRV Memphis, Carlos Ochoa sums up the fate of a public records request made by the group under the Freedom of Information Act for what they call a “Secret Mystery Memo.”

“On June 19th, 2018, Chairman Boyd referred to a legal memo purporting to prove that City Council vacancy elections can only be held in August. A public records request was filed for a copy of this memo. Since then, the city has twice hinted that such a memo might not exist and finally stated that the memo was protected by attorney-client privilege:

“The attorney referenced is city council attorney, Allan Wade. And Chairman Boyd hides behind this secret, possibly nonexistent legal memo, written by the city council attorney. The city council attorney won’t acknowledge whether the memo exists, but claims that at any rate it’s secret. The city attorney and administration say they can’t get involved to give an answer because it’s a city council matter….”

The organization, which so far has not been the fount of a groundswell, hopes to become one. It urges:

“Save IRV Memphis is calling on all Memphians to contact their city council representatives and the mayor’s office to demand that Allan Wade and the city council confirm the existence of Boyd’s legal memo and to release its content to the public. We also call on Chairman Boyd to provide a copy of the memo.

“If the City will not provide the secret memo then they should provide a straight answer to whether a November election can be used to fill a council vacancy. If not, they should explain why not, given the unambiguous language of Ordinance No. 1852
[the mechanism by which the city council and its electoral means were enacted].”

Section 1 of that ordinance reads: “… on any vacancy occurring in the Council … a successor shall be elected to fill out the remainder of the term … in the same manner as now provided for filling vacancies on the Board of Commissioners, except that such special municipal election shall be held on the date of the next August or November election.”

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Editorial Opinion

Memphis City Council Hijinks?

The Memphis City Council is under attack from various disenchanted citizens regarding several alleged pro-incumbent referenda it voted onto the November ballot — one that would counter the council’s current two-term limit for members, another that would negate the Shelby County Election Commission’s plans for ranked choice voting (RCV) in the 2019 city election, and another that would abolish all runoff elections. Now new scrutiny is arising on the question of how and when three council members might be replaced should they win other elected positions they are seeking in the August county general election.

Janis Fullilove

The three members are Janis Fullilove, Democratic nominee for Juvenile Court clerk; Bill Morrison, Democratic nominee for Probate Court clerk; and Edmund Ford, Democratic candidate for the Shelby County Commission’s District 9 position. All are generally favored to win, and all have been urged by a citizens’ group to resign their council positions immediately following the August outcome.

Members of the citizens’ group fear that the three council members, if victorious in their contests, might hold on to their council seats for an additional three months, as is apparently permitted by a literal interpretation of the city charter, thereby overlapping with their new county duties (and double-dipping financially).Most important from the protesters’ point of view, retention of the council seats for that long would stretch the calendar to the point that special elections could not be called for the forthcoming November ballot and would mandate the departing members’ replacement by an appointment process, in which case the replacements named would serve through the city election of 2019.

Edmund Ford Jr.

The challenging citizens fear that a current council majority will contrive to appoint new members of the same stripe, end-running other options that might surface in a special election.

So far, none of the three council members has committed to a course of action on a time for resignation. Berlin Boyd, the current council chair, and Allan Wade, the council’s attorney, insist that the critics have misread the charter and that special elections to replace departing council members can only take place in August — thereby nullifying the prospect of November elections for the three seats and making the protesters’ wishes moot.

The Rev. Earle Fisher and other citizens seeking a commitment for a timely withdrawal by the departing incumbents, should they win, cite charter language specifically authorizing replacement elections in either August or November.

Regardless of who’s right about charter requirements, the protesting citizens’ point is well taken: The appointment process has become wholly predictable, with a dominant council faction choosing replacements who, though they may be admirably skilled and bastions of integrity, have been suggested by well-placed supporters of the current majority and not subjected to any real public vetting via the election process.

The video archives of last week’s council meeting show that, after four speakers had made their case and had been basically blown off by Boyd, Wade apparently engaged the speakers in an exchange of taunts, somewhat off-mic. We think the protesters have a respectable case to make and should be listened to.

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Cover Feature News

Behind Closed Doors

Introducing the Justice Project:

Injustice is a problem in Memphis — in its housing, its wealth-gap, its food deserts, its justice system, its education system. In 2018, the Flyer is going to take a hard look at these issues in a series of cover stories we’re calling The Justice Project. The stories will focus on reviewing injustice in its many forms here and exploring what, if anything, is being done — or can be done — to remedy the problems. 

– – – – –

Sometimes the Memphis City Council works behind the public’s back. 

For example, the maneuvering behind its most controversial decision last year — removing Confederate statues from public parks — was kept secret from Memphis citizens until after the decision was made. The council created a new rule, written vaguely and broadly, and ushered it through a months-long legislative process, with plenty of debate and public input. Then, at the last second, they erased the whole thing and filled it in with details they did not think the public needed to know until after the fact of its passage. 

Council members say the move was legal and that they’ve used the same ploy in the past. Council member Worth Morgan, for one, said he “certainly won’t apologize” for using the maneuver on the statues vote. What we’re left with — the council and the public — is a legislative sleight of hand that allows local government to make decisions without public knowledge or input. 

Council member Worth Morgan, for one, said he “certainly won’t apologize” for using the maneuver on the statues vote.

Another example of a council end-around occurred when the public was not informed about a firm the council hired to lobby in Nashville. They spent $120,000 of taxpayer money to urge Tennessee state lawmakers to kill Instant Runoff Voting, a measure approved by Memphis voters in a referendum 10 years ago. When asked about that decision, council attorney Allen Wade was quoted in The Commercial Appeal as saying that the council uses taxpayer dollars “to do a lot of things” people don’t like.

In a third example, council members sometimes introduce last-minute resolutions and ordinances that hinder public involvement.

All of this may be perfectly legal. But is it right? Do Memphis taxpayers and voters deserve more transparency? 

At least one council member said that some council processes may need review. But most members defended the moves, citing complicated legislative procedures, overall council prerogatives, and other rationale.

Taken separately, each legislative maneuver seems like an arcane machination of the democracy machine, movements that take access to local government out of the hands of the people who pay the taxes that run local government. Taken together, they seem like parts of a playbook that’s used to cloud the legislative process and keep citizens out of certain conversations at Memphis City Hall.

The Secret Statues Vote

On Wednesday, December 20th, council members settled in behind their microphones to resume a meeting that it had adjourned from its regular Tuesday session the day before. One major question loomed: What would the council do about the Confederate statues in two city parks?

A final vote on the matter was on the council agenda. That item read, simply, “ordinance relative to the immediate removal of the Forrest Equestrian Statue and the Jefferson Davis Statue and other similar property from city owned property.” 

Intensity built as the council first worked through some routine business. Tension rose further as three members of the public gave the council their parting thoughts on the statues. Then, when the item came up for that final vote, something confusing happened. At least, it was confusing to the anyone outside city government’s inner circle. 

Council member Edmund Ford brought a new rule — a substitute ordinance — to the table that would change everything. The document was not handed out to the public. It was not in the council’s agenda packet, which is public record. The council voted unanimously to accept the new rule. Then, they voted to unanimously approve it, and it was done.

But, as is customary with big votes in the council chamber, not a single member of the audience whooped, cheered, jeered, booed, or hissed. They sat, stunned.

Council chairman Berlin Boyd then said, “for clarity purposes, let me read the substitute ordinance into the record.” Finally, clarity. Nope. Boyd simply read the same old blanket ordinance heading, the one about “the immediate removal of” statues from city-owned property.

Council chairman Berlin Boyd then said, “for clarity purposes, let me read the substitute ordinance into the record.”

During the crucial vote no council member said the word “statue.” No one said “parks.” Certainly no one said “Greenspace Inc.,” a nonprofit that no one but those in the inner circle had ever heard of. No one said anything at all, really. The council moved on to other business. 

But as we now know, that vote sent players in motion all over the city. That vote cemented an agreement Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland had already signed with Greenspace. That vote sent dozens of police and other public safety officials to cordon off the parks, a seamless orchestration that must have taken months to plan. The police moved in to protect crane operators hired by Greenspace to remove statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Jefferson Davis, and James Harvey Mathes. 

The Flyer‘s editorial stance on the removal of the Confederate statues was clear for months. The paper favored their removal, the sooner the better. But concerns remain about the process — a legislative maneuver that shielded the public from a critical government decision, a maneuver that seemingly allows city government to pass legislation without public review or comment.  

Ford said in an interview months after the vote, that the play was used to ensure public safety. He said other votes, such as one regarding residency requirements for city employees, have gone down the same way. The statues vote was scrutinized, he said, because of the public intrigue.

“There’s nothing that we have tried to do in the dark that we wouldn’t do in the light, as far as legislation is concerned,” Ford said, noting that if anyone had questions they could have asked him. “I don’t want people to think that this is something that is sort of a witch hunt or something, done behind the scenes.”

The Atlantic‘s U.S. politics and global news reporter David Graham, called the council play a “novel trick,” a “surprise move,” and a “novel strategy.” But he worried about the precedent.

“The distance between righteous civil disobedience and risky breakdown of rule of law is not as wide as it might seem, however, and it’s easy to imagine ways in which such a procedure could be abused,” Graham wrote. “What if local authorities defied state or federal authorities to erect a pro-Confederate statue?”

Graham also warned the trick play could bring legal challenges. He was right. The Sons of Confederate Veterans sued the city, a case still in mediation. Also, state leaders — Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally and Speaker of the House Beth Harwell — called for a review of the city’s entire statue episode from the State Comptroller’s Office of Open Records Counsel. 

That report cleared the council, saying it “provided sufficient notice of its meetings and agendas to allow interested citizens the opportunity to attend.”

The council met the Tennessee Open Records Act, the report said, because it posted its meeting dates on its website, along with agendas, documents, and more. Though, it should be noted here, again, that the final statues ordinance was never posted online before the final vote meeting and wasn’t in agenda packets the day of the vote.

Tami Sawyer, who led the #TakeEmDown901 movement, said she was told the morning of the vote “what was supposed to happen.”

“When the ordinance wasn’t read, all I could think was … get to the park,” Sawyer said. “I was more focused on, ‘Was it going happen for real’ than anything else.”  

Council member Morgan said the vote was “done in public” and that “you can’t do a complete substitute ordinance that wouldn’t fit into the subject of the heading.” That is, the ordinance you approve has to, at least, in some way, relate to the one it’s replacing.

In this case, doing something “relative to the removal” of the statues was close enough to “the sale and/or conveyance, at reduced or no cost, of such portions of the city’s easement in” Memphis Park, Health Sciences Park, and the Forrest Monument to Greenspace.

Morgan said the media was mad at the council’s handling of the vote “because they missed the story,” adding, “the reason you don’t announce that the statues are coming down … is because of the violence that we’ve seen,” citing protests and counter protests. It was done legally, he said, and pointed to the comptroller’s report as proof. 

“So, I don’t regret how it was done,” Morgan said. “I do regret a lot of the discussion that happened beforehand and after. The protests have suffered from a lack of leadership and a lack of direction, but I can only control and participate in things that are inside [the council’s purview].

“We did it legally and safely so there’s not much more to say, and I certainly won’t apologize for it.”

Council member Patrice Robinson said she was “almost positive” that the council shared documents about the sale to Greenspace with the public. But she deferred to city council attorney Wade “because he was guiding us in the process of making sure that we handled everything in a proper and legal manner.”

Council member Patrice Robinson said she was “almost positive” that the council shared documents about the sale to Greenspace with the public.

When told the information was not shared, Robinson said, “I can only think we maybe need to look at our rules and how we handle that because it’s not just that particular situation. That’s the way it’s been handled in the whole two years I have been on the city council.”    

Before responding to questions, Wade noted in a letter that this reporter “likes” the Facebook pages of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and Confederate 901. Wade said those likes “revealed an affinity for the views” of the groups and that “we will assume that your apparent bias will color your opinions” in this story, the purpose of which, he alleged, is “to denigrate the removal of the statues.”

[Note: I “like” those pages in the same way I “like” and follow a variety of groups that make news in Memphis. For example, I “like” the Memphis Zoo and Citizens to Protect Overton Park. — Toby Sells]

Wade noted that while the Tennessee Open Meetings Act requires some meetings to be public, “it does not guarantee all citizens the right to participate in the meetings.” The city charter, he said, allows the council to “amend any ordinance ‘at any time’ before final passage” and does it routinely. For evidence, he pointed to the annual budget ordinance, which the council “routinely amends” from the floor before a final vote.

As for directing the council through the statues vote, Wade said, “I do not direct anyone to do anything. I give advice, which the client is free to accept or reject.”

Council member Martavius Jones pointed also to the vote on residency requirements as an example of the council using the substitute-ordinance play. It’s legal, he said. But he was then asked if the method is good for open government.

Council member Martavius Jones pointed also to the vote on residency requirements as an example of the council using the substitute-ordinance play. It’s legal, he said.

“One of the things that I did after [the statues vote] meeting was to go back and make copies [of the substitute ordinance] to give to the media after we voted on it,” Jones said. “Because I believe in transparency in the way we operate as a Memphis City Council.”    

It all seemed above-board to Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (TCOG). Notice was given. The purpose of the ordinance was clear, even if the details weren’t. Past that, it’d be up to a judge to decide if the council broke the law, she said, noting that her group has no open opinion on the statues issue.

“If nobody but the members of the governing body knew what they were voting on, it’s completely understandable why the members of the public would be upset about that,” Fisher said. “It’s really not how a governing body should work.”

Lobbying Against the Public

Hardly an eyebrow was raised last year when council chairman Berlin Boyd asked for money in the city budget to hire a lobbyist. They wanted to help set the city’s legislative agenda in Nashville.

But a fury erupted when the public found out what that agenda included. 

On December 5, 2017, all but three council members voted to send the idea of instant run-off voting (IRV) back to Memphians on a referendum. Trouble was, Memphians had already approved IRV by 71 percent in a referendum back in 2008, and it was scheduled to be first utilized in the 2018 elections.

In a co-written guest column in The Commercial Appeal, former Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy and former city council chairman Myron Lowery — both IRV proponents — said “the county election commission dragged its feet on implementation, inaccurately claiming that the county’s voting equipment couldn’t handle it.”

While some were scratching their heads about the council’s move to bring it back to a vote in December, the council had been hard at work on the issue — behind closed doors — since November. That’s when the council hired the well-known, Nashville-based Ingram Group to find a sponsor to introduce an ordinance to prohibit IRV. According to a Ryan Poe story in the CA last month, the council had been working “quietly” and “behind the scenes” to find a Senate sponsor for the bill. 

While Wade told Poe the bill was moving “full steam ahead” in Nashville, the news of the council’s maneuver wasn’t playing well back home. 

Theryn C. Bond excoriated the council at the podium back in December, reading from the council rules of procedure on a ranked-choice system by which the council itself uses to fill vacancies on the council. 

“Now, what does that sound like to you?” Bond asked. “Sounds to me a lot like IRV. And what is good for the goose, should be good for the gander.”

Lemichael Wilson said of the council’s work to use taxpayer money to fight against something the public had approved, “to call this hypocritical would be a compliment.” Wilson said last autumn’s calls by council members to “give the choice back to the people,” now rang “hollow upon our ears.”  

“Many believe this council — if nothing else — didn’t want Nashville telling it what to do,” Wilson said. “They believed it with such fervor that they supported the council in this late-night sale and removal of Confederate statuary.

“How we can now believe this council is ardently striving against legislative preemption when it is funding that very practice behind the citizens’ backs?” 

Surprise!

The council’s committee agenda is usually posted on Thursday around noon. With a regularity that borders on routine, a new agenda is posted on following days with new items added in different committees. 

What’s the issue? Well, for one, it goes against the council’s own rules. 

“All proposed ordinances, resolutions, motions, and other matters submitted by council members shall be submitted in writing to the Council Office by 10 a.m. Thursday,” reads a section from the council’s rules of procedure. 

Any council member can bring a new ordinance or resolution after that, but only if they present it in writing. Even then, “only items involving extreme emergencies may be added to the agenda,” after the Thursday deadline, according to council rules.

Those rules are often stretched or ignored.

In March 2016, council member Reid Hedgepeth filed a last-minute resolution on a Tuesday morning — as council committee meetings were already underway — that proposed giving the majority of Overton Park’s Greensward to the Memphis Zoo. 

Hedgepeth’s surprise resolution said the zoo “has the greatest usage by citizens and visitors of any of the other various activities in the park.” It would have allowed the zoo to use the green space as a parking lot, add permanent buildings to it, or, really, do whatever they wanted with it.  

The resolution was brought by Hedgepeth but its sponsors included Robinson, Bill Morrison, Phillip Spinosa, Jones, Janis Fullilove, Ford, Boyd, and Joe Brown. So, it seems there had been plenty of discussion about the resolution, though none of it was public. And it caught park advocates completely off guard.

“This outrageous and undemocratic power grab is a massive insult to the thousands of citizens who’ve participated in the ongoing public planning process, to the Overton Park Conservancy, which is engaged in mediation and litigation with the zoo, and to Mayor Jim Strickland,” read a Facebook post at the time from Citizens to Protect Overton Park.

Had the resolution been posted on Thursday, per council rules, it would have given proponents and opponents plenty of time to show up at city hall and express their views. Hedgepeth’s last-minute ploy only gave interested citizens about four hours to change their daily schedules; many showed up at city hall anyway.

The Commercial Appeal once sued the city over this very issue. The 1974 Supreme Court opinion put the law on the city’s side when it came to adding agenda items at the last minute. “Adequate public notice,” to the court was based on “the totality of the circumstances as would fairly inform the public.” 

But a 2012 opinion from the Open Records Counsel to the Tennessee Municipal Technical Assistance Service (MTAS) said the office would not recommend last-minute agenda changes.

“From a best practice perspective, this office would not suggest that a governing body amend an agenda during a regularly scheduled meeting to include an issue in which the governing body knows that there is significant public interest,” read the opinion from Elisha D. Hodge, “and (the governing body) knows that if the item had been on the agenda that was originally published for the meeting, there would have been increased public interest and attendance at the meeting.” All of these issues — silent votes on important ordinances, behind-the-scenes lobbying in Nashville, and last-minute agenda items — are business as usual at city hall. Some of it has been going on for a long time. Legal experts may say (and have said) it’s all above board. But for Memphians, we ask, “Is it justice?” Let’s let Theryn Bond have the final word:

“The last time I checked, you guys work for us,” Bond said to council members last month. “So, come up from behind those closed doors, and roll up those sleeves, and dig into your districts. Because, trust me, it is nothing to get 25 signatures. Do I make myself clear?”

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Cover Feature News

Zombie Apocalypse: The Battle Over a Paint Memphis Mural

“I haven’t had a single person reach out to me yet,” says Pat Surratt, whose Lamar Avenue property suddenly became infamous after an enormous gray zombie was painted on one of its exterior walls last September.

Since that time, the mural has been denounced as “satanic” by Memphis City Council members, has been featured on several local TV news broadcasts, and has become fodder for reports and editorials in various local publications. Everything came to a boil last week at city council, when Chairman Berlin Boyd quoted scripture and said the city would draft letters to begin a process of removing the mural.

Lamar Avenue property owner Pat Surratt doesn’t mind the zombies — and wouldn’t be opposed to a pirate zombie either.

All this public sturm und drang remains something of a mystery to Surratt, who says nobody from the city, media, or neighborhood has contacted him to complain, seek compromise, or to even ask, “Hey Pat, what’s up with that ugly zombie on your wall?”

“It kind of blew me away,” Surratt says, describing the disconcerting experience of hearing no complaints from pundits or politicians who ignored the neighborhood as it slid into decay, then being criticized about a painted cartoon monster straight out of Scooby-Doo.

The zombie is just one of dozens of murals around the city that have been painted under the auspices of Karen Golightly’s not-for-profit group Paint Memphis. To be fair, when art groups like Paint Memphis are described as “occultists” in City Council meetings and politicians speechify on art’s power to create demonic “fixation” in people’s minds, it’s hard not to get distracted by the show.

Justin Fox Burks

murals featuring music icons, butterflies, and, you guessed it, zombies.

“Everybody’s yelling and pointing fingers, and not a single person has reached out to me,” Surratt says. “I’ve seen stories from every news organization in town, I think, from the Daily News to the Memphis Business Journal. But none of them have called me. They’re all talking about what the city council is saying.

“It’s great you have somebody up there doing what they do,” says Surratt, who’s been enlisting artists to brighten his overlooked corner since 2015, when he sought out artists to create a Memphis music wall honoring Willie Mitchell, Johnny Cash, Otis Redding, and others. “But it seems to me this isn’t really about the art or about what can be done to help the neighborhood. It seems like some people just want to get more attention for themselves.”

If the City Council follows through and launches a process of removal, Surratt will finally become a part of the conversation. First, a notice will arrive asking him to remove the artwork, which can’t be considered graffiti since it was created with the owner’s consent. Then, if the owner refuses to comply — which is likely — the whole matter gets turned over to Environmental Court, where Judge Larry Potter will determine whether or not the zombie painting is a nuisance.

Chris Davis

“I don’t regret anything,” says Surratt, who wants to sell the Lamar property and says he’s encouraged by all the positive attention that’s been paid to his little strip since the music wall went up. And he’s thankful for his partnership with Paint Memphis, a two-year-old organization that facilitates an annual muraling festival.

In 2017, Paint Memphis brought more than 150 artists to Surratt’s neighborhood to create works on more than 33,000 square feet of public and private walls for the largest collaborative outdoor painting project in Tennessee.

“There just wasn’t much here to look at before,” Surratt says of the space his buildings occupy — near where South Willett meets Lamar and where Midtown more or less crashes into South Memphis. It’s a stretch of urban connective tissue defined by a concrete train trestle and underpass where the Rozelle, Glenview, and Cooper-Young neighborhoods merge into one another. “It’s mostly just us, the old Lamar Theater, and Payne’s Barbecue,” Surratt says. “Before the murals, it was so easy to just drive past us and never look twice.”

Chris Davis

Though it’s hidden from the road by virtue of being below ground, one of the area’s most dynamic spaces is the Altown skateboard park, a community-driven DIY space, which also received the Paint Memphis treatment in 2017.

Zombie Apocalypse: The Battle Over a Paint Memphis Mural

Paint Memphis founder Golightly says she’s ultimately happy for the attention and thankful so many people are talking about public art. She says it’s paid dividends in the form of new board members, new donors, and more calls about commissioned murals than she’s fielded since launching the project in 2015.

Golightly is a Mobile, Alabama, native who graduated from Rhodes College in 1989 before pursuing advanced degrees at the University of Memphis and the University of Southern Illinois. She’s an author and an associate professor of English at Christian Brothers University who started photographing and writing about street art while traveling across the U.S. and Europe, wondering why the kinds of vibrant public art spaces she found in other cities weren’t more prevalent in an artist-rich place like Memphis.

Chris Davis

That’s when she started learning about public policy and permission walls, where street artists, fine artists, and any other kind of artists are allowed to paint whenever they like without seeking advance permission. She started exploring all the reasons a city might want to use graffiti artists as a resource instead of treating them like a problem. This is the slow-burning origin story of Paint Memphis.

“The corps of engineers agrees with us,” Golightly says, launching into a street art catechism. “Paint preserves concrete.” It’s a practical beginning to a conversation about empowerment, community, and collaboration.  

Paint Memphis puts out national calls and chooses artists based on examples of past work. It brings local artists together with schools, community groups, and wall painters from as far away as Seattle and Los Angeles. Nobody gets paid, but everybody gets fed and works together, following a set of guidelines that were developed in conjunction with the city and residents of the Chelsea/Evergreen area where Paint Memphis created its first mass-scale collaborative mural. The rules to date are basic: no nudity, no profanity, and no gang signs or imagery.

Chris Davis

Golightly acknowledges that she didn’t directly engage nearly as much with the neighborhoods touching Lamar and South Willett as she did before turning artists loose on the Chelsea Avenue flood wall on an earlier project. As part of an effort to improve future community relations, Paint Memphis has created its first intern position and tasked the new hire with creating more opportunities for neighborhood participation.

Still, Golightly, who also faced criticism for a grotesque image of Elvis Presley with a snake embedded in his face, wonders if even a more perfect process would have kept the undead from rising over South Memphis. “‘No zombies’ is a pretty specific request,” she says. “But who knows, maybe somebody would have said ‘No zombies.'”

Golightly prefers to keep aesthetics out of the debate in favor of conversations about mission, the law, and building a better process. Her points about arguing taste were driven home at last Tuesday’s City Council meeting, when anti-zombie council member Jamita Swearengen and a handful of like-minded residents engaged in a bit of art criticism.

Justin Fox Burks

“A true, voluptuous black woman in a bikini — that’s coming back to life,” one man said, offering his opinions on the meaning of positive, family-friendly art and resurrection imagery.

Although he was never asked, Surratt also has some thoughts about about sprucing up the zombie. He thinks people might be more open to a monster mural if one of the gray guy’s eyeballs wasn’t hanging out. “Maybe we could give him an eyepatch,” Surratt says, imagining what kind of response a pirate zombie might elicit. “We could give him a beard and hat at Christmas. Paint him like Uncle Sam for the 4th of July.”

Golightly doesn’t want anybody to put an eyepatch on the zombie, but she isn’t entirely opposed to repainting certain areas after a reasonable period of time. “I don’t like to paint in places we’ve already been,” she says, pointing to the other things her organization does, in addition to creating murals. “The area around the Chelsea wall had literally become a dump,” she says, describing a weedy stretch where the city had stopped mowing and people had begun to toss old mattresses and tires. “All of that had to be cleaned up and removed. On Willett, we removed like three dead animals and I don’t know how many dirty diapers.”

Chris Davis

The goal, she says, is to keep moving forward, cleaning up and covering decay with fresh coats. But sometimes editing happens.

“Nobody said anything about the Chelsea wall for the most part,” Golightly says. “But, on the end-piece, someone painted a skeleton holding a scythe, and a minister came to me and said people didn’t want to see images associated with death. He asked if I could fix it, and I said I didn’t know if I could.” The problem was solved when Saint George’s school contacted Golightly looking for a project. She gave them the controversial section of the Chelsea wall, and now there’s an angel where the grim reaper stood.

“People need to actually go out and see the work for themselves,” Golightly says, adding that pictures of individual sections don’t really do the sprawling art experience justice. The two zombie murals have gotten so much attention, it’s easy to forget they’re a relatively small part of a 33,000 square foot project. “Nobody’s going to like everything,” Golightly says. “But you’re going to like something.”

Justin Fox Burks

Karen Golightly

In addition to zombies, the artists of Paint Memphis 2017 created wavy psychedelic worlds in an underpass beneath the train tracks. They painted pictures of flowers and faces alongside fantastic birds and beasts. Visitors will see Memphis musicians, comedians, and actors. Country music icon Hank Williams inexplicably takes up space across the road from a pair of Beale Street musicians, just around the corner from hula hoopers and a wall dedicated to sponsors and partners, including Clean Memphis, Art Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts. There are realistic paintings of people and places, and conceptual work like “Bulletproof,” by Jamond Bullock, a fine arts grad from Lemoyne Owen College, whose surreal image of a pyramid and lips holding a smoking bullet leaves viewers with something to talk about.

“Sometimes you have those people to step in front of you and become dream killers and they become like a bullet,” says Bullock, a busy artist who ships his art all over the world and has murals in Orange Mound, on South Main, and in Soulsville across the street from the Stax Museum. “This person is catching the bullet. Instead of letting their dreams be killed, they’re stopping the person who’s killing their dreams.”

Bullock’s popular “A Day in the Life” mural attracts tourists who have their picture made in front the work’s giant butterfly wings. He’s been making murals with Paint Memphis from the beginning and describes the work as a positive experience that’s allowed him to network with artists he wouldn’t have met otherwise. Artists like Nashville painter Brad Wells who died in December 2015 and is the only Paint Memphis artist to have his work treated with an anti-graffiti coating to preserve it from being painted over.

Chris Davis

“It’s a painting of a butterfly on a flower,” Golightly says of the one preserved image. “I don’t think it’s going to upset anybody.”

The grotesque Lamar Avenue zombie and his lovely bed of roses is another story entirely. It divides viewers — and politicians — who are split as to whether it’s a positive or negative image for residents, motorists, and passers-by. But whether he’s positive, negative, satanic, or a one-eyed angel of pure light, Surratt wants to keep him around. Golightly says any attempt to remove him without a court nuisance ruling becomes a First Amendment problem. So, like factions in a post apocalyptic fantasy, the various factions are hunkering down and preparing for a fight over zombies.

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Categories
Editorial Opinion

Art Attack

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

City Council Chair Berlin Boyd has described UrbanArt as a “quasi governmental” and failed organization. It’s a harsh, and not entirely accurate, assessment of a 20-year-old independently managed not-for-profit group that made Memphis a “percent for art” city, transforming the landscape and public expectations in ways that can only be understood by juxtaposing what was with what is now so ubiquitous it’s easily taken for granted.

Greg Cravens

Twenty years ago, public art in Memphis meant statues. More specifically, it meant bronze statues of “great men” like slave trader and KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. There were other, not entirely regrettable examples, of course. Elvis Presley and W.C. Handy were both immortalized on Beale Street. Overton Park had its Doughboy, and the downtown waterfront had an obelisk dedicated to the selfless heroism of Tom Lee, “a worthy negro.” There were even a couple of modern works isolated on the North end of an entirely desolate Main Street mall, hidden from a majority of Memphians who’d been fleeing the decaying urban core for decades. But once you accounted for the musicians, heroes, war memorials, and idols to white supremacy, there wasn’t much else to brag about. Today, by comparison, a drive down James Road includes painter Jeffrey Unthank’s impressive, epically scaled history of Frayser. A visit to Overton Square brings drinkers, diners, and shoppers into contact with multimedia artist Kong Wee Pang’s sparkling bird mural and sculptures by Yvonne Bobo, in addition to all the actors and musicians populating Memphis’ once-empty, now-prospering music and theater district. The Benjamin L. Hooks branch of Memphis’ public library is an enchanted forest of ideas. Kindergarten students entering Downtown Elementary are greeted by Lurlynn Franklyn’s fine mosaic floor. These are just a few examples of what a “failed” organization has accomplished in two decades. The successful revitalization of abandoned neighborhoods like South Main, Broad, and Crosstown, are almost impossible to imagine uncoupled from the influence of UrbanArt and work by local, regional, and international artists.

UrbanArt, which is funded in part by ArtsMemphis, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and by private donations, developed Memphis’ Percent for Art program with a complete awareness of just how easy it has always been for politicians to look serious and frugal by cutting apparent luxuries like art. That’s why percent for art funding was tied to a mere 1 percent of money already budgeted for capital improvements — money that would have been spent anyway, and without the transparency, community access, and public monitoring UrbanArt already brings to the table. Whether or not one loves every piece of public art that gets installed, the organization has repeatedly made its motivating point that artists are creative problem solvers and that makes public art a tremendous bargain.

In every case, public art requires political will because everybody’s a critic. And, to give Boyd his due, more can always be done to create opportunities for local and minority artists while hedging against provincialism and cultivating a healthy mix of national and international influences. But in a relatively short amount of time UrbanArt has made Memphis better. That’s no fail.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Amazon Prime-time

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about luring Amazon to build its second company headquarters, to be called Amazon HQ2, in Memphis. In early October, the city council voted to offer the mammoth online retail giant $60 million in cash incentives to move to the Bluff City.

“Amazon, here we come,” said council chairman Berlin Boyd, after the vote. To which I say, slow your roll, Berlin.

To put the council’s offer in perspective, consider that last summer, the Grizzlies paid $94 million to sign Chandler Parsons to a four-year deal.

To put the offer in even more stark perspective, consider that Amazon is worth more than $500 billion (with a “b”), and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ personal worth is around $87 billion. Offering Amazon $60 million to come to Memphis is like offering to buy Chandler Parsons dinner at Folk’s Folly in order to get him to accept a trade to the Brooklyn Nets.

Pardon me if I don’t have much optimism about this deal.

Many cities around the country are eager to become home to Amazon’s HQ2, and why not? The company says it plans to spend $5 billion to build its new facility, which would theoretically create 50,000 new jobs, including 2,500 positions that would pay at least $60,000 a year. That’s a big game changer for any city. For Memphis, it would be transformative.

According to city leaders, there could be other incentives from Shelby County, the state of Tennessee, and the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) in the package, but few details have emerged.

But let’s take a look at Memphis’ competition. Dallas is offering a $15-billion bullet-train-based headquarters. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is putting together an incentive package worth $7 billion, including up to $10,000 for each job created. Philadelphia is offering three sites with 28 million square feet of development space in an area already served by transit, retail, and residential spaces. Chicago, Phoenix, and other major cities are also readying pitches for the October 19th deadline. And Stonecrest, Georgia, is offering to rename itself Amazon, which is certainly going the extra mile.

Amazon has set forth several “key preferences” for its proposed new second home: Suitable buildings and sites are of “paramount importance.” Other preferences cited include a “stable and business-friendly environment and tax structure,” incentives from local and state governments, and finally, there’s this: “A highly educated labor pool is critical and a strong university system is required.”

Oops.

No offense to our fine local colleges and universities, but it would be difficult to make the case that Memphis has a highly educated labor force. In a 2017 WalletHub ranking of the country’s 150 “best-educated cities,” Memphis comes in at 114, just behind Montgomery, Alabama. Only 39 percent of Memphians have a college degree.

Don’t get me wrong. I truly hope the city pulls off a Memphis miracle and lands the Amazon deal, but we’d be foolish to count on it.

If, as seems likely, we don’t get it, we should look at the experience as a learning opportunity, a wake-up call to face the conjoined issues of poverty and a subpar education system that are holding so many of our citizens — and our city — back.

This will no doubt be called a case of comparing apples to oranges, but what if we came up with a Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes (PILOT) Program to motivate local businesses and corporations to raise their minimum salary to $15 an hour? Or how about using some of those “cash incentives” to pay top-of-the-market teacher salaries in order to lure better educators to the city? Or, since car-centric cities are falling behind the curve, how about coming up with ways to combine county, state, and EDGE money to invest in a modern, high-tech transportation system.

Memphis has a lot going for it and I’m optimistic about the city’s future, but if we don’t land the big one, maybe we could seriously begin to think outside the traditional box and create our own transformative change.

Or maybe we could just get the Grizzlies to sign us to a four-year deal.

Categories
News News Blog

Berlin Boyd Ends His Contract With Beale Street Merchants Association

Berlin Boyd

Memphis City Council chairman Berlin Boyd announced Tuesday he is ending his publicly criticized contract with the Beale Street Merchants Association.

Boyd, also chair of the council’s Beale Street Task Force, signed a contract with the association last month in an effort to secure corporate sponsors. However, when the council voted to allow the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC) to compensate merchants for security costs at the Sept. 5 council meeting, Boyd forgot to recuse himself from the vote. 

Boyd’s announcement to dissolve the contract came amidst the council’s discussion of reconsidering the said resolution which remits Beale Street Bucks and cover charge revenue to the DMC, making funds available to be allocated back to merchants.

Council member Edmund Ford Jr. proposed amending the resolution to make it clear that the reimbursement funds provided to the merchants are for public right of way security.

After a lengthy discussion, the council voted unanimously to return the resolution to committee on Oct. 3.

Categories
News News Blog

City Council Makes Headway to Remove City’s Confederate Statues Regardless of Historical Commission’s October Decision

The Memphis City Council unanimously agreed Tuesday to sponsor an ordinance that allows the statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Health Sciences Park and Jefferson Davis in Memphis Park, as well as any related artifacts to be immediately removed from the City, even if the Tennessee Historical Commission denies the city’s waiver request in October.

Citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision mandating equal access to public parks, council attorney Allan Wade told the council’s executive committee that the best way to legally remove the statues is to start an ordinance that establishes a city policy for the immediate removal of the Confederate monuments from public spaces.

This policy, he says, is based on the notion that the two statues, and artifacts like it on city-owned property “constitute a public nuisance,” which state law defines as anything that interferes with the public’s use enjoyment of the spaces.

Wade continues that the statues “potentially infringe upon the civl rights of the significant majority of the population of the city.”

Violating someone’s constitutional rights takes precedent over state laws, Wade says.

If you start with a Constitutional premise, he says, “there is no justifications for these statues to be there as an impediment to African Americans.”

If passed, the ordinance will not take effect until after the THC votes on the Forrest statue waiver at its October 13 meeting.

Wade says he wants to allow the THC to “do the right thing. If they don’t, then this ordinance says unleash the dogs.”

The final vote for the ordinance is set for October 3.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Tennessee, Shelby Parties Organizing for 2018

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Retiring Blue Cross-Blue shield exec Calvin Anderson, here at a ceremony naming a street for him, will be a cog in the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial campaign.

Last week was a time for members of both local political parties to gather and take stock. The Shelby County Republicans did so with their annual Lincoln Day banquet at the East Memphis Hilton on Saturday night — the highlight of which was an address by former Bush-era U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who, while contending that “we need Donald Trump to be strong,” cautiously but firmly took issue with the president’s immigration policies. (For a full account of Gonzales’ remarks and the evening at large, see “Politics Beat Blog” on the Flyer website.)

The Lincoln Day event drew an extensive field of GOP gubernatorial hopefuls for 2018: U.S. Representative Diane Black (R-6th District); state Senator Mark Green (R-Clarksdale); State Senate majority leader Mark Norris (R-District 32); entrepreneur and former state Economic Development director Randy Boyd; and Nashville-area businessman Bill Lee.

• Even as Shelby County Republicans were gathered at the Hilton to hear Gonzales’ sober-sided hedge to all-out Trumpism, some 150 Democrats were making moves to reassert some vision and presence of their own, celebrating “Obama Day” at the Madison Gallery under the auspices of the Shelby County Young Democrats, with Mayor Kelvin Buck of Holly Springs, Mississippi, as official host and Mayor Megan Barry of Nashville serving as keynoter.

The emphasis there was altogether on moving forward afresh, with a new national party chairman, former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, having been elected in Atlanta earlier Saturday and with visions of stronger candidate efforts for Democrats in the forthcoming off-year election year of 2018.

After months of making appearances up and down the length of Tennessee, former Mayor Karl Dean of Nashville, Barry’s immediate predecessor, issued a formal statement making it official: He’s a candidate for governor in 2018. Dean will apparently have some good local help from newly appointed campaign treasurer Calvin Anderson, a longtime aide to former U.S. Senator Jim Sasser. Anderson has just retired from several years as a Blue Cross Blue Shield executive (with a street newly named for him adjacent to the insurance giant’s Memphis headquarters) and remains well-connected.

And, even though Nashville real estate entrepreneur and mega-donor Bill Freeman, who had been touching the state’s bases in an exploratory bid of his own, decided over the weekend not to run, the state’s Democrats will apparently still have a respectable gubernatorial primary in 2018, just as in their now vanished years of ascendancy.

State Representative Craig Fitzhugh, the well-liked Democratic House leader from Ripley, has been making it clear for months to any and all who have asked (including ourselves) that he intends to run for governor, and he repeated that resolve for the record on Monday. Though General Assembly rules preclude Fitzhugh’s taking formal organizational steps before the current legislative sessions ends in April, he, like Dean, has been out and about, appearing both at the Memphis YD event and a meeting last week of the Tipton County Democrats.

And, yes, Virginia, as previously indicated in this space, soon there will be a new bona fide Shelby County Democratic Party that will try to make good on the local party’s revivalist hopes.

State Democratic chairman Mary Mancini of Nashville, who recently appointed 13 Shelby County Democrats to serve as an ad hoc committee to plan a restructuring of the currently decertified local party, arranged for the group’s first meeting on Tuesday night of this week in the law office of David Cocke, a vintage Democrat and member of the ad hoc group.

The now completed membership of that core group is comprised of: Cocke, Dave Cambron, Corey Strong, Jeanne Johnson, Van Turner, George Monger, Jolie Grace Wareham, Danielle Inez, Deborah Reed, Emma Meskovic, Clarissa Shaw, Cordell Orrin, and Keith Norman.

• As the General Assembly prepares for the likely return of the Draconian de-annexation measure sponsored last year by state Representative Mike Carter (R-Ooltewah) and state Senator Bo Watson (R-Hixson), the voluntary “right-sizing” plan which the Strickland administration hopes to offer as an alternative may be in for trouble on the City Council.

Asked about its prospects following his speech last Wednesday to the downtown Kiwanis Club, current City Council chair Berlin Boyd repeated his determined opposition to the plan, asserting that the city was in no position to give up the $7 million in tax revenues it would lose in the short term. And Boyd said, “There are lots of others on the Council who feel the same way.”

• As Congress takes a brief break, the wave of well-attended and often high-tempered congressional town meetings on health care and other issues is likely to continue, in Tennessee as elsewhere, but U.S. Representative David Kustoff (R-8th) has seemingly adopted a strategy that, to some degree, will sidestep them.

Kustoff explained things in the aftermath of his address to a Chamber breakfast at the Crescent Club last Thursday. Pleading the large “footprint” of his sprawling district, Kustoff said he had opted for relatively limited group sessions in sites like Brownsville, Covington, and Jackson, with a pre-arranged cap on the number of subjects to be discussed.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Common Sense Pot Policy

CREDIT: Laurin Rinder | Dreamstime.com

Unlike Bill Clinton, I’ve inhaled. So have 49 percent of all Americans, according to a recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Marijuana (medical or otherwise) has been decriminalized or legalized in 23 states, and measures are on the ballot to legalize it in five more states this November, including Arizona, Nevada, Massachusetts, Maine, and California (where medical pot is already legal). A recent Gallup poll found that 53 percent of Americans think pot should be legalized and regulated like alcohol.

There’s a legal doobie in your state’s future, dude. It’s a matter of when, not if.

City Councilman Berlin Boyd proposed an ordinance in council committee Tuesday that would allow Memphis police officers to charge people found in possession of less than a half-ounce (14.2 grams) of weed with a civil penalty of $50 and the possibility of performing community service. The Nashville Metro Council is also considering such a measure.

This is a good idea. Drug arrests for small amounts of marijuana clog our judicial system, tie up public defenders and police officers, and result in criminal records and jail time for what is essentially a victimless crime. A disproportionate number of those charged with this crime are young and black.

Boyd’s proposal isn’t exactly cutting-edge thinking. In Mississippi, for example, possession of 30 grams of pot or less has been a misdemeanor since 1978. The Magnolia State has also legalized medical marijuana on a limited basis. Let that sink in: Mississippi has a more enlightened marijuana policy than we do.

It shouldn’t be surprising that public opinion has swung in this direction. Pot use has become normalized since the 1960s, when it first became widespread among the youth culture. In fact, nearly three-fourths of Americans, according to a 2014 CNN/ORC survey, are now of the opinion that pot is less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes. Increasingly, states are realizing that there is money to be made in regulating the sale of marijuana, much as they do alcohol and tobacco, and policy follows the money.

Boyd’s ordinance makes a lot of sense for numerous reasons, not the least of which is that it recognizes the reality of public opinion and the resultant change that’s sweeping our country’s pot laws.

In Tuesday’s committee hearing, the proposed ordinance was opposed by Memphis Police Director Mike Rallings, a representative of the Memphis Fire Department, and several city council members. Some of these opponents conflated marijuana use with harder drugs, and cited pot as a gateway drug, a theory that has been thoroughly debunked.
The council committee ultimately voted to send Boyd’s ordinance to the full council for consideration. I hope they will pass it, but even if they do, the issue sorely needs to be taken up at the state level. Tennessee’s pot laws need to be modified to reflect the current reality: Legalized marijuana is going to happen at some point.

Many years ago, I sat through a parent drug-education class at one of my children’s high schools where a counselor gravely warned us that most heroin users had smoked marijuana. I suspect most of the baby-boomer parents in that room had smoked pot in their youth and were probably thinking the same thing I was: Yes, and those heroin users had probably drunk alcohol and smoked cigarettes, too. And almost certainly they had eaten cheeseburgers. All were potential gateway substances in this reductive-reasoning scenario.

Half of the American population has smoked pot. If that habit really led to heroin addiction, we’d be in serious trouble — and states wouldn’t be legalizing weed, one after the other.

It’s well past time for Memphis — and the state of Tennessee — to get real about pot. It’s time to catch up to Mississippi.