Tag: Freddie Gray

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Opinion The Last Word

Letter to My City

There are dead and dying black people everywhere.

I haven’t logged on to Facebook in two weeks, partly because people talk too damn much, partly because I don’t want to watch endlessly looped videos of black and brown people’s slaughter and share sadface emojis because I don’t have any more meaningful words about their deaths.

Words are data-mined and used in targeted ads: Quality proofreading services, Marvel’s Defenders series, black and brown people vomiting blood from gunshot wounds in 4k resolution on your screen — aren’t these new phones amazing? Look at that quality; you can see each individual shudder in that death rattle. Check out these suggested videos. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Cry.

I love Memphis, but does Memphis love me?

Last night, I was driving home from dinner in my mom’s car. My neighborhood is belted by extreme affluence on one end and extreme poverty on the other. I live squarely in the middle, in the liminal space, which is lowkey my existence because I’m the kind of millennial that people aren’t talking about when they talk about millennials. Charleena Lyles was a millennial, too. I wonder if her love of avocado toast is to blame for our failing economy. I wonder how many degrees of separation there are between avocado toast and her murder. There are dead and dying black people everywhere.

I was driving my mom’s car last night to get dinner for my family. My route is always the same when I’m heading west toward home: turn on the rich people’s street to get to the street designated for the not-rich black people, most of whom are dying from incarceration, from poverty, from generations of advancing bare centimeters and you all should be grateful, we could just wall off your part of the neighborhood and leave you in Memphadishu, dude, but I’m cool, bro, so here, have a swig of my 201 Hoplar what do you mean you don’t like IPAs? I don’t even know who Duanna Johnson is, dude. Forget it, we’re building the wall, don’t say we never tried to give you anything.

The rich people’s street on my side of the ‘hood has 24-hour security patrols. The rich people’s street on the other side of the ‘hood has 24 hour security patrols and those police blue eyes in the sky that are possibly the blue eyes of the precogs rifling through our black minds for prethoughtcrimes against the white supremacist order, the better to justify our murders. Data-driven probable cause, but all the artificial intelligence is racist.

My route is always the same. I turn on the rich people’s street to get to my street. As I am sitting in the lane to turn on the rich people’s street, a blue eye — a blue life? — pulls up short, creeps behind me as I am sitting in my mom’s car, a bag of food in my wife’s lap. The other blue eye winks from across the street, as if to say to the blue life behind me, “Do what you gotta do. Fear for your life if you need to.”

Thankfully, my child hasn’t been born, so they won’t have to see my black life taken by this blue life. All I’ve done is buy dinner. I have guacamole in the bag. How many avocadoes is my black life worth? I contemplate having my wife turn on Facebook Live — if I go, I’m going out in 4k. But we’re working-class blacks and we can’t afford 4k tech on a writer’s salary, so I don’t bother. I haven’t committed a crime, but neither did Philando or Sandra or Tamir or Darrius or eight-year-old Aiyana or Laquan or anyone else on this charnel house list that started, really, in 1619. There are dead and dying black people everywhere. Listen to the high definition sound quality of those rattling chains.

That winking blue eye followed me through my dreams. On my way to work, I pass two signs: “I <3 Memphis” and “Memphis Loves Everybody.” Let’s do the math: One of those is true; the other is bullshit. Memphis don’t love me. Memphis loves those other millennials, the ones who think quality avocado toast goes well with craft IPAs. Memphis don’t love me. Memphis glares at me suspiciously in its tourist sandals while I’m going to pick up my slices from Memphis Pizza Cafe, even though I’ve been going there since I was 16 and the millennials Memphis loves just got here last year. Memphis loves grit and grind. Memphis loves urban displacement, platitudes, preserving historic standards, saving the Greensward. Memphis loves being number 3 on the Best New Mid-Sized Cities for Millennial Homebuyers list. Memphis loves progress as long as it comes with a shaggy surfer haircut, a pantsuit, a startup with a Grizzlies blue-and-gold material UI logo, a digital rendering of a pistol, and an insensitive ironic slogan because that’s the new Memphis, man. Memphis loves not loving me and people like me.

I finally log on to Facebook. People are still talking. Dana Loesch is in an NRA ad calling for people to take up arms and defend America in its noble struggle against its oppressed. City, county, and state politicians are still debating whether it’s more economically viable to smother us slowly or to bleed us out with a single bullet. The Commercial Appeal is “exploring” Memphis’ problem with gun violence. A blue life creeps by, armed and armored in the same kind of van that Freddie Gray was killed in. Memphis loves Everybody. There are dead and dying black people all over this city. I love Memphis.

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphis writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis, and The Memphis Flyer.

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News News Feature

Tale of Two Cities

It’s impossible to watch coverage of Baltimore protests sparked by police brutality and not wonder: Could that happen here?

Could Memphis erupt like Baltimore?

The ingredients behind the Charm City’s unrest aren’t unique to Baltimore, but they’re not identical to Memphis.

For starters, there is no local equivalent to Freddie Gray.

Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died April 19th, a week after his spine was almost severed while in Baltimore police custody. That extreme example of state-sponsored violence collided with longstanding frustrations about police harassment and the dire economic prospects for African Americans.

Two weeks of tense protests over the value of black lives followed. Earlier this month, six police officers were charged in connection with Gray’s death.

In Memphis, the closest comparison to Gray would be Duanna Johnson, said Paul Garner, an organizing coordinator at the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center.

In 2008, Memphis police officer Bridges McRae beat Johnson after she was arrested on prostitution charges.

In 2010, McRae, who is white, pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges. Johnson, who was black, was shot to death in 2008. The case remains unsolved.

But if Memphians didn’t take to the streets after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, there’s little reason to think they’d do so now, said Marco Pavé, a hip-hop artist and activist.

“It’d take something really extreme for us to get on that level,” said Páve, who is also the CEO of Radio Rahim Music.

Still, it’s worth noting the similarities between the two cities.

Healthy public investments flow to tourist areas — such as Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and Memphis’ riverfront. But these investments haven’t trickled down to poor neighborhoods, such as West Baltimore and South and North Memphis.

The share of the black population is identical — 63.3 percent — and both cities have a black mayor and police chief.

The decline of good-paying, union-protected manufacturing jobs hit Memphis hard, but it sent Baltimore reeling.

As Memphis public housing projects were torn down, families were scattered across the city, unlike the concentrated pockets of poverty in Baltimore.

But Memphis has higher rates of poverty and unemployment for African Americans and a smaller share of college-educated residents.

Most of the new jobs are low-wage jobs, like the hundreds Conduit Global promised when it opened a call center last year. Last week, the company announced it will lay off nearly 600 workers, most of whom earn around $10 an hour.

Late last month, the sporting goods mecca Bass Pro Shops opened in the long-shuttered Pyramid, bringing 600 jobs, for which there were thousands of applicants.

A lottery for a city summer jobs program with 1,000 spots drew more than 6,500 applicants.

To help fund youth job programs, Memphis Light, Gas & Water now accepts donations, just like they do for people who can’t pay their light bills.

When a city has to pass the hat to raise money for jobs, something has gone horribly wrong.

Pavé doesn’t advocate violence, “but the thing I would prefer most … is for Freddie not to get murdered. That’s the most egregious part — not the response to the inequality; it’s the inequality itself.”

The Center for Community Change (CCC) and its national coalition of partners realize this, which is why they launched the Putting Families First: Good Jobs for All campaign two weeks ago.

Unrest in communities like Baltimore underscores the need for massive change on a national scale, which is why one of the main goals of Putting Families First: Good Jobs for All is to reinvest in communities of concentrated poverty, like Baltimore and Memphis.

“This campaign seeks to restart the economy in places where racial bias, exclusion, and sustained disinvestment have produced communities of concentrated poverty and despair,” Dorian T. Warren, CCC board member and author of the “Putting Families First: Good Jobs for All” report, explained at the launch.

He continued: “This goal is to channel significant investments to communities with high unemployment and low wages, so they can rebuild their local economies and expand residents’ access to jobs and wealth-building opportunities.”

The choices we’ve made as a nation have brought us to this point. We’ve made the rules of the game, and we have the power to change them.

But in order to move forward, we must see America’s growing population of color as an asset to build on and not a threat to neutralize or worse.

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News News Blog

Million Moms March in Memphis

Next Saturday, May 16th, Memphis moms (and their allies) will host a solidarity march in conjunction with last weekend’s planned Million Moms March in Washington, D.C. The D.C. march was held on Mother’s Day weekend to raise awareness of the issue of unarmed black men being killed at the hands of police. The Memphis march was supposed to be held on Mother’s Day, but it was postponed due to weather.

The Memphis rally will take place at 10 a.m. at Main Street and A.W. Willis downtown. It’s being hosted by Families for Justice. The national march in D.C. is hosted by Mothers for Justice United. The marchers are asking the Department of Justice to demand accountability for deaths, such as the recent death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri last year, at the hands of police officers.

Families for Justice, according to their press release about the march, “seeks to help dismantle institutional racism. Families for Justice is a diverse group; inclusive of mothers, fathers, children and concerned citizens of any ethnicity, culture, religious or political affiliation, united in understanding that this is an American human rights failure and that all people play an important role in confronting racial injustices.”

A flyer for the Mothers for Justice United march planned for Washington D.C.

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News News Feature

Lives That Matter

I never met Freddie Gray. But in reporting on cases in “the pit” — the bottom floor of the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center in Memphis — I’ve met plenty of guys like the man so many African Americans in Baltimore have exalted to martyr status.

They are the ones who suffer from a fatal flaw of omission, as they anxiously relate to me their stories of persecution at the hands of police, either before or after their arrests. I’ve patiently listened. Then I’ve gone back and checked their criminal rap sheets and found out the vital information, the arrest history they didn’t bother to tell me.

In the case of the 25-year–old Gray, public outrage with his death has continued to overshadow a lengthy criminal record that included almost two dozen prior arrests from illegal gambling to burglary to drug possession. It makes me shake my head in wonderment that Gray’s acknowledged criminal career and the highly questionable nature of his death in the custody of Baltimore police, should be elevated to a martyrdom that becomes the catalyst for people burning down their own neighborhoods under the banner of “black lives matter.”

Why, given the illustrious history of the civil rights movement, are we African Americans now willing to let social media, racially motivated opportunists, and our thirst to create modern-day martyrs lead us to ignore the lack of moral character of some of these victims of police misbehavior?

In the dictionary, “martyr” is defined as a person who willingly suffers death on behalf of any belief, principle, or cause. Where does Gray fit into any of that? What in his life dictated his death should be elevated to the same category as those of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, or James Chaney? Why should Gray’s murder be categorized as a life that mattered any more than that of white civil rights icons Detroit housewife Viola Luiza or slain civil rights activists Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner?

The success of the civil rights movement didn’t hinge on the skin color of those who knowingly and willingly were ready to sacrifice their lives for the tenets of social justice they believed in. It was because, in one of the most turbulent times in our history, those eventual victims of atrocities all embraced the unpopular concept that all lives matter, whether white, black, or brown.

I was warned not to write this column, because it might be construed as somehow being disloyal to black people. I was told it might be safer to take some middle ground, where I would express some amount of outrage for Gray’s death and stress the need to continue efforts to establish a civilian review board in Memphis to have some form of oversight on potential overzealous MPD actions.

I do feel sadness for Gray’s family, and I believe the Baltimore police officers involved in his death should be investigated. And now that the Baltimore prosecutor has filed charges against the officers (who were black and white, male and female), the investigation will go forth as it should. I also hope the Memphis City Council will give members of the civilian review board some teeth in order to help to be more effective watchdogs over incidents when law enforcement officers have possibly overstepped their legal bounds.

However, why I wrote this column didn’t come to me until I sat across from my granddaughters and grandson for a joyous brunch in Overton Square. I’ve read all of this fatalistic crap about how black children are destined to fail in life. I’ve heard all the arguments. They’ll have no parental guidance. I’ve ingested those cold statistics that project by the time they’re in their teens they’ll know a family member who’s been shot or is in jail or is dead. Because they’re black, they’ll be prone to acquiring felony records that will immediately limit future career opportunities and they’ll be sentenced to being on the welfare rolls.

None of those dire predictions will happen as long as my grandchildren remain in the loving embrace of their family. Whether they like it or not, they will be exposed and entrenched in the values of pride, honesty, and the drive to succeed. They will not help to burn down cities. They will strive to be active parts of the foundations upon which great cities and communities are built. But above all, it will be instilled in them, that wherever life takes them, they will always be ensconced in the truth that “all lives do matter,” including theirs.