Tag: poverty

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Local Nonprofit Leaders Urge Officials to Address Systemic Racism, Poverty

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Brandon Dill

Protesters and police officers face off during the 2016 Hernando de Soto bridge protest

A coalition of local nonprofit leaders wrote an open letter to local officials and business leaders, listing steps to address police issues and poverty in the city.

The letter, signed by more than 100 leaders of nonprofits here, lists eight demands related to police brutality and accountability, as well as five demands for tackling poverty in Memphis.

“We have come together as black leaders of the nonprofit space to amplify the cries and demands heard in our streets and around the country,” the letter reads. “Joined by our non-black colleagues in leadership, we demand more of our city’s leadership. We see the direct impact of racism and oppression daily.”

Specifically, the letter asks the following:

• Release all of the protesters that were arrested and drop all charges; investigate law enforcement brutality and misconduct during the recent protests

• Reallocate funding from the police department to fund alternatives rooted in community health and crisis response

• Ban chokeholds and strangleholds by Memphis and Shelby County law enforcement officers

• Require de-escalation as a first response by Memphis and Shelby County law enforcement officers

• Develop a duty to intervene when an officer witnesses another officer using excessive force

• Require reporting by officers any time they point a firearm at a citizen

• Give the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) the power to investigate and ensure accountability for police conduct and provide clear avenues for CLERB’s input on police training, policies, and procedures

• Include grassroots black and brown leaders and activists on the team selecting the next MPD chief

Next, the letter lists five demands to address inequality and poverty, explaining that the systemic issues go beyond policing.

“From education to wages, we have constructed and perpetuated a system that keeps our residents in poverty,” the letter reads. “We call on leadership in all sectors — government, nonprofit, and corporations — to adopt an agenda that addresses these issues. It will require doing businesses differently and centering the lives, dreams, and concerns of all of our residents.”

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The specific asks include:

• Combat poverty by tracking companies paying a living wage and having corporations sign on to a living wage pledge and a commitment to give temporary employees health insurance and benefits

• Renew investment in K-12 in the city budget

• End money bail and stop penalties for traffic tickets, court costs, and other fines

• Enact a citizen participatory budgeting process for the city and county that prioritize neighborhood-level investments

• Release a clear plan for more effectively funding the Memphis Area Transit Authority by August

“We believe deeply that the leadership in our city wants a city where all residents are treated with dignity and humanity and are provided opportunities to become thriving citizens,” the letter reads. “For us to get there, we ask the leaders in government and business to respond to these demands with clear commitment to ACTION.”

The letter calls for the recipients to respond with clear action steps by June 26th. Read the full letter and see the list of signees below.

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News News Blog

Report: Shelby County Should Be Focus of TANF Fund Surplus

Beacon Center of Tenessee

Governor Lee

Shelby County should be the spending focus for the state’s massive $571 million surplus of unused federal funds aimed to help low-income families, according to the organization that discovered the surplus.

Two weeks ago, the Beacon Center of Tennessee, the Nashville-based, free-market think tank issued a report called “Poverty to Prosperity: Reforming Tennessee’s Public Assistance Programs.” The report found that Tennessee spends only a fraction of the federal funds it gets to fund Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) programs here.

One of those programs in Tennessee, called Families First, gives temporary financial assistance to eligible families with children in the form of a cash benefit, as well as employment and job search opportunities, according to the Beacon report. The TANF funding also helps fund TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program.
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Shelby County represents the largest caseload size of TANF (23.3 percent), TennCare (17 percent), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at 22 percent, according to Beacon.

”Tennessee should invest in pilot projects focused on poverty in Shelby County and opportunities to provide more supportive wrap around services for working age adults that need childcare, transportation, education, and employment training services,” reads the report. “Successfully partnering with families in Shelby County to tip the scale in their favor to move from poverty to prosperity would have the single greatest economic impact for the state’s systems of support.” [pullquote-1]
In a letter Wednesday, Memphis Rep. Steve Cohen demanded answers from Tennessee Governor Bill Lee Wednesday on the state’s $571 million surplus of federal funds for needy families. 

Cohen said Tennessee only spent $20 million of its $190 million federal allocation last year, leaving $170 million unspent on TANF programs last year. In all, the unused TANF funds totaled more than $732 million, according to Beacon. Cohen said his $571 million figure included only funds that weren’t yet obligated.

Initially, Lee adminstration officials defended the surplus, saying they’d need the extra funds for another economic downturn. After weeks of backlash over the surplus discovery, Lee said in budget hearings Monday that his office is working on a plan use more of the funding.

For starters, Lee said the Tennessee Department of Humans Services, which administers the TANF funds, will spend about an additional $70 million this year to nonprofit organizations.

But the assurance was apparently not enough for Cohen.

“When 15.3 percent of Tennesseans are living in poverty, it is inexcusable for the state to withhold millions of federal dollars allocated to help this exact population,” Cohen said in a statement. “At best, this has resulted in Tennessee’s gross mismanagement of federal dollars; at worst, Tennessee has deliberately chosen not to assist needy families.”
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Beacon’s report concluded that Tennessee should take the additional TANF funding and for the Families First program, “focus on creating innovative transition services that reward working parents for each move up the economic ladder toward stability and prosperity like transportation and childcare supplements for families who are working.”

As for TennCare, Beacon said Tennessee should use some additional TANF funding to ”take a deep dive into its caseload” and ”promote more access to care for its enrollees.”

For both programs and SNAP, Beacon suggested “Shelby County should be the main area of focus.” Beacon Center of Tenessee

Beacon Center of Tenessee

Beacon Center of Tenessee

Beacon Center of Tenessee

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News News Blog

Group Hopes to De-Criminalize Poverty


A Tennessee organization is looking for community-sourced solutions to the criminalization of poor Tennesseans.

Free Hearts, an organization led by formerly incarcerated women, seeks to provide support, advocacy, and education to families impacted by incarceration. The group’s ultimate goal is to keep families together or reuniting them.

The organization is asking the public to complete a survey to help generate community-based solutions to decriminalize poverty in Tennessee.

“#ItsNotACrime to be poor, but the state of TN has made it a crime to be poor and working-poor,” the survey introduction reads.

Dawn Harrington, executive director of Free Hearts, said that the survey will help identify new Tennesseans who want to join their efforts to end the criminalization of the poor and “transform our state into one that is just and equitable for all.”

The survey will be open through October 4th. Those who are interested can also send a 1-minute video on the criminalization of poverty to the group.

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Free Hearts, along with the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, helped push for a recently-passed state law meant to help parents facing incarceration stay with their families.

The Primary Caretaker Bill, which became law in July, requires that courts factor in someone’s caretaker status when handing down sentences. The idea is for the caretakers to be offered a community-based alternative to incarceration.

Facebook/Free Hearts

Free Hearts with Gov. Bill Lee as he signs the Primary Caretaker Bill


The group has since been talking with Gov. Bill Lee’s office about solutions to the criminalization of poverty. The organization was asked to present solutions to address the issue and other policies related to poverty and criminal justice.

The survey is a step in that direction. Harrington said the group wants to build on the work it’s done for caregivers, by looking for alternatives to parts of the system it says criminalizes poverty, such as bail and pre-trial detention.

“It is our belief that participation is the first win and in order to propose solutions to a problem that affects so many of us, we must get input and buy in from Tennessee across the state on their ideas and organizations that already exists that they believe are effective,” Harrington said.

To incentivize participation, Free Hearts will enter all survey participants or those who create videos in weekly drawings through October 4th for a chance to win a $500 gift card.

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News News Blog

Webber’s Shooting Called ‘Boiling Point For Community’

CREDIT: Facebook


Civil rights groups say the community’s response to Wednesday’s fatal shooting of Brandon Webber at the hands of U.S. Marshals officers goes beyond the events of this week and is the result of years of injustice.

Just City said in a Thursday statement via Twitter that the neighborhood’s response is based on “decades of sustained over-policing and entrenched policies that criminalize poverty.”

“The loss of another young life was but a spark on the smoldering ashes that exist in so many neighborhoods in our community,” reads the statement from Just City. “Every single day in Memphis, young and old alike encounter oppressive systems, which are nearly impossible to avoid or escape.”

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Just City said the courts demand more time and attention from the poor than the wealthy, so “even simple traffic tickets can cause a crisis.”

“Hefty” court costs and fees, which if not paid result in driver’s license suspensions, is one way that Just City said those living in poverty are unfairly treated by the system.

“Law enforcement and courts demand accountability for the slightest misstep,” Just City said. “Yet when a life is taken in a hail of gunfire, we wait for days, weeks, or years for a simple description of what occurred, and officers are rarely, if ever, held accountable.”

Webber’s Shooting Called ‘Boiling Point For Community’

Hedy Weinberg, director of the ACLU of Tennessee, shared similar sentiments Thursday, saying that the community’s response was “clearly one of pain, of frustration, of anger.”

“While we in no way condone violence against police officers, the boiling point reached by some individuals in the crowd last night is the consequence of decades of injustice, discrimination, and violence against black people in Memphis and beyond,” Weinberg said. “Of course people in Frayser are upset and angry. We should all be angry.”


Weinberg continues saying that to ignore the pain of protesters and instead to respond with “a militarized show of police force, only illustrates and reinforces the problem.”

Facebook

Brandon Webber

“To adapt the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., unrest is the language of the unheard,” Weinberg said. “To stem the erosion of trust between the community and law enforcement, it is incumbent on Memphis leaders to start listening. This means acknowledging the community’s legitimate pain and anger.”

Weinberg also questioned if there were any attempts made by the officers to de-escalate the situation before shooting Webber: “Was shooting Mr. Webber over a dozen times, if reports are accurate, really necessary?”

There should be a “swift, thorough, and transparent” investigation into the shooting and a “prompt” release of any footage or evidence related to the incident, Weinberg said.

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The Memphis branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also wants answers surrounding Webber’s death.

In a Thursday statement, Deidre Malone, president of the Memphis branch, said the group is “very interested” in determining whether or not the U.S. Marshal officers that shot Webber were wearing body cameras and if there “was a better way to engage Mr. Webber once he was located.”

“Unfortunately for our citizens, Memphis is again in the spotlight over a shooting of an African American,” Malone said. “The NAACP Memphis Branch will continue to ask these questions until we obtain a response.”


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News News Blog

Panel, Community to Discuss Intersection of Poverty and Education

CREDIT: United Way

United Way

Panelists featured in the series’ first installment on equity

A community conversation about poverty and education is scheduled for Tuesday, July 17th at the National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM).

It will be the second of three installments in Poverty Unplugged, a series of solution-oriented, community conversations. Hosted by United Way of the Mid-South, the series looks at the intersection of poverty in three different areas.

Tuesday’s installment will focus on access to education and how it can aid personal development. It will also consider the amount of funding in communities that goes to education, if it is enough, and if the funds should be split into other areas.

The panel will consist of Mark Sturgis, executive director of Seeding Success; Danny Song, founder of Believe Memphis Academy; Shante Avant, deputy director of the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis; and Tami Sawyer, local activist and director of diversity and community partnerships for Teach for America.

“Access to an equitable education is still one of the challenges facing our city and 

country today,” Sawyer said. “We’re hoping we can bring light to what’s keeping Memphis children from quality education and what practices and solutions we’re delivering in our individual and collective work.”

Kirstin Cheers, with United Way, said the overall goal of the three installments is to increase understanding and awareness in the community around the complexity of poverty and “how the multi-faceted layers connect to determine whether a person advances or dormant in this community.”

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“Additionally, it is a formal nod to the incredible work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his final manuscript that included all these topics,” Cheers said. “It started as a partnership with NCRM to ensure the dialogue and steadfast work of fighting poverty continues on in this community beyond April 4th. It took far longer than a day to get here and will take even longer to overcome.”

The first conversation, which was held in April, centered around equity and understanding the difference between equity and equality. The topic for the last installment, which is scheduled for October 2nd, will be fair wages and quality jobs.

In this final installment, there will also be discussion about how the topics of the previous two conversations — equity and education — determine the outlook for individuals and communities seeking self-sufficiency and economic empowerment.

The discussion on Tuesday begins at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

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News News Feature

The Roots of Protest

Poverty is a form of violence.

It holds millions in bondage, locked into neighborhoods stripped of public or private investment, trapped in low-wage jobs. Often, this violence is state-sponsored via policies that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor, who are often brown and black. So it is a short walk from national protests against police brutality to calls for economic justice.

Rookie activist Tami Sawyer wants to help people in Memphis — the poorest large metro area in the nation — make that journey. In the past two weeks, the 32-year-old St. Mary’s alumna organized two die-ins — one outside the National Civil Rights Museum and another on Beale Street. These and dozens of similar protests nationwide were sparked by deaths of two unarmed black men — Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island. In both cases, a grand jury failed to indict the white officers who killed them.

But the fury on display at protests and on social media is not directed solely at a warped criminal justice system. It is the entire game that is rigged.

“We can scream, we can yell, we can cry on TV,” Sawyer said, “but it will fall on deaf ears. We don’t have economic power.”

For proof, look at last week’s report from the Pew Research Center. Although the economy is recovering, the black-white wealth gap is now at its highest since 1989. In 2013, the median household wealth of white families ($141,900) was 13 times greater than that of black families ($11,000).

African Americans make up 14 percent of the country’s population, but black-owned businesses bring in just 0.5 percent of the nation’s receipts.

It is difficult to amass wealth when just two generations ago, black people were shut out of some trades, red-lined out of more desirable neighborhoods by racist lending policies, and banned from state-run colleges funded by their tax dollars.

With little inter-generational wealth, black people are more likely to be unemployed and, regardless of household income, live in neighborhoods where property values are falling. These poor neighborhoods are more likely to be hyper-policed, which puts black people at greater risk of encounters that could be defused by smart policing or that could end in death.

That’s an oversimplified version of how the criminal justice system functions in a larger machine that devalues black lives. (For the complete account, read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.) But in this context, it makes sense that the Ferguson grand jury decision, announced the Monday before Thanksgiving, spawned the #BlackOutBlackFriday shopping boycott. (Black Friday sales were down 11 percent, but pundits were loathe to credit hashtag activism.)

Sawyer supported the boycott but wondered about the long game. “You’re going to boycott on Friday, but when Cyber Monday comes up, you’re going to go spend money with Best Buy,” she griped.

Her Instagram page became a photo gallery to encourage people to shop with black-owned businesses on #buyblackfriday and beyond. “At the end of day, we don’t make it anywhere, if our own people don’t support it,” said Sawyer, who does employee development for government agencies.

Her vision of economic empowerment grew last week after a chance encounter with D’Army Bailey, a retired judge, attorney, and activist. At a black-owned coffee shop/office space in Uptown, Sawyer talked strategy with a man she’d met through the die-ins.

Bailey sat at a nearby table, eavesdropping. Then he interrupted. “He said, ‘Besides lying in the street, what else do you have planned?'” Sawyer recalled.

He was brusque, but she listened. “He said go to the county commission meeting and see what they’re debating today.”

She did. On the agenda was the economic impact plan for Graceland, which calls for $125 million in public investments to build a private hotel on the property and create 282 jobs.

“The jobs aren’t spelled out,” Sawyer said. “Are they going to be low-wage? Are they going to be middle-income?”

Those questions weren’t asked at the meeting. The lone vote against the plan came from Bailey’s brother, Walter.

“Being aware of how the money in this city is spent is important,” she said. “Our freedom as a culture ties into our economic freedom.”

Her next protest is planned for Christmas Eve, outside Graceland.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Third-World Poverty on Our Doorstep

I recently undertook a writing assignment for Memphis magazine which involved a trip to Helena, Arkansas. My wife and I decided it would be fun to take old Highway 61, just to get a feel for what the journey must have been like 20 years ago, before the new road’s casino-influenced upgrade to a zippy four-lane. It was eye-opening.

We were amazed at the contrast. There were no billboards — and no traffic — just green fields of cotton, rice, and peanuts under a big blue sky. We had the road to ourselves.

Soon, we were working our way through the bustling casino complexes of Tunica County, marveling at the new buildings, new roads, and fresh plantings of crepe myrtle and other landscaping. We drove through downtown Tunica, also landscaped, bedecked with flags, and made over to an almost Disney-esque degree. Whatever you may think of casinos, there is no denying that the resultant tax revenues have thoroughly transformed the county.

Helena, not so much. Oh, there’s a casino, all right, but it’s across the river in Mississippi, and the economic benefits have evidently not found their way across the bridge.

Downtown Helena is as near to a ghost town as you’ll ever see. The main street, Cherry, features blocks of boarded-up buildings and, on this Sunday, was entirely empty of people or cars. We literally pulled a U-turn to take a picture and stopped on the dividing line to get a better angle. Five minutes later, we were still clicking away and still hadn’t seen another human.

After spending the night in a gorgeously restored Victorian bed and breakfast (the only guests), we decided to hit a few more backroads and ended up in Friar’s Point, Mississippi.

I’ve seen the slums of Lima, Peru, and other third-world countries, and nothing I’ve seen — nothing — compares to living conditions on the south side of Friar’s Point. People were living in tiny boxes on cinder blocks. Mounds of trash were everywhere, being scavenged by packs of mangy dogs. It was poverty at its most abject.

These folks are living a hellish existence in the midst of millions of acres of plenty, 60 miles from Memphis. Surely there is something we can and should do.

Foreign aid comes to mind.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Mississippi is Number One — For Obesity

(AP) – Experts say Mississippians need to skip the gravy, say no to the fried pickles and start taking brisk walks to fight an epidemic of obesity.

According to a new study, this Deep South state is the fattest in the nation. The Trust for America’s Health, a research group that focuses on disease prevention, says Mississippi is the first state where more than 30 percent of adults are considered obese.

Aside from making Mississippi the butt of late-night talk show jokes, the obesity epidemic has serious implications for public policy.

f current trends hold, the state could face enormous increases in the already significant costs of treating diabetes, heart disease and other ailments caused by the extra poundage.

“We’ve got a long way to go. We love fried chicken and fried anything and all the grease and fatback we can get in Mississippi,” said Democratic state Rep. Steve Holland, chairman of the Public Health Committee.

Poverty and obesity often go hand in hand, doctors say, because poor families stretch their budgets by buying cheaper, processed foods that have higher fat content and lower nutritional value.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – a self-described “recovering foodaholic” who lost 110 pounds several years ago – explained during a Southern Governors’ Association meeting in Biloxi last weekend that there are historical reasons poor people often fry their foods: It’s an inexpensive way to increase the calories and feed a family.

Dr. Marshall Bouldin, director of the diabetes and metabolism center at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, told the Southern governors that if the Delta counties were excluded, “Mississippi would wind up being about 30th in diabetes problems in the United States.”

Mississippi’s public schools already are taking steps to prevent obesity.
A new state law enacted this year requires schools to provide at least 150 minutes of physical activity instruction and 45 minutes of health education instruction each week for students in kindergarten through 8th grade. Until now, gym class had been optional.

The state Department of Education also is phasing in restrictions on soft drinks and snacks.

All public schools are currently banned from selling full-calorie soft drinks to students. Next academic year, elementary and middle schools will allow only water, juice and milk, while high schools will allow only water, juice, sports drinks and diet soft drinks.

The state Department of Education publishes lists of snacks that are approved or banned for sale in school vending machines. Last school year, at least 50 percent of the vending offerings had to be from the approved list. That jumped to 75 percent this year and will reach 100 percent next year.

Among the approved snacks are yogurt, sliced fruit and granola bars, while fried pork rinds and marshmallow treats are banned. One middle school favorite – Flamin’ Hot Cheetos – are on the approved list if they’re baked but banned if they’re not.

State Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds said he hopes students will take home the healthful habits they learn at school.

“We only have students 180 days out of the year for seven hours in a school day. The important thing is that we model what good behavior looks like,” Bounds said Monday after finishing a lunch of baked chicken.

Bounds ate at a Jackson buffet that’s popular with state legislators. On Monday, the buffet included traditional, stick-to-your-ribs Southern fare: fried chicken, grits, fried okra, turnip greens.

Dr. William Rowley, who worked 30 years as a vascular surgeon and now works at the Institute for Alternative Futures, said if current trends continue, more than 50 percent of adult Mississippians will be obese in 2015.

Holland, who helps set the state Medicaid budget, said he worries about the taxpayers’ cost of treating obesity.
“If we don’t change our ways,” he said, “we’re going to be in the funeral parlors … because we’re going to be all fat and dead.”

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Mayoral Applicants Welcome

Memphis is facing a watershed year. The looming mayoral election hasn’t begun to heat up yet, but the summer promises plenty of political maneuvering and fireworks as candidates jockey for position.

It’s now looking more and more likely that several candidates — each supported by varying constituencies — will be vying to unseat Mayor Willie Herenton. This is no doubt the way Herenton hopes it will play out. The more candidates there are, the more likely it is that the mayor will return for another term.

I have nothing against any of the announced candidates, but I don’t think any of them has thus far shown themselves capable of addressing the current citywide ennui. There is no one yet running who, in the immortal words of George Bush the Elder, has “the vision thing.”

Most candidates are trying to tap into the anger of the electorate, but there is nobody — black or white, Republican or Democrat — who would seem to have the ability to inspire hope and provide a coalescing leadership.

We need someone who can unify us and make us proud to be Memphians again. Our self-esteem as a city is at rock-bottom. Our corrupt and inept politicians have made us a statewide joke. Our crime problem eats at our core like a cancer. But crime isn’t made from whole cloth. It’s woven from the dark threads of poor education, one-parent homes, illegal guns, drugs, poverty, and hopelessness.

A candidate with vision sees the big picture, articulates the problems and their causes — and lays out a way forward. Herenton hasn’t done this, at least not recently. And even if he began to do so today, he’s burned too many bridges, alienated too many of his constituents. After three terms, his relationship with the City Council — and with at least half of the city’s residents — is probably broken beyond repair.

Another four years of “staying the course” with the political status quo could prove disastrous. At this point, change of any kind would be welcome, but real change will require a vision — and a visionary. Applicants welcomed.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com