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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Something Like Prayer

Photo: Shara Clark

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak

— Mary Oliver, “Praying”

Sometimes I stop on my neighborhood walks to caress the moss carpeting the arm of a mighty magnolia that reaches toward the sidewalk. As spring approaches (which, as I write this, officially begins today), the buds and blossoms intoxicate my senses — the sweet smell of blooming dogwoods and the bright hues of newly flowering gardens speckling the way. One might consider these moments something like prayer — a pause to appreciate things often missed in the hurriedness of human life.

The signs of spring as spotted on a recent walk (Photo: Shara Clark)

Last week, I noted the many dandelions and clover patches dotting the edges of the walkways on my route. I’ve never been too good at finding four-leaf clovers, but occasionally I’ll stop and scan for one. After passing several over the course of a mile, a particular patch called to me and broke my stride. I took a few steps back to get a closer look, and as soon as my gaze focused on the clovers, there it was — a four-leaf! But then, wait — another, and another, and another. It felt like I’d hit the jackpot. Moving my eyes and fingers along the puffs of green, it seemed every other clover was a lucky one. I plucked until I hit seven. I’m not sure why, but that was the number. Although I knew in my gut there were more; I’d leave those for someone else who took the time to look down. It filled me with warmth, perhaps something like a response to prayer, a sign in the silence that I was on my right path that day.

Yesterday, as the temperature dropped before what I hope was the last frost of the season, I saw from my porch a mama squirrel carrying her baby in her mouth. Mama scurried quickly across a lattice portion of my side fence, with baby curled in a ball hanging by the scruff of its neck. I assume she was transporting the wee one to a safer or warmer nest, as I read they’re known to relocate. Her acrobatics were impressive, toting a baby a third of her size as she jumped down, ran, and leaped to the top of the wooden fence across the yard, tight-roping the height of it and only stopping every few feet to secure baby in her grip. Having never seen such a thing in my decades on Earth, a warm feeling washed over me watching this gentle moment unfold. A representation of love and protection, nature and nurture.

Once the squirrels disappeared from view, I let my own furry creatures outside to play. My dogs Frances and Steve enjoy sunbathing on these longer days, and happily munching away at the creeping ivy, sniffing the tiny blue violets, or rolling around in the now lush grass.

I’ve never been too good at praying, and elaborate words may escape me most days. But I do see the beauty in the weeds and stones, in the moss and magnolias. And witnessing this rebirth — this voice of spring — is something like prayer.

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Editorial Opinion

The Brandon Webber Case: Work To Be Done

CREDIT: Facebook

As noted elsewhere in this issue, the major local news of late has focused on the tragic death in Frayser of young Brandon Webber at the hands of U.S. Marshals, followed by an immediate and widespread community reaction to the presence of law enforcement officers dispatched to the scene for crowd control.

The fact that in the ongoing mayhem of that confrontation numerous officers were injured by thrown objects was alarming in its own right. Along with the precipitating incident — yet another fatal encounter between law enforcement and an African-American youth — there is more than substantial evidence that we as a community have passed some threshold in social dislocation that must be addressed.

Facebook

Brandon Webber

Although racial tension is a major ingredient of the problem, it does not by itself explain why the problem exists. As was to be expected in our cybernetic age, there was a barrage of online reactions to the tragic incident, with whites and blacks to be found on both sides of the dividing line. Certainly, a generous number of the MPD and sheriff’s department officers dodging rocks, bottles, and bricks — and, commendably, avoiding overreaction — were black. And, for all the white commenters sympathizing with the protest emanating from the African-American community, there were a fair number of African-American commentators both online and in the broadcast media deploring Webber’s seemingly suicidal provocations, and inveighing against opportunistic efforts to exploit the crisis.

Though the temptation to make Webber a martyr may have seemed a stretch, given the circumstances of the precipitating crime he was suspected of — car theft and assault with a deadly weapon — that fact should not diminish the human instinct to mourn his fate and to empathize with his loved ones left behind. And it should not prevent us from realizing that the outpouring of rage and grief generated by Webber’s passing is the understandable and even proper residue of sentiment that developed over time in relation to previous victims of fatal encounters with law enforcement, many of those victims being wholly or relatively blameless. In a sense, society is reaping a whirlwind now from discord sowed in those prior ill winds.

The dark clouds have gathered, and they will persist. If there is a silver lining to be found in them, it is in the fact of an ongoing awareness in governmental councils of a need for criminal justice reform — not just in relation to the easing of penalties for nonviolent offenders and the facilitation of their re-entry into productive society, but of a change underway in official attitudes toward offenders and an increasing tendency to see them as fellow citizens needing a hand up. We have not yet fully come to grips with the specter of class division and income inequality — as significant factors in social dislocation as race, if not more so. There is work to be done — by all of us.

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Editorial Opinion

No More Gambles

At this point, it is generally acknowledged that the presidency of

George W. Bush has been one of the most problematic in American history. Now, that’s a polite and fair-minded way of putting the matter, isn’t it? To be more blunt about it, scholars and layfolk alike have settled

into a consensus that Bush is a contender, along with the likes of Harding, Grant, and Buchanan, for the title of Worst President Ever. His approval ratings in the polls continue to drop and are hovering these days in the low or middle 20s, percentage-wise.

The nature of the administration over which this driven, underachieving, and overmatched son of a former chief executive presided is well captured in the current Oliver Stone biopic, W., which presents a portrait that conscientious reviewers have variously described as cartoonish and satirical, on the one hand, and sympathetic and serious, on the other. That range of opinions says it all, really. To invert the old punchline, it only hurts when we stop laughing. This is a man who wants to do the right thing but doesn’t have a clue as to what it is, so he either plays it by ear or becomes dependent for guidance on self-serving father-surrogates. (Do the names Cheney and Rumsfeld ring a bell?) But not, however, on the literal father, the infinitely more sagacious first President George Bush, for we have by now learned from Stone and a score of biographers what we already suspected: that this is nothing less than a Freudian psycho-drama we have been living through for the last eight years.

All we knew going in, circa 2001, was that our new president chose to call himself a “compassionate conservative.” Bush turned out to be neither. His administration scorned the have-nots of the country, and his policies were reckless and slapdash in the extreme. Even elementary common sense should have told him — and us — that we couldn’t pay for expensive wars and hand out gargantuan tax cuts at the same time, that we couldn’t go it alone in foreign affairs and maintain our alliances, and, finally, that we couldn’t trust to the greed of financial speculators, wholly unsupervised, to keep our free-market economy on the straight and narrow.

All of which is to say that we don’t intend to be fooled again.

The Republican candidate calls himself a “maverick.” Fine and dandy. Then, while there’s still a small corner of time left, he should show us real distance from the failed policies of the last eight years and not, as has seemed to be the case so far, from his own best instincts in 2000, that long-lost millennial year of hope.

The Democratic candidate wants to rekindle that notion of hope and promises change. Increasing numbers of Americans seem to believe in his sincerity and, moreover, are impressed with a manner that is both deliberative and impassioned.

Four years ago, we recommended a vote for John Kerry, though we were never totally captivated by a candidate who seemed to wear his indecisiveness on his sleeve.

Barack Obama is something else — cautious but purposeful and determined, it would seem, to draw us together in common enterprise. In a spirit of confidence and anticipation, we gladly endorse his candidacy.

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Editorial Opinion

Presidents in Glass Houses …

Buried in the back pages of the newspapers these past two weeks by the Olympics, and now pushed offstage almost entirely by the Democratic Convention in Denver, the mega-crisis in the Caucasus — where Russia responded earlier this month to Georgian sabre-rattling over ending the autonomy of two ethnic Russian regions within its borders by invading the former Soviet republic — took a turn for the worse Tuesday, when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev formally recognized the “independence” of those regions (South Ossetia and Abkhazia). Predictably, Secretary of State Condi Rice blustered about this “regrettable” move on the part of Medvedev and his mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who may well be welcoming these two mini-states into the Russian Federation before the first snows fall on Moscow.

And what can the U.S., as “the world’s only superpower,” do about this blatant violation of international law? Not much, thanks to the fact that our military forces are overextended in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Not that what the Russians are doing is anything less than reprehensible. But when Nicholas Sarkozy, president of France and the EU president, speaks out against the “outrage” of Russia’s bullying of Georgia, the world listens. When the architect of our own country’s miserably flawed foreign policy speaks, the world chuckles.

“The territorial integrity and borders of Georgia must be respected,” pontificated George W. Bush Tuesday. Right you are, Mr. President. Just like you respected the territorial integrity and borders of Iraq in the spring of 2003, launching an equally unprovoked war against an equally sovereign state left equally defenseless against the military might of a stronger power.

There is, however, one important difference between Russian aggression against Georgia and your aggression against Iraq, Mr. Bush: The Russian army is already headed home, while ours is still pounding sand in a country where so much American blood, treasure, and national honor has and continues to be lost.

“Tourists” and their Dollars

Tourism spending is supposed to support the financing of FedExForum, the convention center, the Bass Pro Pyramid, the fairgrounds, Beale Street, and Elvis Presley Boulevard near Graceland. Add to that the day-to-day operations of the Memphis Zoo, the Memphis Redbirds, the Children’s Museum, and many others.

Tourists, in other words, are really loaded. They’re sleeping in $100-$200 hotel rooms, eating expensive meals, and buying $50 tickets. And they’re oblivious to the price of gasoline, unlike the rest of us. The truth, of course, is that “tourism” spending includes a lot of local spending, too. The revenue streams that support our sports and entertainment projects are fed by taxes that would otherwise go into state or local coffers. And if the state rebates the taxes, you can bet someone in Nashville is keeping track and debiting the Memphis account somewhere along the line.

When public officials say they’re building major projects without using general funds or property taxes, they are fudging. The general fund would be more robust and Memphis property taxes — the highest in Tennessee — would be lower if financiers didn’t play their shell games. One way or another, it’s all public tax money.

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News

A Family Affair

CREDIT: Richard Thompson

On April 21st, Art Gilliam, chairman and president of Gilliam Communications Inc., will be one of four inductees into the Society of Entrepreneurs.

Gilliam — along with Hilliard Crews of Shelby Group International, Doug Marchant of Unified Health Services, and Dan Poag of Poag & McEwen — will become a member of that august organization during its 15th annual dinner and awards banquet at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn.

It’s one more accolade earned for Gilliam, who purchased WLOK 1340-AM 30 years ago. The city’s first black-owned radio station grew into a historic landmark on South Second Street. While traditional gospel music is its forte, WLOK is a well-respected voice for communities throughout the Mid-South.

“We’re really a community station and always have been,” says Gilliam, 63. And even after 30 years, Gilliam is still talking growth. “We’re in the embryonic stage,” he says, adding that it might take a year or two to really find out what’s ahead for WLOK.

Gilliam, who also owns WHGM Radio Inc., is in the process of selling that Savannah, Georgia, station. The $200,000 sale was approved by the FCC last year and was scheduled to be consummated in January, but that has been delayed. Gilliam expects the deal to be completed soon.

Gilliam says there’s a hope “to preserve WLOK as a community asset going forward,” but it’s unclear what shape that would take. For instance, forming a foundation is an option, Gilliam says, because it would put the station’s future under a structure more concerned with its role as a community asset than just a business.

In the last 30 years, Gilliam, a former Commercial Appeal reporter and opinion writer at WMC-TV, has seen the media landscape change dramatically. WLOK has changed too, switching from R&B to a traditional gospel-music format in the 1980s. It hasn’t looked back since, building a loyal listener base that is primarily African American and older. They tune in daily to listen to longtime on-air personalities like Brother James Chambers, Jahue “Doc” Mumphrey, and Delsa “Fireball” Fleming.

Gilliam says the station’s annual Stone Soul Picnic in September is a microcosm of what the station represents. The event, held every year at Tom Lee Park, features music but also offers health screenings and voter registration. The station is also part of an initiative that provides counseling for people suffering from drug addiction and a hotline for people who want to get out of gangs.

“People identify with us as a member of their family,” says Gilliam.

Kim Harper, the station’s program director, agrees. Memphis, she says, is definitely a gospel town, and WLOK wants to improve what it currently does. Take the Stone Soul Picnic, for instance: “We want to make it international. We are doing things now to invite some people, other cultures to come in,” she says.

And Harper says the station will continue to grow its listener base. To that end, it can be heard via the Internet. “We’re now heard worldwide,” says Harper, who has been with WLOK for 10 years and hosts the early-morning show. As for the future, Harper says the day is coming when AM radio will sound no different from FM or even HD.

However, Gilliam says, that doesn’t mean the station plans to get involved in satellite radio. “We may very well get into areas that are related to what we do, but we don’t have a five-year game plan that puts us into another field [like FM or HD]. Certainly, it’s possible that we would look at other things,” he says.

Gilliam does not foresee any change in his personal program. Radio, he says, is a business that is most conducive to community activism.

“It never stops being something you are interested in doing,” he says. “There’s never a time that it wouldn’t be rewarding and challenging to me.”

Richard Thompson writes on Memphis media at Mediaverse-Memphis.blogspot.com.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Juvenile Justice

Whether it’s the inevitable effect of a party-line shift on the Shelby County Commission, which went from a 7-6 Republican majority to a 7-6 Democratic majority after last year’s quadrennial elections, or it’s a matter of purposeful effort on the part of new members, race-consciousness has returned to the commission’s front burner. (See also this week’s)

Not that it was ever wholly absent. Any number of issues before the commission in the last decade or so have been affected, at least implicitly, by the issue of race. For starters, there is the matter of school construction — and disagreement between blacks and whites (aka Democrats and Republicans) over how city and county systems should be governed and funded. Another racially tinged issue, dormant for the moment but a raging controversy during the last several years, was that of privatizing the county’s correction facilities.

But justice, and the question of whether it is dispensed equally and equitably, is at the core of explicitly racial concerns that haven’t been so directly addressed on the commission since arguments over redistricting preoccupied the body more than a decade ago.

The focus of recent discussion has been the matter, which simmered after last summer’s countywide general election and came to a boil with the swearing-in of the new commission, of whether there should be a second Juvenile Court judgeship. That probably wouldn’t have been an issue had anyone other than Curtis Person — a respected longtime state senator, a white, and a Republican — won in a field in which three prominent African-American and, presumably, Democratic candidates canceled out each other’s votes. The fact that Person had served as a part-time court administrator for several years (and thus could be identified by critics with its practices) exacerbated matters, as did the question of racial inequities in the administration of juvenile justice.

Though support for the candidacy of last year’s court runner-up, former U.S. attorney Veronica Coleman, is part of the reason for the current controversy, race has become the overriding issue. There is no denying that black youths predominate before the court, that their cases are disproportionately remanded to adult courts, and that, as was recently disclosed, suburban white youths have often had their own cases diverted to alternate and presumably milder handling outside the court’s jurisdiction.

This situation is but the tip of the iceberg, say several of the commission’s black Democrats, some of whom are demanding both a federal investigation of the court and a command appearance before the County Commission by Judge Person, who, for his part, has promised to address all concerns if permitted to do the job he was elected to do. The commission’s Republicans, who tend to be Person’s defenders, balk at what they consider the peremptory nature of the summons.

Meanwhile, a decisive vote on the issues of a second judgeship has been delayed, and, following a stormy, racially tinged debate in a committee session on Monday, so has a vote on commissioning a formal study on the court’s procedures.

While there is no doubt that the moment of truth is approaching on the issues of Juvenile Court, we hold on to the hope that racial and political comity will survive the final resolution.