Tag: Liz Rincon

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Politics Politics Feature

Movers, Shakers, and Wannabes

Justin Pearson (Photo: Justin J. Pearson | Facebook)

Gone from Memphis on a new professional mission that is an advance itself which may lead to more is Liz Rincon, who is heading to Chicago to become the new director of development for the Chicago Philharmonic.

Liz Rincon with Chooch Pickard at her going-away party

Rincon, a longtime activist, has been the proprietor of the Rincon Strategy Firm for, lo, these several years in Memphis and has shepherded many a candidate in a city and county election. She is well-known as an expert in “cutting turf,” i.e, mapping out and organizing neighborhood door-to-door actions, and for her efforts in assisting the city of Memphis in encouraging residents of impoverished areas to accept Covid vaccinations.

• John Marek, the activist and cannabis entrepreneur who ran for the city council’s 5th District seat four years ago, losing to current incumbent Worth Morgan, may try it again, depending on the final shape of the council districts (the bluer the better, from the point of view of Democrat Marek). Alternatively, he is considering a challenge to incumbent Chase Carlisle for the Super District 9-1 seat.

Likely candidates for the 5th so far include Nick Scott, owner of the Alchemy restaurant at Cooper-Young, and Meggan Wurzburg Kiel, an organizer at MICAH (Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope) and former director of support for Soulsville Charter School.

• Greg Blumenthal, who long considered being a candidate for the 5th District council seat, has opted instead to join two other activists, John Carroll and George Boyington, in forming a new political consultancy. The trio is assisting Memphis mayoral candidate Van Turner (who is also helped by the firm run by Matt Kuhn and Mike Lipe), as well as District 86 state House candidate Justin Pearson.

• Justin Pearson,who came to fame as the leader of the successful 2021 campaign against a proposed oil pipeline to be routed through South Memphis, is running with the same vigor for the District 86 seat which was made vacant by the death in November of 93-year-old Barbara Cooper.

Anyone who remembers Pearson’s stewardship of the successful battle against the pipeline knows that he has a way with campaigns and a knack for dramatizing issues. His task of late is more personal. He is attempting to convince the voters of District 86 to vote him in as Cooper’s successor rather than any of several opponents. This past weekend, Pearson turned his birthday party into a fair-sized rally. He has door knockers aplenty at work, has collected a pile of endorsements, and is said to be ready to send out mailers.

As no doubt are others. Nine other candidates are competing, several with good chances, especially considering that, as in the case of any other special-education vote, the turnout is likely to be low. Among the contenders: Tanya Cooper, Barbara Cooper’s daughter and an educator in her own right; Julian Bolton, a longtime member of the Shelby County Commission and other public endeavors who is well remembered among the somewhat elderly voters who regularly vote in this district; Will Richardson, who ran up a decent vote in his August primary challenge to Rep. Cooper; Rome Withers, son of the well-remembered photographer Ernest Withers; Dominique Frost, employee of Shelby County government and an insurance entrepreneur; and Clifford Lewis, son of a well-known activist.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Holding Our Own Against the State as Gender Bully

Transgender Pride Flag, a symbol of transgender pride and diversity and transgender rights (Photo: Sharon McCutcheon)

Staying up late at night, worried about your children is a common occurrence for all parents. What are they watching on their phones? Who are they chatting with? Who was that my kid just drove off with? Standard parental anxiety. However, now there is a new fear that has taken over my nightly worries and has manifested into actual terror. No, I am not being dramatic, this fear is real. I am speaking about our Gov. Bill Lee and the smug way he just made it impossible for queer and trans youth to exist safely in our state.

I am a mama, a proud one. My children do not seem to want to conform to gender-assigned clothing, never have and probably never will. Because my oldest likes to wear clothes bought on the “boys” side of Target, has always been a little advocate for the LGBTQ community, and prefers they/them pronouns, I am terrified that the governor has just given permission for narrow-minded and frighteningly armed people to target and bully my beautiful and brilliant kiddo.

A slew of anti-trans legislation poured out of our state capitol building like the pink slime in Ghostbusters. Just oozing with hate, really bad science and information. The Tennessee Equality Project works so hard to fight this “slate of hate” and try to keep our youth safe. Yet, that train left the station and instead of working on pandemic relief and healthcare needs for our suffering state, the state government dug in and went full bully on our most vulnerable.

When I watched Gov. Lee sign some of the cruelest anti-trans legislation, with his giant smug smile slapped across his face, I wanted to pack up and leave. I wanted to find that progressive utopia, where my children could learn freely about American history without it being sliced into slivers of white bread. My husband and I could raise our children in peace, free from the fear of being targets. We were going to find that location, move, and let Tennessee be a distant memory. There was only one problem — that place does not truly exist in America. Sure, there are more “tolerant” cities and states, but we are not looking to be “tolerated.” We just want to live our lives, safely and free of fear.

I have seen so many posts from friends and acquaintances saying it is time to leave Tennessee. They, too, are living in a world where their fears are becoming realities. We are making national and international headlines, where people are commenting that they never plan on coming to Tennessee because we are so hateful. Well that sucks for our tourism industry, our ability to recruit new business and wealth. Who will invest in us now? Trust me, these hateful bills will come back to bite Gov. Lee, straight in his dad jeans.

After a week of thinking about a lot of things — mainly how to keep my children safe from bigots and bullies — I decided the best thing to do is stay, be brave, and protect all our children. Leaving is what those knuckle-draggers want, so they can slowly create a Tennessee where everything is homogenized and covered in mayonnaise. Well, this Latinx mama, who wants her children to live freely and safely, is not going anywhere. (Although, it is always good to have a backup plan, like a godfather in NYC.)

I want nothing but safety and protections for my child and yours. I want dignity restored, and I want these East Tennessee Republicans to get the heck out of my business because I am a Memphian and I am willing to get in the mud to make their ability to pass outrageous and bigoted laws more difficult. I will take up more space. I will be louder and more visible, and I will not allow them to make a weird white pseudostate because they feel like their “culture” is being threatened. I know it is tempting to start the process of moving to a more tolerant place, but for now let’s stay and try to right the wrongs of this last year. As a mama, a Memphian, and your neighbor, I will always be on the side of dignity for all. I hope you will stay and fight that fight with me. Donate to your local LGBTQ organizations, be your child’s first champion, not their first bully. Memphis is our home; let’s keep it safe for all.

Liz Rincon is a political consultant.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

From Nashville to Memphis: A Venue Change

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In Nashville, things were coming to an end, with the 2015 session of the General Assembly scheduled for a likely finish this week. Meanwhile, in Memphis, things were, in a sense, just getting started. It finally became possible on Friday of last week for would-be contestants in the 2015 Memphis city election to draw candidate petitions from the Shelby County Election Commission.  

On the first day, the most noticeable visitor to the Election Commission’s second-floor office downtown was the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr., about whose intentions (particularly as a possible candidate for mayor) a good deal of speculation had swirled. Whalum both satisfied and furthered the suspense by drawing not one but three petitions — for Mayor; for City Council, District 5; and for City Council Super-District 9, Position 2.

The two council positions are those about to be vacated, respectively, by mayoral candidate Jim Strickland and Shea Flinn. As of last week, when District 4 Councilwoman Wanda Halbert announced she would be seeking the City Court clerk’s position instead of seeking reelection, there will be a total of five open seats on this year’s ballot — six if you count, as some observers do, the District 7 council seat, now that of interim Councilman Berlin Boyd and formerly the seat of Lee Harris, now a state Senator.

Whalum made it clear, both at the Election Commission and on Saturday, at a public-education forum in Raleigh, that while he regarded himself as a prospective winner in the mayoral race, he would defer to Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams (an attendee at the Raleigh affair at Bob’s Country BBQ), should the latter choose to run for mayor, as he has previously indicated he would.

“Whatever race I run in, education will be my platform,” said Whalum, a former school board member who advocates that Memphis take steps to resume a de facto city school system.

The known mayoral field so far continues to consist of incumbent A C Wharton, councilmembers Strickland and Harold Collins, County Commission Chairman Justin Ford, Williams, and former University of Memphis basketball player Detric Golden.

 

The Other Brian Kelsey: Whatever his popularity in his own District 31 — which begins in Midtown and extends into East Memphis, Cordova, Bartlett, Germantown, Collierville, and Lakeland, – which continues to reelect the state Senator comfortably, Brian Kelsey has a wholly different reputation elsewhere in Shelby County.

Among those Memphians who consider themselves progressives, for example, Kelsey is about as popular as, say, Dick Cheney or Ted Cruz would be at a Democratic National Convention. At one time or another, he has had his hand in legislation antagonistic to gays, abortion-rights advocates, proponents of living-wage ordinances, income-tax advocates, public-school defenders, believers in gun control, and to supporters of the Affordable Care Act in general, and to Medicaid expansion in particular.

That list should not be regarded as fully inclusive. Kelsey is an equal-opportunity exacerbator. In addition to his perceived offenses against Democrats, he has also taken an abundance of positions considered objectionable to various members of his own Republican Party, notably including Governor Bill Haslam, who has labored to keep Kelsey in check on issues ranging from voucher legislation to restraints on gubernatorial privilege.

It should be said that Kelsey sees himself as a champion of liberty, as he would define that term, and — hark! — there are bills of his that actually do bridge the enormous gap between him and a multitude of others who would define that term wholly differently. 

In last year’s legislative session, Kelsey secured passage of SB 276, which struck down obstacles to employment for reformed felons, and in the session now coming to an end, the senator sponsored SB 6, the “Racial Profiling Prevention Act,” which has now passed both chambers and awaits only the governor’s signature to become law.

The bill defines racial profiling as “the detention or interdiction of an individual in traffic contacts, field contacts, or asset seizure and forfeiture efforts solely on the basis of the individual’s actual or perceived race, color, ethnicity, or national origin” and would require all police departments and sheriff’s departments in Tennessee to adopt by the end of this year a written policy in conformity with the definition.

Kelsey, it seems, can work across the aisle. The racial profiling bill was co-sponsored by Memphis state Representative John DeBerry, and the previous year’s bill on behalf of ex-felons was co-sponsored with state Representative Karen Camper. Both DeBerry and Camper are inner-city Democrats.

Now, an even more striking piece of collaboration may be in the offing. At a meeting Monday night at Celtic Crossing of “Drinking Liberally,” a group of self-styled progressive Democrats, political consultant Liz Rincon, a key member of the group, was sharing portions of some online correspondence with Kelsey, wherein the state senator seemed to be expressing himself open-minded about the prospect of raising the minimum wage for servers in food and drink establishments.

Hmmm. The senator from District 31 could be a work in progress.

…

As the General Assembly prepared to close out 1) without acting on Governor Bill Haslam’s Insure Tennessee Medicaid-expansion proposal; and 2) with House concurrence on a Senate bill that would impose a 48-hour waiting period on abortions among other restrictions, dissenters made their feelings known.  

Jackson Baker

First Baptist Church on Broad pastor Keith Norman (left) and state Representative Joe Towns presided over a press conference last week at Christ Community Health Services adjacent to Norman’s church as part of statewide information session on Insure Tennessee sponsored by the House Democratic Caucus. They vowed to continue efforts to secure passage of the governor’s Medicaid-expansion proposal — in a new special session, if need be.

As the House in Nashville prepared to put its imprimatur on new abortion restrictions, protesters at the Poplar Avenue headquarters of Planned Parenthood, many of whom had made repeated visits to the General Assembly in an effort to dissuade legislators, indicated they, too, would continue their opposition to what they regarded as backward-looking legislation. To make the point, they affected the period dress of pre-Roe v. Wade times. (See picturel, top of page.)