A key Senate panel approved legislation Wednesday that would provide public money for private school tuition for Tennessee students whose school systems do not offer in-person learning all year.
However, lawmakers amended the bill first to remove a provision that also would have extended vouchers to students whose parents disagree with school mask mandates in their district.
The 6-2 vote in the Senate Education Committee came after only 30 minutes of discussion about a controversial voucher policy that has been debated for years in Tennessee’s legislature and is currently being challenged in court.
Unlike Tennessee’s 2019 voucher law that was promoted as helping low-income students who attend low-performing schools in a few districts, the new legislation seeks to incentivize all 147 of the state’s school systems to keep students learning in person amid COVID-19.
“We’re doing this because we know that in-person learning is the most effective way to educate a child,” said Sen. Mike Bell of Riceville, noting that last year’s test scores showed a dramatic drop following a year of learning disruptions that leaned on remote instruction.
The Republican lawmaker, who is co-sponsoring the bill with Rep. Michael Curcio of Dickson, said he wants public school systems to “take that job seriously” and keep brick-and-mortar classrooms open. He made references to large districts in Memphis and Nashville that provided mostly online learning last school year and saw their students’ scores decline beyond average statewide declines.
The bill would extend voucher eligibility to students in any district that does not offer 180 days of in-person learning because of the coronavirus pandemic for the three upcoming school years beginning Sept. 1, 2022.
Other eligibility requirements under the 2019 law would remain in place for students in districts that have a high concentration of low-performing “priority schools,” or have schools in the state’s school turnaround district program known as the Achievement School District. That criteria applies to Memphis and Nashville, where leaders didn’t want vouchers introduced and challenged the law in court.
Tennessee’s voucher program was halted by a judge in 2020 because it applied only to students in Memphis and Nashville. The case is under appeal, with arguments scheduled before the Tennessee Supreme Court on Feb. 24.
In the Senate panel, lawmakers questioned whether the new proposal could trigger voucher eligibility in districts receiving state-approved waivers to switch temporarily to remote learning. Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn launched the waiver process last fall after the COVID delta variant spread made it hard to keep schools staffed.
Charlie Bufalino, assistant commissioner of policy and legislative affairs for the Tennessee Department of Education, said the short answer is yes. However, it’s uncertain whether remote waivers will be offered beginning next school year when the proposed voucher legislation would kick in, he added.
If remote waivers are still available, Bufalino said districts could consider offering an in-person option while also providing temporary remote learning — or they could just use their 13 days stockpiled for closing schools due to inclement weather, illness, or other widespread challenges.
Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who voted against the bill, said districts could quickly exhaust their stockpiled days and be forced to extend their school year into summertime.
Akbari also pointed out that many private schools continue to toggle back and forth between in-person and remote learning to adjust to the changing pandemic.
“What happens if a parent tries to use this [voucher] just because they want to get their kid in a private school, and that private school is doing virtual learning?” she asked. “Then we’re taking state dollars to go to this private school, and they’re doing the same thing that’s being done by [public schools.]”
“That’s the beauty about this piece of legislation,” Bell responded. “That’s up to the parent. It’s a parent’s responsibility to choose a school that is going to meet their child’s needs.”
“My concern with that is it’s still state dollars,” Akbari reiterated, “and they’re taking state dollars to a private school that’s potentially doing the same thing that the public school is doing. So it’s not helping something that’s been identified as a problem. It is just giving the parents a state fund to take their child to a private school.”
Voucher critics have long argued that voucher advocates have an agenda beyond giving more education choices to families, many of whom already have multiple options such as public charter schools, magnet schools, online schools, and specialized optional schools, as well as homeschooling and private schools. They say the goal is to privatize education, especially for more affluent families who can most afford to cover the full cost of private school tuition beyond the $7,000 or so that a Tennessee voucher would provide.
The leader of Tennessee school superintendents said his organization opposes the bill, as it has all voucher legislation.
“We’re opposed to public funds leaving our public schools,” said executive director Dale Lynch. “Decisions are difficult enough at the local level, especially during this pandemic. Putting in this extra layer just adds to the challenges we face while trying to do what’s best for all students.”
On a related note, Gov. Bill Lee, who championed the 2019 law, is seeking to rewrite Tennessee’s 30-year-old system for funding schools to a student-based approach instead of the current resource-based approach.
The change could force the state to do student-by-student calculations that would make it easier for Tennessee to expand a private school voucher program, although Lee has denied that’s the reason he’s pushing for an overhaul.
Cannabis reform in Tennessee can’t clear one big hurdle, but that hurdle has a shot at being removed this year.
Lawmakers here haven’t been able to pull the trigger on reform, as so many other states have, because the drug is listed on the federal government’s Schedule I. This puts cannabis on the same list as heroin, LSD, meth, and peyote. This designation seems to scare the bejeezus out of Tennessee lawmakers for fear the feds might begin cannabis enforcement once again.
It does seem the state is moving toward reform. The Tennessee Medical Cannabis Commission began its work late last year, hammering out some details of what such a program here might look like. However, the bill that created that group states clearly that Tennessee will not move forward with any cannabis reform until the federal government removes the drug from the Schedule I.
However, there is a cannabis bill already filed for the Tennessee General Assembly’s next regular session. In July, state Rep. Bruce Griffey (R-Paris) filed legislation that, if approved, would ask Tennesseans what they think about legalizing marijuana with a nonbinding poll question in 2022 elections. The bill, though, was panned by many as doing too little for any actual reform.
“This is the type of bill you introduce when you don’t have the courage, as a legislator or a party, to just do what’s right,” tweeted state Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) at the time.
But Congress cracked the door on reform last year, offering some hope of removing that federal hurdle on reforms here. In September, the House Judiciary Committee passed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which would remove the drug from the controlled substances list, expunge nonviolent cannabis convictions, and more.
While this move has support from Democrats, a Republican effort was announced in November. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) filed the States Reform Act. The bill would remove cannabis from the Schedule I and provide states a framework for reform working with their unique laws.
“The States Reform Act takes special care to keep Americans and their children safe while ending federal interference with state cannabis laws,” Mace said at the time.
In April, Virginia became the first state in the South to legalize cannabis for all adult use, medical or recreational. The new law sets the path for legal cannabis sales to begin there in 2024. Also, New Hampshire lawmakers approved recreational cannabis reform earlier this year.
In Europe, Malta lawmakers turned heads when they legalized cannabis with nationwide legislation, becoming the first European Union country to do so. German lawmakers promised cannabis legalization in December after such proposals had been blocked for years.
Dozens of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters have cost Tennessee untold amounts of money, resources, and, more importantly, lives.
That’s according to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration (NOAA), the federal agency responsible for monitoring the climate and environment. That report says the U.S. has suffered 310 weather and climate disasters since 1980 and that each cost more than $1 billion in damages and losses.
Credit: NOAA
The country saw 21 such events in 2021, the reports says. The year saw one drought, two flooding events, 11 severe storms, four tropical cyclone events, one wildfire, and one winter storm that each racked up over $1 billion in response costs. These events also resulted in 688 deaths, according to NOAA.
The report does not break out the specific costs and lives lost in Tennessee, but it does capture any such event that has affected the state.
For example, the Category 4 Hurricane Ida slammed the Louisiana coast in August, leveling homes and knocking out power for thousands. Response to the hurricane and losses incurred cost about $75 billion, NOAA said, and 93 died.
A major storm had already caused flooding in Tennessee, hitting hard in the small town of Waverly. Those there were still calculating the devastation in lives lost and clean-up efforts when Ida dumped another 2.5 inches of rain on the area.
Hurricane Ida had a more direct economic effect in Tennessee, too, as the storm’s rain bands soaked the festival grounds for Bonnaroo 2021. The show was supposed to mark the festival’s return from 2020’s Covid cancellation. But event organizers said the rain meant the show could not go on, issuing refunds to ticket holders of what is a multi-million-dollar concert event in the state.
“While this weekend’s weather looks outstanding, currently Centeroo is waterlogged in many areas, the ground is incredibly saturated on our tollbooth paths, and the campgrounds are flooded to the point that we are unable to drive in or park vehicles safely,” Bonnaroo tweeted at the time. “We have done everything in our power to try to keep the show moving forward, but Mother Nature has dealt us a tremendous amount of rain over the past 24 hours, and we have run out of options to try to make the event happen safely and in a way that lives up to the Bonnaroo experience.”
Memphis is mentioned directly once in NOAA’s report and it comes with a direct price tag. In 2011, parts of the Ohio Valley saw nearly 300 times the amount of its usual rainfall. Much of that water flowed into the Mississippi River. Combine that water with the year’s typical snowpack melt, and the event flooded the river.
Credit: National Weather Service/ Images show floodwater surrounding Tunica casinos in 2011.
The overall cost of the flood was $3.8 billion, according to NOAA. For Memphis, the flood caused $403 million (adjusted for inflation) in damages. It also caused more than $1 billion worth of agricultural damages in Mississippi.
Talks on climate and the economy were held in July during a House Financial Services Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and and Financial Institutions. Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the Union of Concerned Citizens, said Congress needs an advisory council to require climate risk exposure in the marketplace and protect those most in harm’s way (usually low-income households) from the harms of climate change.
”If we fail to take action now, the potential for severe shocks to our financial system will grow and, as with previous crises, the impacts will be especially harsh for those who can least afford it, low- and fixed-income households and communities of color,” Cleetus said.
I’m one of the lucky weirdos who is both right-handed and left-eye-dominant. I discovered that fact when I was about 10 years old and was allowed to join in the “target practice” in the hills behind my grandparents’ house. When my uncle handed me a light rifle, I took it with my left hand and raised the sight to my left eye. Either my dad or my uncle corrected me, but I responded with something like, “It feels wrong.” Frankly “wrong” isn’t the half of it. It feels downright unnatural for me to shoot right-handed.
I’ll never forget my uncle laughing out loud at his bookish, right-handed nephew shooting like a southpaw. I remember my dad shrugging his shoulders with that “What are you gonna do?” expression on his face.
I share this story to underline this fact — I was raised around guns. I was never one of the cousins who really got a kick out of shooting, but I don’t think of a gun as some sort of mythic creature that can act of its own accord. I haven’t only seen them in movies and on TV. So I can only hope that you won’t write me off when I share this next story.
When I was about 10 years old, I lived with my mother and younger sister off Jackson Avenue in Midtown. We lived in a little gray duplex that, in my memory at least, sat on a small hill.
Late one night, my mom had to run an errand. I don’t remember what the errand was. Maybe she just desperately wanted a Pepsi. My mother has a fondness bordering on mania for Pepsi. I’m not sure where we were going, and I’m not sure why she decided to take us with her. It’s likely this was after our house had been broken into, so maybe she felt safer letting us sit in the car while she ran inside.
So she woke me up and stuffed me into a coat and rolled my sleeping sister up in a blanket like a burrito, and, with me in the lead and my mother carrying my sister, we made our way to my mom’s beat-up old Toyota. I was sitting up front in the passenger seat and my mother was bent over sliding my sister into the back seat when a man ran up and grabbed her purse.
He had a gun, a handgun, and he was pointing it at my mom. She screamed, hands up framing her face like a cartoon character who’s seen a mouse. I was frozen. But the mugger ran off and my mom eventually stopped screaming. This story has a happy ending. We survived, and we lost only a cheap faux-leather purse and its paltry contents.
It can happen so quickly. That’s what I’ll never forget, even though in reality, this is something of a non-story. No one was shot; no one was killed or even hurt. Still, people are shot and hurt and killed every day. There’s the thinnest of membranes between a regular day and the worst day of your life. And, unlike with disease or catastrophic storms, this is a problem of our own making.
I admit it’s not a problem with only one solution. It’s not even a problem with only one symptom. There are so many kinds of gun violence, and so many causes. It will take effort and expense and coordination to fix.
Last week, a 24/7 Wall St. study was published; it cited Memphis as the most dangerous city in the United States. Reports such as that one aren’t helping anyone. Writing off a city — or a community or neighborhood or ZIP code — as inherently dangerous is in itself a kind of violence. It says it’s socially acceptable to ignore that problem, to judge or avoid a place and its people. And of course, legislation like Tennessee’s “permitless carry” bill, which Governor Bill Lee signed into law earlier this year, isn’t helping either. We will have to do challenging work, on multiple levels, from different angles, to have a hope of living in a safer country, state, and city.
Fall brought a grim parade of violence to Memphis. On September 23rd, 29-year-old Uk Thang was fired from his job as a sushi vendor at the Collierville Kroger. He returned to the store with a gun and shot 14 people, one of whom, a widowed mother of three named Olivia King, died. Thang turned the gun on himself before police arrived.
On September 29th, a 13-year-old at Cummings K-8 Optional School shot and injured a classmate in a stairwell. Then, in the early morning of October 3rd, 36-year-old Rainess Holmes and three others broke into a home on North McLean occupied by several students at nearby Rhodes College, looking to steal electronics. When he and Andrew “Drew” Rainer scuffled over an iPad, Holmes shot him in the chest. Rainer died at the scene, and a second person was injured.
Then, on November 17th, Young Dolph, one of the most successful Memphis rappers of the last decade, was in Makeda’s Homemade Butter Cookies on Airways when two men rolled up in a white Mercedes. Armed with an assault rifle and an automatic handgun, they fired through the store’s front window. Young Dolph was pronounced dead at the scene, leading to an outpouring of grief for the man who had become known in the community for his generosity. No suspects have been arrested.
These high-profile stories of gun violence are the tip of the iceberg. In 2019, there were 237 homicides in Memphis. In 2020, there were 327, a 38 percent increase. By early December 2021, 310 Memphians had become victims of homicide, virtually guaranteeing that by year’s end the final toll will be higher than 2020. But killings alone don’t tell the whole story. So far this year, there have been more than 5,000 violent assaults in Memphis.
The alarming rise in gun violence is not purely a Bluff City phenomenon. According to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, the rate of firearms killings in the United States rose 24 percent from 2019 to 2020. Mass shootings rose from 417 to 611 over the same period. Curiously, this rise in violence comes at a time when all other crimes are trending downward. Property crimes like larceny and burglary are at their lowest rates since the mid-1960s.
“We’re seeing cities across the country that had a bad year in 2020, a very violent year,” says County Commissioner Mick Wright. “But it seems to be continuing here in Memphis, and that’s very concerning. I think it should be concerning to all elected officials, as well as everyone who lives here in Shelby County. We see it on the news every day. I think people are certainly tired of the shooting and looking for answers.”
What’s Going On? There are a lot of guns in America. In 2017, the Small Arms Survey found that there were about 393 million firearms in the United States — 122 guns for every 100 Americans. A 2020 survey by the RAND Corporation found that Tennessee ranked 14th in the nation in terms of gun ownership, with 51.6 percent of adults saying they had a gun in the home. The two states bordering the Memphis metro, Mississippi and Arkansas, ranked seventh and sixth, respectively, with 55.8 percent and 57.2 percent of households owning a firearm. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics, there is a strong correlation between the number of guns in a state and the state’s gun death rate. Alaska, the state with the highest gun death rate, has the third-highest rate of gun ownership. Tennessee’s gun death ranking is 12, two positions higher than our ownership ranking. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, tied with New Jersey for the lowest gun ownership rate, is also the state with the lowest rate of gun deaths.
“Gun crime is top of mind everywhere we go,” Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich told a Rotary Club audience on November 30th.
And yet, the Tennessee Legislature is dead set on relaxing gun laws. In 2014, they passed a bill making it legal to store any firearm, loaded or unloaded, in a motor vehicle, as long as it is kept from “ordinary observation.” Weirich called the law a “contributing factor” in the escalation of gun violence. “Back in 2010, we had less than 300 guns stolen from cars,” she said, referring the audience to a chart her office produced. “You can see as of October 12, 2021, we’ve had 1,286.”
Weirich advocates for several measures that would streamline the process for the 150,000-200,000 criminal cases that pass through her offices every year, allowing prosecutors to focus on getting violent offenders off the street. She said the permitless carry law that went into effect on July 1st is a step in the wrong direction. “It takes away the ability of law enforcement to come up and ask to see your permit, if you are openly carrying in a restaurant or walking down the street or going into Home Depot. And that is an issue for law enforcement and will continue to be an issue. You know, there’s a lot of talk about penalizing and criminalizing car owners that don’t lock their gun up in their car safely, and that type of thing. My philosophy is always let’s punish the people that are stealing the guns to wreak havoc in our community, and let’s be serious about that. But I don’t know of any common sense legislation that’s floating around.”
Beyond Statistics Michael LaRosa, associate professor of history at Rhodes College, says the murder of Drew Rainer “has had a real chilling effect on the campus, and on that neighborhood, and on the whole city life, I think, because of how visceral it was. I’ve been working at Rhodes for 27 years. I’ve never seen anything like this. … The students are afraid, you know? They’re not afraid in the sense that they’re not going out or staying in their rooms barricaded. But they’re worried about their own personal security in what is really a very safe neighborhood.”
LaRosa does not hesitate to blame the proliferation of guns, thanks to what he calls an “antediluvian” attitude of Tennessee state lawmakers. “Everybody has a gun and that affects the way we interact with one another on the street, and it obviously affects the way the police do their job,” he says. “That’s why we had seven murders [in Memphis] this weekend.”
Erika Kelley (Photo: Courtesy Erika Kelley)
For Erika Kelley, gun violence is a personal issue. On March 18, 2016, she was preparing for her father’s wake. “The day before I buried my father, I got a call that my son, Dontae Bernard Johnson, had been found dead in a parking lot. We later found out he was robbed, shot, and killed due to senseless gun violence. This happened in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. At the time, he was 23 years old. In my last conversation with him, as he was preparing to come home for my father’s funeral, he shared with me that he and his high school sweetheart at the time were expecting their first child. He was so excited about that. My granddaughter is now 5 years old. He never got a chance to meet her.”
Dontae Bernard Johnson (Photo: Courtesy Erika Kelley)
Soon afterward, a friend who had also lost her son to gun violence reached out to invite Kelley to a meeting of Moms Demand Action (MDA), a grassroots group founded in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. She is now the local group leader for the Memphis chapter. Kelley and her group spent the last year lobbying against the “constitutional carry” law. “We have been back and forth to Nashville, going to the governor’s office, talking to him, trying to stop them from passing that law. There’s already enough gun violence. Constitutional carry is just asking for more. And as you can see, that’s what’s been going on.”
Erika Kelley and Pastor Brian Kelley (Photo: Courtesy Erika Kelley)
Ultimately, the group’s meetings with lawmakers were fruitless. “They would listen to us and say, ‘Well, we hear you.’ But obviously, that’s all they did because you see that law they passed. … We were with the chief of police and different local community leaders here in our city … The sheriff, he shared in a town hall meeting a couple of weeks ago that he drove all the way up there and met with the governor for five minutes. Basically, they didn’t care. They were already going to do what they want to do.”
Last June, Governor Bill Lee, who made permitless carry a top priority, called the law “long overdue.” He made the remarks during a ceremonial bill signing at the Beretta USA gun factory in Gallatin.
Searching for Answers Charlie Caswell Jr., executive director of Frayser’s Legacy of Legends CDC, is on the front lines of the fight against gun violence. Growing up in the Dixie Homes public housing projects, Caswell was no stranger to violence. “At 14 and 15 years old, both years, I witnessed my friends being murdered in front of me. It had a traumatic impact on my life that led to me acting out with anger over the years. That led me to want to reduce and mitigate that in the lives of other children.”
Charlie Caswell Jr. (Photo: Courtesy Charlie Caswell Jr.)
At the core of Caswell’s program is the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) questionnaire, which is administered to determine if people have experienced violence, abuse, or neglect; have seen a family member die by suicide; or are growing up in a household with substance abuse, mental health problems, or chronic instability due to parental separation or incarceration. About 61 percent of adults who take the test have experienced at least one ACE, and one in six say they have experienced four or more. ACEs disrupt the development of young brains. High scores on the ACE test are predictive of chronic disease, depression, and violent behavior. “Trauma comes in different capacities. It doesn’t have a color to it, or a gender, or a socioeconomic capacity. It happens. ACE tests that show physical abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, and household dysfunction before their 18th birthday, if you have four or more, you are 1,200 times more likely to attempt suicide, and 40 to 50 percent more likely to use drugs and alcohol.”
Caswell says that thousands of people in the predominantly Black neighborhoods of Frayser and South Memphis are caught in a cycle of poverty, neglect, and violence. “When these children and families are referred to us, we basically sit down with them to assess the trauma that they have experienced in their lives, and then we assess their resilience. We begin to focus on their strengths, which many of them, because of the trauma, have never really paid attention to. … What we recognize through this work, is that many of them have generational trauma. Some of the things that these young men and young women are going through, when we sit down and talk to the parents, the parents went through the same thing.”
Christina Gann is the program director for in-home services for Youth Villages, a Memphis-based nonprofit. “We work with a wide array of young people who are at-risk, and I see a lot who have juvenile justice involvement,” she says.
Gann and her Youth Villages colleagues say they have seen a change in the populations they serve. “I think one thing that did not help was the pandemic,” Gann says. “Kids are back in school this year, which has helped tremendously, but I think that that also made things more challenging for families, and then also for the kids. We saw an increase in a lot of different behaviors. But something else that we’ve experienced is, there’s a lot of exposure to trauma, whether it’s direct or indirect. There’s so much violence in the communities our families live in, and those kids are experiencing the effects of being exposed to that trauma, whether it’s defiance or their concern for their safety. So they feel like they need to get a gun to protect themselves.”
Caswell believes the social upheaval of the pandemic exacerbated his community’s existing problems — but he is quick to point out that his services have been in demand not just in Frayser, but all over the city, and a recent trip to the predominately white, rural community of Crossville, Tennessee, revealed the same problems of poverty, drug addiction, and generational trauma. “I say, there was an epidemic before the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control, the same people who told us to wash our hands, stay six feet apart, and kept us in quarantine, were the same people who came out with the research in 1995 on the impact of trauma. When you take the people who are dealing with dysfunction, and you keep them in the house all year — they didn’t go to school, they didn’t go to work, they stayed in with the same family — all that trauma and negativity, just like a volcano, it then erupted. What we’re seeing is an eruption of what was already building up and was not being addressed, before we left them in that mess.”
“It’s Not a Mystery” On the streets, the grim parade continues. Friday, December 3rd, three teenagers and a nine-month-old baby were ambushed while sitting in their car at a Marathon gas station on Elvis Presley Boulevard. Breunna Woods, a 16-year-old cheerleader, and Phillexus Buchanan, a 15-year-old student at Hamilton High School, were killed, while another 16-year-old and the baby were wounded. Twenty-two people under the age of 17 have been murdered in Memphis so far this year.
Kat McRitchie, a longtime MDA activist, believes a public health approach is the only way forward. “It’s not a mystery, what causes gun violence. It’s a question of whether or not we have the political will and are willing to commit the resources to preventive measures that don’t always campaign well. They take lots of work, lots of coordination of multiple offices at various levels of government, nonprofit, healthcare, and education. It’s hard work, and sometimes, it’s expensive work. But in similar cities like St. Louis, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh, we have seen success when they treat gun violence like a public health epidemic and treat it strategically and take prevention very seriously. In Memphis, we’re used to taking a lot of problems for granted and accepting them as things we just have to respond to because they’re a given. Gun violence, like many other problems facing our city, can be prevented. It does not have to be this way. And if we, as a community will come together, it won’t be this way.”
An enormous engraving on a new state building glorifies animal abuse, according to an animal advocacy group.
The Washington, D.C.-based Animal Wellness Action (AWA) said the Tennessee Walking Horse engraving on the side of the new State Archive Building in Nashville went largely unnoticed until locals contacted the group.
The image shows a horse with one hoof raised high in the characteristic “big lick” gait of the animals. Walking horses have a natural, smooth gait but to get their hooves up higher in a competition, trainers have “sored” the horses, intentionally harming the animals’ hooves and ankles. To do this, trainers will pour irritating chemicals like diesel fuel or mustard oil on the horse’s ankles, fit them with high-stacked shoes, link heavy chains around their ankles, drive nails into their hooves, or train them with trimmed hooves, exposing sensitive tissue.
Credit: Animal Wellness Action
“It’s shameful to see the state of Tennessee double down in support of the pain-based ‘big lick’ gait that’s now displayed on the walls of its new archives building,” said Marty Irby, executive director at AWA and a past president of the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ & Exhibitors’ Association. “This exaggerated movement of the horses’ front legs is induced by driving nails into the sensitive part of the horses’ feet or by applying burning chemicals onto their pasterns and then putting giant, stacked shoes and ankle chains on their feet. This image should be archived only as a historical footnote about this animal cruelty that runs rampant in the state.”
In 1970, Congress declared the soring of horses to be cruel and inhumane with the passage of the Horse Protection Act. The law prohibits anyone from entering a sored horse into a show, sale, auction, or exhibition. Breaking the law comes with a jail sentence of up to two years and a fine up to $5,000.
The law also disqualifies any trainer and horse from a competition if the horse is found to be sored. Inspectors found 36 violations of the Horse Protection Act in preliminary inspections at Shelbyville, Tennessee’s annual National Walking Horse Trainers’ Show, one of the largest horse shows in the world. All horses were cleared, however, on follow-up inspections.
Through the Horse Protection Act, the walking-horse industry polices itself. Irby says enforcement of the law is “intermittent at best with just a handful” of criminal prosecutions. An investigation by the Animal Wellness Institute (AWI) found 956 warnings for soring violations in 2016. In 2018, there were none and since then the USDA has issued only one complaint and not conducted any investigation, according to the AWI report. Two years later, that number dropped to zero. Since 2018, the USDA has issued only one administrative complaint related to soring and has not conducted any investigations, according to the AWI.
The AWA and AWI are pushing lawmakers to approve the Prevent All Soring Tactics (PAST) Act. It would ban the use of stacked shoes and ankle chains in competitions, get rid of the walking horse industry’s self-monitoring program, and increase penalties for those found scoring horses.
AWA has been pushing the PAST Act since 2012. The legislation passed the federal House in 2019. AWA said opposition from senators from Tennessee and Kentucky killed the bill in the Senate that year. But the legislation was reintroduced in the Senate this year.
“Though the Horse Protection Act was signed into law more than 50 years ago to protect horses from painful soring, this abuse continues unabated,” said Cathy Liss, president of Animal Wellness Institute.
To some, showing the walking horse in stride on the side of a state building is a step in the wrong direction.
“Placing the ‘big lick’ on the façade of the new state archive building is a brazen and embarrassing display of animal cruelty, especially when the University of Tennessee and other state institutions don’t want anything to do with this kind of malice toward horses,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Center for a Humane Economy.
Several groups called Shelby County’s money bail system unconstitutional in a letter issued Tuesday and urged leaders to meet with them about the practice or face a lawsuit by year’s end.
The letter is from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee (ACLUT-TN), Just City, and The Wharton Law Firm. It paints a picture of a broken system that favors those with money to get out of jail and disproportionately affects poor, Black, and disabled detainees.
“Jailing people simply due to their inability to afford a sum of money is unconstitutional and harmful public policy,” said Andrea Woods, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project. “Shelby County officials should embrace this opportunity to remedy the county’s discriminatory, wealth-based detention practices. We would rather see smart systems fixes now than be forced to bring these issues to court.”
The letter says pre-trial release is a fundamental right under the state and federal constitutions. Tennessee law requires judges to treat money bail as a “last resort,” it says. Except for “extreme circumstances,” all criminal suspects have the right to some sort of conditional release from jail before their trials.
Shelby County’s system, however, keeps “hundreds of people” detained because they cannot afford bail. This can lead to loss of employment, housing, education, health care, and child custody, the groups said.
The county’s current pre-trial system can hold a person for “weeks or longer” without a bail hearing with counsel, according to the groups. Ability to pay is not considered when bail is set, “leaving those who cannot afford to pay detained indefinitely, even if they are not a flight or safety risk, while those who face the same charges but can afford to pay money bail are freed until trial.”
“Because of this community’s dependence on money bail, the Shelby County Jail is full of people who cannot pay for their freedom,” Josh Spickler, executive director of Just City, said in a statement. “There are proven alternatives to this counterproductive system, tools and policies that have worked in other cities just like Memphis to reduce crime, save money, and help people.
“These methods work, but they require leadership. Today, we are inviting Shelby County leaders to join us for a long-overdue conversation about safe and effective alternatives to the money bail system. We hope they’ll join us.”
The letter threatens litigation and demands reform for the county’s bail system. It says the groups “prefer to work with you to resolve our concerns but stand ready to explore other options” if the county does take action.
That action — an answer to a meeting request from the groups — needs to take place before December 31st. If not, “we have no choice” but to file a lawsuit.
“We cannot and will not sit idly by and let this easily corrected problem persist,” reads the letter.
Instead of the current system, which the letter says “does not promote court appearance,” the groups want (among other things):
• bail hearings no later than 24 hours after a person’s arrest
• no money bail set unless proof exists that the person will not return for trial without it
• a consideration of ability to pay for bail before it is set
• affordability for bail means the person can pay the bail amount within 24 hours without borrowing money
(Credit: Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity)
Memphis lost more living-wage jobs during the pandemic than most metros around the country, according to a new analysis from a think tank focused on economic equity for the middle and lower class.
Memphis ranked in the top largest metros for the loss of jobs paying $20,000 per year or more, according to a new report from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP). The city is listed alongside Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Bridgeport (Connecticut), Knoxville, and Birmingham. However, 84 of the country’s largest cities posted losses in living-wage jobs, according to the report.
“Too many Americans remain functionally unemployed in all regions of the U.S., but some regions have done better, proving that recessions, like economic recoveries, are not created equal,” said LISEP chairman Gene Ludwig. “If policymakers are to make decisions to facilitate an equitable recovery, it’s important for them to be aware of the disparities these data show. And these data are much more revealing about the economic picture of these local areas than headline economic data.”
LISEP also offers a “true” unemployment picture that goes further to define unemployment than the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The institute’s True Rate of Unemployment (TRU) includes those in “functional unemployment,” or those working jobs that pay below $20,000 a year. Those working these kinds of jobs — the functionally unemployed — rose by 10.78 percent in Memphis from 2019 to 2020, according to the LISEP report.
According to the federal BLS data, the Memphis area’s unemployment rate was 4.6 percent in January 2020, rose to a high of 12.3 percent in July 2020, and settled to 6.9 percent in December 2020. Preliminary data from the federal government has the Memphis unemployment rate at 4.9 percent for September, based on the latest figures.
However, the city’s overall “true” unemployment rate, according to LISEP analysis, was 33.3 percent last year. This larger figure includes those who are functionally unemployed, looking for a full-time job (35+ hours) but unable to find one, and those who are unemployed. The number also includes military personnel, federal government employees, retirees, handicapped or discouraged workers, and agricultural workers, all of which are not included in the federal unemployment number.
“Memphis’ situation can, in part, be attributed to a high share of entertainment and leisure workers, a sector that was vulnerable to the pandemic as well as the area’s Black population, which has generally suffered more functional unemployment all over the country than the white population,“ reads the report.
Federal data puts Tennessee’s unemployment rate for 2020 at 7.4 percent. However, LISEP’s “true” formula puts the number at 54.3 percent.
Tennessee won a 16-year legal battle over water rights in the U.S. Supreme Court Monday.
Lawyers for the state of Mississippi have argued for more than a decade that Tennessee is stealing its water from the Middle Claiborne Aquifer, an expansion of underground water that flows beneath eight states. Oral arguments in the case went before the Supreme Court in early October. Mississippi sought $615 million in damages.
Justices were unanimous in their verdict issued Monday morning. “Mississippi’s complaint is dismissed without leave to amend,” reads the opinion, which means officials there cannot change their argument and bring the issue back to court. Should lawyers bring the case back to the court, they’ll have to file a new case.
In its latest argument, Mississippi lawyers told justices that water pumping in Tennessee sucks up water from Mississippi under the state line. Mississippi claimed an absolute ownership right to all groundwater beneath its surface — even after that water has crossed its borders. Lawyers claimed Tennessee’s wells violated Mississippi’s sovereign ownership rights to the water.
Justices agreed that pumping in Tennessee “clearly” has effects on water levels in Mississippi. Memphis Light, Gas & Water pumps about 120 million gallons from the aquifer each day from more than 160 wells in and around Memphis, according to the court.
“Tennessee’s pumping has contributed to a cone of depression that extends miles into northern Mississippi, and Mississippi itself contends that this cone of depression has reduced groundwater storage and pressure in northern Mississippi,” reads the opinion.
However, instances like these are a “hallmark,” justices said, of similar cases remedied by equitable apportionment, meaning the states have to share the water equally. Though, the Mississippi case is the first time equitable apportionment laws would be applied to aquifers.
But Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said the rule should not be different for aquifers and when water is shared between two states, “each one has an interest which should be respected by the other.”
“Mississippi suggests the Middle Claiborne Aquifer is distinguishable from interstate rivers and streams because its natural flow is ‘extremely slow,’” reads the opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court. “But we have long applied equitable apportionment even to streams that run dry from time to time.
“And although the transboundary flow here may be a mere ‘one or two inches per day,’ that amounts to over 35 million gallons of water per day, and over 10,000,000,000 gallons per year. So, the speed of the flow, at least in the context of this case, does not place the aquifer beyond equitable apportionment.”
If Mississippi returned the case to the court, it would be to ask for terms of equitable apportionment and “must prove by clear and convincing evidence some real and substantial injury for damage.”
