Tag: Wendi C. Thomas

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News News Feature

If It Makes You Happy …

I had one resolution for 2014: Do more of what makes you happy.

Beautiful in its simplicity, this resolution was at least 10 years in the making.

The problem: I was addicted to doing, accomplishing, achieving. My drug of choice: to-do lists. They were a tangible way to show progress — and I was a list addict.

Lists for work were on legal notepads: Call sources for a story; write 300 words by 2 p.m. Lists for home were written in blue ink on sheets of plain printer paper folded in half. I have been known to stop in the middle of wrangling a fitted sheet into submission to add “fold laundry” to the list, simply for the thrill of crossing it off later.

There’s psychology behind the (false) sense of control obsessive list makers derive from sifting their world into bulleted items. And there’s an entire personal productivity industry such as David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system or one of my favorites, the pomodoro technique of timed productivity sessions.

In my 30s, I took the obsession to a new level, with lists of goals that, once accomplished, would signal my arrival in responsible adulthood. Or so I thought. On my list of “30 things to do before you turn 31”: Read one of the great classics each month (I started — and stopped — with Anna Karenina); purge the attic of 20-year-old newspaper clips from my days as a cub cops reporter in Indianapolis; master several new dishes to wow dinner guests.

But each year, when my birthday rolled around, I could only cross out a few goals. The rest were recycled for the next year, but as I approached 40, the list had no power to motivate. Instead, the sight of the lists was depressing. I saw it as a testament of my inability to GROW THE HELL UP AND DO MATURE GROWN PEOPLE STUFF.

And then, everything changed with the birth of my (first and only) niece two and a half years ago. I didn’t know you could love someone so completely that it terrified you. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to spend hours playing peek-a-boo or letting her do stuff her mother wouldn’t, like liberate Kleenex from the tissue box, one by one.

What I wanted to do and what I thought I had to do were in constant conflict. Adding “perform Itsy Bitsy Spider ad nauseum” to my fastidious list felt indulgent. Would it be the first step on the road to slovenly loserville?

My “aha” moment came in a most 21st-century way: via Pinterest, where the inspirational quotes serve as a lazy woman’s version of Sunday mornings with Joel Osteen or Oprah’s “Live Your Best Life” tent meetings.

On this particular saying, there was no attribution. It wasn’t plastered over a treacly blue-sky background. Just seven words in a typewriter font: Do more of what makes you happy.

It was permission to make a new to-do list with just one item. I would do less of what I thought it was that adults did — tasks that were usually mundane and joyless. Instead, I would spend my time and energy with people I enjoy and on experiences that feed my soul.

Following this one rule meant that I knitted more. Nothing fancy, but my hands like the rhythm and the immediate (although poorly shaped and usually unwearable) results. I perfected a pound cake. I put years of childhood piano lessons to use and played classical music (poorly). I took my mother to Montreal and splurged on floor seats to a Cirque du Soleil show.

Sometimes being happy costs money, like when I went hiking in the Amazon with my cousin, my brother, and his girlfriend. But more often than not, happiness is free, such as karaoke night at my parents’ house. Listening to my Jamaican-born mother belt out the “Banana Boat Song” — it doesn’t get much better (or funnier) than that.

Or a recent afternoon with my darling niece. She’s in the pretend-play phase, which means she serves dinner in an overturned tambourine with a maraca-turned-spoon. On this day, we were playing bedtime. A book was my pillow, and she neglected to give me a blanket, but she told me “Sweet dreams!” as we settled onto the carpet.

Not 30 seconds later, my niece touched me on my shoulder to wake me. I opened my eyes. Her smiling face was just inches from mine. “Good morning, sunshine!” she said in her sweet, singsong voice. Before she dished oatmeal from a stacking toy cup, my niece asked, “Auntie Wendi, do you need a bib?”

That is happiness.

So for 2015, I have just one resolution: Do even more of what makes me happy.

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (December 25, 2014) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Joe Boone’s music feature, “Venerable Studio Changes Hands” …

What did they do with the hundreds of pictures of Sai Baba that were hanging everywhere?

Yeah Man

About Steve Steffans’ Viewpoint, “Southern Democrats: Down, Not Dead” …

I’m going to get this article tattooed to my forehead so I don’t have to keep saying this over and over again when I talk to any Tennessee Democrat who isn’t from Memphis.

Autoegocrat

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s letter from the editor, “Good Cop. Bad Cop” …

I’ve been an advocate of a constitutional ban on union representation for public employees for quite a while.

But I have to admit, if I were a police officer and had heard and read all of the idiots and their mindless followers blaming “economic inequality” as the root cause for the recent highly publicized police incidents, I’d probably want a good union steward, too.

Nightcrawler

Your call for police departments to “man up and acknowledge their bad apples” is one of the best positioned arguments on the issue I have read. Unfortunately, this posture of “protect your own no matter what” permeates so many organized labor organizations, to the detriment of the reputation of the organization overall. From teachers to bus drivers to NFL players, the representing labor organizations seem to go out of their way to protect even the most obviously unqualified or, at times, criminally inclined members at the expense of the reputation and good work of its majority.

There are bad people in every profession. If others in those professions would acknowledge that and help clean house, it would benefit everyone — fellow professionals and the customers of those professions alike.

rjb

I’m still wondering why no one is talking about the fact that Ohio has an Open Carry law. In fact, the city of Cleveland’s ban on open carry was overturned by the Republican legislature — something the NRA praised. And before you say, “Well, kids are not covered by open carry!” Remember that the officers after the shooting called in: “Shots fired. Male down. Black male, maybe 20.”

Charley Eppes

About Wendi C. Thomas’ column, “The Roots of Protest” …

It appears Obama and the Democrats are going to fix the black unemployment problem by opening the borders to millions more illegals and giving amnesty to those already here. I’ll admit I don’t understand how flooding the job market with an unending supply of cheap labor is going to help African Americans get jobs, but I’m sure all of the black Democratic politicians have it figured out because none of them are complaining.

GWCarver

Every Republican and Democratic administration in the past 30-plus years has refused to enforce the laws that would have fined employers of illegals thousands of dollars per hire. That simple upholding of their sworn duty would have saved those jobs that big business couldn’t export via the myriad of free-trade agreements. It ain’t a Democrat vs. Republican thing.

CL Mullins

The prospect of low-cost labor has been very appealing to both Republicans and Democrats alike. And the lack of any sort of sustained protest from the general public who enjoyed those lower priced goods produced by that cheap labor was also a factor. Call it the Walmart Factor. There are many who scream about what they consider Walmart’s “slave” wages, but they also enjoy the low prices, so they really don’t complain too much.

Arlington Pop

I can agree that public investment in Graceland is nonsense, but what other economic development plans are on the table for Whitehaven? Southbrook Mall? That is even more nonsensical by a large margin.

If it’s all going to boil down to race for everything that occurs, then the point that the money is being spent in Whitehaven rather than downtown or in East Memphis should amount to something. But it is conveniently forgotten in this column.

Brunetto Latini

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News News Feature

The Cosby Show

In October 2006, a month before Bill Cosby settled a civil suit filed by a woman who accused him of sexual assault, I interviewed him backstage at the Orpheum.

He was in town to perform at a benefit for Hurricane Katrina-damaged Dillard University. I can’t remember who set up the meeting, but it was presented as a special treat: “Do you want to talk to Bill Cosby?”

How could I say no?

I would get to meet the creator of The Bill Cosby Show, the patriarch of the black familial perfection that was the Huxtables, to which my family was often favorably compared.

I remember being nervous before the interview. I worried that he’d think my questions were dumb, that he’d think I was dumb, that my pen would run out of ink and he’d wonder aloud about how dumb you had to be to show up to an interview with an inkless pen.

This was in Cosby’s “call out” days — when he’d plod about the country, scolding black audiences and preaching the salvation found in personal responsibility. All of black America’s woes would disappear if we’d parent better, polish our grammar, and, of course, pull up our pants.

By October 2006, the tally of Cosby’s accusers stood at six.

I took a tape recorder to the interview, so I could be sure to capture every word. Backstage, I waited my turn while Cosby talked to a mom and her kid.

Someone got me a chair, and I sidled up to ask some questions.

Words came out of Cosby’s mouth, but they didn’t relate to the questions posed. Nor were his responses formed in complete sentences that would make decent quotes. He was a rambling mess of disjointed thoughts.

More than once, I rephrased my question in an attempt to get something usable. My forehead crinkled in confusion, but Cosby got frustrated, as if I were the one being willfully obtuse.

Intimidated and anxious, I backed down. I thought: If what this rich, powerful Ph.D. is saying is clear to him and not to me, maybe I am dumb.

The column, which had two partial quotes from Cosby, stunk. (To be fair, it stunk not just because of Cosby’s refusal to cooperate but also because, back then, I foolishly bought into the respectability politics rhetoric on which Cosby’s call-outs were based. For that I apologize.)

In the past month, 14 women have publicly come forward to accuse the 77-year-old comedian of sexual assault, bringing the total number of accusers to 20.

Some of the incidents go back more than 40 years, and the women’s accounts are eerily similar: Cosby offers them a drink or pills, and when the woman comes to, she’s being groped or penetrated.

His shows are being cancelled, and organizations with any connections to Cosby are severing ties.

After I interviewed Cosby, I told my parents that I was so disappointed by how incoherent he was that I never wanted to interview any other famous person I admired. I didn’t want to mar the image in my head with reality.

The reality is that Cosby is either a serial rapist or the unluckiest guy on the planet. I’m certain it’s the former.

The testimony of these 20 accusers was persuasive. Any lingering doubts were erased after I saw how Cosby treated an Associated Press reporter last month.

In a brief snippet of the videotaped interview, the AP reporter awkwardly shifts his line of questioning from Bill and Camille Cosby’s art exhibit to the allegations of sexual assaults.

Bill becomes a manipulative bully, calling into question the reporter’s character for broaching the subject.

“I don’t want to compromise your integrity, but we don’t — I don’t — talk about it,” Cosby said, before asking that the video be “scuttled.”

“I think if you want to consider yourself to be serious, that it will not appear anywhere,” Cosby said.

He suggests that the reporter has reneged on an implicit agreement.

“The reason why we didn’t say that upfront was because we thought that AP had the integrity to not ask,” Cosby said.

The reporter makes no promises, but he’s clearly uncomfortable and the interview ends.

In the two-minute exchange, Cosby puts on his most convincing performance ever — as a predator accustomed to using his power and influence to intimidate others into submission and silence. It’s a role Cosby has played for decades, but it looks like the show is about to end.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Playing the Bike Card

In a recent Flyer column, Wendi C. Thomas posed a question that demands an honest and sincere answer. Her question is relevant to all Memphians, and to all residents of Shelby County, Desoto County, Greene County, and any other place in the U.S., or in the wider world, where people of different races and cultures must live and work together. She asks: “How will biking be different from the other well-intentioned movements that still leave brown and black people and poor people behind?”

While her question was framed in the context of the economic impact of bike lanes on disadvantaged brown and black Memphians, the underlying problem behind her interrogative will come up again and again for as long as the world turns: How will we all make public policy together that doesn’t leave someone behind? This isn’t some random local issue that we Memphians alone have to deal with when we’re worrying about bike lanes, of all things. This is a fundamental problem within democracy itself, and woe to us all if we ignore it.

Nobody likes talking about race, but there it is, staring us all right in the face every day. Memphians, especially, must strive to reconcile the race issue for ourselves and for others, because we have the opportunity to do so. If we, of all communities, of all houses divided, can work out our differences and stand united afterward, we can become an example for the rest of the world to follow. The world desperately needs that kind of example, and we are uniquely poised to offer it. The stakes are higher for us than we might at first realize, because there are a lot of other people who don’t live in Memphis who will also be helped if we can we can get our own house in order.

Here is how we will not work out our differences: leveling the charge of “replicating racist systems” — essentially an accusation of racism — for supporting bike lanes. Firstly, if institutional racism is so pernicious that it can infiltrate the minds of staunch anti-racists when they endeavor to support a public project that has nothing whatsoever to do with race, then we all may as well drive home and go back to bed because there is no possible way to defeat an enemy that powerful. Moreover, even if the social theory behind that accusation describes reality with 100 percent accuracy, that is one of the single most depressing things you could possibly tell someone else: You were being racist without even meaning to. That message will win no elections and change no minds, because it immediately puts the listener on the defensive and tells them that they are not in control of their own thoughts and feelings. Nobody wants to hear that. Not even the Devil himself is believed to have that much power over the human will.

There is a movement afoot to make privileged Americans more aware of the largely invisible class, sex, gender, and race structures that undergird our society. Contemporary academics who study race and gender use a framework for understanding and mapping out those social dynamics called intersectionality. Among social scientists, intersectionality is used as a way to account for the fact that a single black mother of two in Binghampton might face a different set of challenges in life than an unmarried white male college graduate in Connecticut. In popular discussion or debate, it has become a way to bludgeon privileged individuals who are seen to be insufficiently devoted to the cause of social justice. If you’ve ever been told to “check your privilege,” you’ve already encountered it.

As long as this movement points an accusatory finger at the people it ostensibly aims to enlighten and tells them that they have no control over the problem, it is bound to fail. Race and class privilege are difficult enough concepts to understand and apprehend on their own, let alone when they are accompanied by a guilt trip. There are many more constructive ways to approach the problem, and while those privileges may very well permeate every aspect of our daily lives, the insistence that we shoehorn a discussion of race into absolutely every aspect of public policy decision-making is simply not practical. Sometimes a bike lane is just a bike lane.

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News News Feature

Bicycling Bias?

Those who sit left of center often gloat at the relative ease with which we broach the tender topic of race, at least as compared to the right. But given the oversized defensive reactions to a recent journal article about the primary beneficiaries of Memphis’ bike lanes, perhaps we progressives should pump our brakes. Without the thick skin that conservatives earned during decades of regressive racial politics, some Memphis progressives winced like spin-class rookies at the assertion that the movement does more for the creative class than it does for the 30 percent of city residents who live below the poverty line.

In “Behind a Bicycling Boom: Governance, cultural change, and place character in Memphis, Tennessee,” published last month in the journal Urban Studies, the authors quantified in detail the rise of the biking movement in Memphis.

Despite the advent of 60-plus miles of bike lanes, the development of the Shelby Farms Greenline, and plans for the Harahan Bridge project: “…change does not automatically benefit all citizens,” the authors wrote. “In fact, changes in place character of cities may play an active part in perpetuating inequalities in who has power and for whom that power is used.”

What the article did not do is call the bicycling bunch classist and racist, but that seems to be what some heard.

A commenter on the Memphis Flyer‘s website wrote: “Because we should obviously tilt our city to the ‘uncreative class’ and the ‘stagnation machine elite’ instead, for the sake of ‘inclusion’. (sic) … I’m as liberal as anybody, but cities cannot survive or grow on the backs of the apathetic, the unemployed, the dependent, and the criminal.” Another online reaction: “Idiots (both black & white BTW) who choose to try to stand in the way of positive changes with claims of racial inequality are what’s wrong with this city.”

In a far more sophisticated rebuttal, Kyle Wagenschutz, the city’s bicycle/pedestrian program manager, noted that the percentage of black cyclists was 57 percent in 2013, which almost mirrors the city’s black population.

Although the number of bicycle commuters has more than doubled between 2005 and 2013, the actual number of two-wheeled commuters is fewer than 650.

Does this mean that bicycling is bad? Of course not. But in backing Madison Avenue bike lanes despite business owners’ protests, did bike advocates lead with their commitment to reducing racial/structural inequality? Did they throw their fund-raising prowess behind the failed 2012 gas tax referendum that would have raised up to $6 million for public transportation?

They did not. And that’s okay, but it’s disingenuous to bristle when the article’s authors note the class privilege inherent in the $2 million raised for the Shelby Farms Greenline, used primarily for recreation.

Take the $4.1 million in tax breaks won by a developer to build an apartment complex along a planned pedestrian-bicycle route connecting Main Street in Memphis to Main Street in West Memphis. How will the profits from these and related projects build wealth for black families, where the median household wealth is $6,446 compared to $91,405 for white families?

How do we secure bikes for those who have lost their driver’s licenses because of unpaid traffic tickets — while advocating for changes in criminal justice policies?

How can a single mother of two kids (the typical makeup of a low-income Memphis family) get to her job by bike? Where would she shower when she arrives? Where would she store her bike?

There are bike advocates considering these tough questions, but if it’s true that only a hit dog hollers, why did this article strike such a nerve?

“Studies show that inequalities are reproduced by social processes, sometimes despite the best efforts and best intentions of good citizens,” said Wanda Rushing, a sociology professor at the U of M and one of the article’s three authors. “Sometimes good intentions lead to unexpected, and sometimes undesirable consequences.”

(Disclosure: Rushing and I will co-teach an economic inequality class this spring. The journal article was written months before we met.)

The awful efficiency of racism is that it persists even when there are no cross-toting, white-hooded Klansmen to be found. You can be a spandex-wearing, black-friend-having, progressive white bicyclist and still unwittingly replicate racist systems that advantage some and neglect others.

The question isn’t whether bike lanes run through black neighborhoods (they do) or whether bicycling advocates are bigots (most probably aren’t).

The question is: How will biking be different from the other well-intentioned movements that still leave brown and black people and poor people behind?

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Opinion Viewpoint

Teen Makeover

Memphis teens need an image makeover. But in the absence of Olivia Pope, the savvy media manipulator and star of ABC’s Scandal, they’ll have to do the job themselves.

The city’s youth have endured a prolonged public flogging since the violent September 6th attack on three people outside a Kroger store by some of their young peers and other unrelated incidents involving rowdy teens.

None of the victims’ injuries were severe. But, say several youth in the Bridge Builders Change leadership program, the damage to Memphis teens’ collective reputation and psyche remains.

“They make it seem like we’re barbaric,” said Ariel Moore, 16, a junior at Marion High School in Arkansas. “It really tears down youth.”

The program’s media cohort strategy to salvage their image: a YouTube video, BBChange, less than three minutes long. In the same online space where their collective character was dented, the teens want to contrast who the media say they are with who they know themselves to be.

The teens’ video begins with a mash-up of Google searches, audio snippets of news reports, and scrolling Twitter feeds filtered by the words “Memphis” and “teens.”

“Pack of Wild Teens in Memphis caught on video beating man. Civilized People or Animals? America or The 3rd World?” wondered @HouseCracka.

“THIS IS WHY I CARRY A GLOCK 19 EVERYWHERE THESE DAYS,” tweeted @GodGunsGoodTime.

Then, as if they turned the channel, the video fills with static, and then the hashtag #ChangeChallenge appears. One by one, these students tell who they are and what their vision is for their city.

“I am a patient, confident, love-giving leader,” says BrookLynn White, a 16-year-old senior at St. Benedict at Auburndale High School.

“I am a Memphian, and I am ambitious,” says Akin Bruce, a 17-year-old senior at White Station High. “Ambitious, dedicated, and determined to produce success not only for myself but also for my community.”

“I am someone who is not afraid to stand out against the crowd,” says Thomas Wynn, 17, also a White Station senior.

“I envision a future in Memphis where youth especially are involved and given opportunities to rise to a higher standard than the one that is present,” says Mary Allen, 17, a senior at St. Mary’s Episcopal School.

But kids who meet three times a week are no match for four local TV stations and the fear-mongers.

As of early this week, the Bridge Builders Change video had 75 views on YouTube. One of the many YouTube videos of the Kroger attack had more than 555,000 views and, inexplicably, more than 330 thumbs up.

Wynn said when he saw the Kroger video, “I was hurt because I knew the backlash was going to be awful.”

And it was. The comments White saw on Facebook stunned and scared her. Posters assumed all teens in Memphis were out of control. “Should we be carrying guns?” she wondered. “It wasn’t me,” on the Kroger video, White said, “but because of what happened, I’m being seen differently.”

It’s ironic, they say, that they’re taught not to stereotype, but that’s exactly what adults are doing to them, based on the actions of a relatively small number of kids.

Before the extermination comes the dehumanization. It happened in Rwanda when Hutu propagandists deemed the Tutsis cockroaches. It happened in Germany when Nazis called Jews rats. And these teens worry that it’s happening again, when adults call them animals and savages, and other adults leave those assessments unchallenged. When all that politicians and criminal justice officials have in the way of solutions are law enforcement hammers, the teens become nails.

“Being a black teen, a male, everything is on the line 100 percent of the time,” said Regi Worles, 16, a junior at White Station High. “I have dreams. I want my dreams to come true. I don’t want anything to … ” He fished for the word. “Ruin you,” finished Emma Donnelly-Bullington, 17, a senior at Central High School.

The media shapes the perception of adults and sometimes teens themselves.

“A lot of people don’t realize the power the media has,” said Wynn, who worries about a self-fulfilling prophecy. “What they see is ultimately what they believe.”

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News News Feature

What Happens Next?

If women have no access to abortion in Tennessee, what happens next?

What happens to women, pregnant as the result of rape, who don’t want to carry the trauma inside them for nine months? What happens to women who simply can’t afford another child – financially or emotionally?

Those who back the first constitutional amendment on the November 4th ballot do not want you to consider what happens next.

If Amendment 1 passes, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature will enact enough abortion restrictions to make Roe v. Wade meaningless.

Whether it’s mandatory waiting periods or medically unnecessary hurdles for a procedure with a lower rate of complications than a colonoscopy, draconian measures adopted in other states would surely find a home here.

“If this passes, it opens the floodgates,” said Allison Glass, state director of Healthy and Free Tennessee, which promotes reproductive rights.

The fight over Amendment 1 exposes the hypocrisy of pro-fetus, anti-child conservatives who bark for smaller, less intrusive government while maneuvering their way into women’s personal affairs.

What the legislature won’t do is abandon a foolhardy commitment to abstinence-only sex ed in public schools, find money for universal pre-K, or persuade Governor Bill Haslam to save more than 800 lives annually by accepting federal money to expand Medicaid.

Here’s what the proposed amendment says: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or require the funding of an abortion. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”

You read that right. The decision to outlaw abortion even in the stomach-churning case of incest would be left in the hands of state legislators, 83 percent of whom are men.

That prospect worries Rebecca Terrell, executive director of the reproductive health center, Choices. Terrell spends a good bit of her time these days debunking “Yes on 1’s” talking points, which include the fact that 25 percent of abortions in Tennessee are performed on women who live out of state. 

In Mississippi, which has just one abortion provider, 2 percent of abortions were obtained by women who live out of state. The reason why women come to Tennessee to get an abortion is no different than the reason why children with cancer come from around the globe to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“They say it’s an abortion destination,” Terrell said. “It’s really a health-care destination.”

On Saturday, Terrell was among 200 people gathered in First Presbyterian Church’s parking lot for what was billed as a get out the vote rally, complete with a bounce house for kids and toe-tapping music. At a break in the music, “No on 1” field director Gail Tyree took to the stage and led the crowd in a call-and-response.

“All you need to know,” she yelled. “No on 1!” the crowd yelled back.

More energy, money (nearly $2 million raised so far), and national attention have been directed at the Amendment 1 battle than at any other constitutional amendment in recent history. Terrell and others are trying to be sure they stay on the right side of the line that prohibits 501(c)3s from lobbying.

A healthy roster of Christian ministers and other faith leaders, both white and black, are firmly in the “No on 1” camp.

“As people of faith, we are and should be concerned about the impact of any legislation that might limit access to basic needs for survival for people who are already at risk,” said Rev. Faye London, interfaith coordinator for SisterReach, a reproductive rights organization. “As I’ve traveled across the state, most of the clergy I’ve encountered, whether they’ve been able to say it out loud or not, feel the same way.”

London is careful not to directly advocate against Amendment 1, but is frank about the high stakes. Access to abortion, she says, is a basic need. “The ability to build the life that is going to be healthiest for you and your family is a basic need.”

A May poll by Vanderbilt University found that 71 percent of voters opposed giving the state legislature authority to regulate abortions.

A No vote on Amendment 1 gives women facing an unintended pregnancy, not legislators, the right to decide what happens next.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (October 15, 2014) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s Letter from the Editor on Amendment 1 …

When I see the “Yes on 1” signs in yards all over town, I just want to go up to those people and say “Do you really know what that means?”

It means we voluntarily give up our rights to privacy. And we invite our elected state representatives and senators, whoever they may be, now and in the future, to make whatever kind of laws they want to make about a woman and her family’s personal business. I am especially bothered by churches that are promoting this idea that we should defer to politicians about our private medical decisions.

It is gullible to condone government overreach on a promise from elected officials who may not even be in office two years from now. If the “Yes” people want to say their religious dogma compels them to believe this or that about abortion, that’s fine. We all have a right to believe what we want to believe. But, when those same people want laws passed that force me to abide by their beliefs, that’s a violation of my rights under the Constitution.

It really does not matter which political party we align with or whether we are black or white, rich or poor. Women of all stripes and persuasions have problem pregnancies and are vulnerable to incest and rape. What a travesty it would be to pass an amendment to the constitution that affords no protection to us in those cases. Vote “No” on Amendment 1.

Tonya Wall

My husband is an Episcopal minister. We are both Christians and adamantly opposed to Amendment 1. Although some people view this amendment as a religious litmus test, we must really look at the bigger picture. Amendment 1, if passed, would threaten our cherished system of government. The proponents of the amendment in the legislative branch are basically saying to the judicial branch of our government, “Since you struck down the laws we passed in 2000, we found a way to get around it. We will just change the very document we’ve sworn to uphold.” The sad thing is that they have hooked people of faith onto the idea that they can legislate morality and undermine our system of checks and balances.

The passage of Amendment 1 would set a dangerous precedent and could become a slippery slope for many issues, not just abortion. The Constitution ought to be about protecting people’s rights, not taking them away. If you read the proposed amendment, you can see how vaguely it was written: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion … not even in circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”

While none of us likes abortion, if we or someone we loved was in one of these extenuating circumstances, we would want these personal and very private medical decisions to be made in the doctor’s office and not in Nashville. Please respect the dignity and worth of each woman in our society by voting “No” on Amendment 1. And remember to cast a vote for the governor of your choice.

Janice Richie

Greg Cravens

About Jackson Baker’s post, “Bailey Hits ‘Deal … Political Machinations'” …

I hear there’s a special costume for Halloween this year, with a fuzzy grey-haired cowboy in a black mask and big 10-gallon hat, sitting astride a white stallion. They call him The Lone Dissenter.

OakTree

About Wendi C. Thomas’ column, “Husband Wanted. Unemployed Need Not Apply” …

I have an idea: How about the men not make the choices that will put them in prison and give them a record?

Breckrider

There are a lot of issues Wendi is pointing out here, and I can see why her critics like to give simple rebuttals like “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” They like these simple talking points, because it hurts to actually wrap their heads around the complexity of the issues.

Charlie Eppes

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Husband Wanted. Unemployed Need Not Apply.

If you want to destroy a community, someone once told me, take away the men’s jobs. To make a man’s job search nearly impossible, burden him with a criminal record.

The baggage from a stint in a correctional institution can bleed into the institution of marriage in ways that don’t bode well for single women or the economic strength of a city.

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, never-married women were asked what they wanted most in a spouse. Nearly 80 percent answered that tops on their list was a partner with a steady job. But in the Memphis metro area, there are only 59 employed young men for every 100 young single women, making this one of the worst places to find a marriageable (read: employed) man.

Money can’t buy love, but it can provide the economic stability that’s in short supply here in the nation’s poorest metro area.

“You got to have a J-O-B if you want to be with me,” sang Gwen Guthrie in the 1980s pop hit “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent.” For better or worse, our society still draws a straight line between manhood and the ability to provide, financially. When men have a criminal record, they are far more likely to be unemployed, which makes them less likely to be married. Their children are more likely to grow up poor, in a household run by a single mother.

That is where the public discussion of the family usually starts, with a hypercritical analysis of single mothers and how they raise their children. Rarely do we explore what societal pressures contribute to the rise in single motherhood or how public policy perpetuates poverty.

One obvious answer: A national obsession with mass incarceration that has only recently started to wither, as a growing body of evidence erodes the theory that higher imprisonment rates lower the crime rates.

Between 1994 and 2012, New York, which has banned for-profit prisons, cut its imprisonment rate by 24 percent and its crime rate by 54 percent, according to a September report from the Pew Charitable Trusts. During that same time period in Tennessee, where prisons are run for profit, the imprisonment rate soared 59 percent and the crime rate fell by 22 percent.

Shelby County is second only to Davidson County (Nashville) in the share of inmates it sends to state prisons. A tough-on-crime stance might win the district attorney another term, but it doesn’t guarantee public safety. It does, however, help guarantee a permanent underclass.

Ex-offenders can’t obtain many professional licenses and even some student loans, both of which would increase their odds of employment and better-paying jobs. And ex-offenders are barred from voting, including an estimated 19 percent of blacks in Tennessee, which gives state legislators little incentive to remake state law.

In 2010, the city of Memphis began to “ban the box” on city job applications that required men and women to state whether they had been convicted of a felony. In 2012, two Memphis Democrats managed to pass a bill that would expunge the criminal records of some ex-offenders with a single nonviolent conviction.

Every tiny step forward is met with several steps back. In its last session, the Republican-controlled legislature stiffened the penalties for a growing number of crimes and passed new laws to criminalize more behavior.

The impact is that “large numbers of men in their prime adult years are removed from their communities,” said Nicole Porter, director of advocacy for The Sentencing Project. States must “create the atmosphere in which people can thrive versus people being caught in systems that weaken communities and then weaken their families,” Porter said.

Since the criminal justice system disproportionately ensnares black men, it has an outsized effect on a predominately African-American metro area such as Memphis. The causes of the area’s endemic poverty are many, but employment for ex-offenders is essential to the metro area’s success.

“There are people who have records who have skills and drive and intelligence, who made a mistake and won’t make it again,” said Reid Dulberger, CEO of EDGE, Memphis’ and Shelby County’s economic development organization. “We can’t afford to exclude them going forward. We need all hands on deck.”

But unless we overhaul our criminal justice system, the Memphis area is wedded to failure.

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Opinion Viewpoint

The Power of Poverty

Memphis is still the nation’s poorest large metro area, and the share of children who live in poverty is climbing. The news, delivered via 2013 Census data released last week, is not a reason to surrender the so-called, half-hearted war against poverty. It is a call to use different weapons and to transform the public policies that conspire to keep people poor.

It is time to take up the mission for which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died in Memphis: economic justice.

“If the society changes its concepts by placing the responsibility on its system, not on the individual, and guarantees secure employment or a minimum income, dignity will come within reach of all,” wrote King in his last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

As a city, we have been mindful of, if not obedient to, King’s call for racial harmony.

We are fond of the aesthetics of integration — witness our civic pride at the sight of interracial crowds at Grizzlies playoffs games — but blasé about the execution of equality.

The overall poverty rate in the Memphis metro area — which stretches to the nearest parts of Arkansas and Mississippi — is 19.8 percent. The disgrace is in the details: The poverty rate is 29.2 percent for blacks, 38.3 percent for Hispanics, and 8.4 percent for whites. A staggering 52.4 percent of Hispanic children and 43.2 percent of black children live in poverty, compared to 9.8 percent of white kids.

From 2012 to 2013, the child-poverty rate rose by 3 percent. Forty-two percent of Memphis’ poor live in female-headed households.

“To reduce child poverty, we need to reduce mothers’ poverty,” said M. Elena Delavega, assistant professor of social work at the University of Memphis.

To do so requires three things: universal childcare, an increase in the minimum wage, and efficient public transportation.

If we could only do one of those, I asked, which one should it be? Delavega sighed. “It’s like if you asked what’s better — to feed a person or give them something to drink,” she said.

“Well, if you don’t do both, they’ll die anyway. We should do those three things, and we should do them at the same time.”

Memphis is rich with experiments in education reform, many funded by generous benefactors and nonprofit foundations.

“Philanthropy is commendable,” King said, “but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

The circumstances are dire: “Cuba is better than we are in terms of the investment in education,” Delavega said. It’s true, the communist nation spends more of its GDP on education than the United States, the state of Tennessee, or the city of Memphis.

But King’s rhetoric suggests that millions spent to fix classrooms may be misdirected, if well-intentioned. “We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished,” King wrote in 1967.

In 2013, Shelby County’s poverty rate was 21.8 percent — higher than it was in 1970, 20.6 percent.

“It is clear,” states Mayor A C Wharton’s Blueprint for Prosperity, “that Memphis cannot reduce poverty by pursuing the same strategies that have been prevalent for the past 40 years.”

Taken as a whole, Wharton’s anti-poverty initiative claims it can shrink the poverty rate by 1 percent every year for the next 10 years.

Better childcare is one part of Wharton’s plan, but virtually none of it relies on cooperation from other elected bodies.

But Delavega’s road to economic security for all requires significant investment by the state. In a recent report, the Corporation for Enterprise Development identified 67 policies that states can employ to boost financial security and create opportunities for all residents.

Of those, Tennessee has adopted 18, earning it a rank of 43rd for policies adopted and 44th for outcomes for family economic security.

This is not cause to abandon King’s dream.

It’s time for a revolution. “A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies,” King said. “A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.”

Wendi C. Thomas is a columnist, journalist, and founder of Common Ground: Conversations on Race, Communities in Action. Visit her blog at wendicthomas.com,

and follow her on Twitter @wendi_c_thomas.