The Nashville Tea Party to take aim at Metro Council, and the Tennessee Equality Project wishes them well

For as long as I've been following Metro Nashville politics, Ben Cunningham has been floating around the Metro Council preaching his no-tax message. He was able to convince some council conservatives to sign no-tax pledges. He was the catalyst behind the referendum that requires higher property tax increases to be approved popularly. Lately, Ben has blogged exhaustively on Tea Party activities around the country. The Tea Party focuses exclusively on the "evils" of government without respect to the evils of economic power, and it advocates placing limits on government regulation of corporate power. Consequently, it is supported by corporations, unlike Occupy Wall Street, which challenges the wealthy 1% and draws attention to class.

So, it was no surprise to me that Ben's latest project is the Nashville Tea Party (which has received criticism for not being actually based here in Davidson County) and the pressure it potentially might bring to bear on the Metro Council. Yes, Metro Council, which is already stocked with both conservative and progressive members who seem willing to give big business every break imaginable while generally ignoring the large majority who create but don't capture most of the wealth.

So, the presence of the Tea Party is not good for those of us in the community who do not enjoy the patronage of wealthy donors, who have to rely more on organizing and mobilizing human capital, who look to the grassroots in the absence of deep pockets. The lawyers and the lobbyists of Nashville's elite are legion. They do not require the Nashville Tea Party working to leverage even more breaks that defy the general interest.

Then, there is the Tennessee Equality Project who seem to be welcoming the Nashville Tea Party because they seem to believe that the qualifier "Nashville" makes them friendlier on the social issues:

Chris Sanders, an organizer of the gay rights organization Tennessee Equality Project, released a YouTube video Tuesday in which he said he expects the Nashville Party to “take a slightly different approach and tone” than the Tennessee Tea Party. He said he believes the new group will focus less on social issues.

The Tennessee Tea Party was roundly criticized in November for how the organization weighed in on the resignation of Massachusetts U.S Rep. Barney Frank, a Democrat who is openly gay. “Good riddance you perverted sodomite POS!!,” the Tennessee Tea Party wrote on its Twitter account.

“Only time will tell how they will get involved, but I would expect a different tone coming out of this group than we’ve seen from the Tennessee Tea Party,” Sanders said. “As with any group of citizens that gets engaged, I wish them well.”

Wish the Tea Party well? Metro politics is conducted as a zero sum game: convention center construction took tourism taxes from the Nashville Predators/Bridgestone Arena, which took revenues from General Fund programs for the rest of us. Challenging economic times don't mean the Chamber of Commerce will not get their subsidies from Metro. They mean that parks, sidewalks, and libraries will get slashed. Stormwater fees are capped for businesses and stormwater projects that affect everyone else lag. It is already local government by the wealthy for the wealthy.

So, the Nashville Tea Party showing up to leverage more plums for Nashville's elite class is not good news from where I sit. Wish them well? Hardly. And I intend to do what I can to help them fail. Because if they win it means less resources and less services for regular Nashvillians.

I am at a loss to comprehend TEP's welcome mat. Perhaps Chris Sanders and TEP are willing to welcome the Tea Party because they do not see them as a threat. Maybe when it comes to harrowing class disparities and economic inequality of opportunity, TEP and Tea Party share common ground. As long as the social issues are not raised, as long as the Tea Party focuses on money, there will be no fight. There is still a lot of cash and private growth opportunities to be leveraged from Metro Council that lobbyists can pass around without letting the culture wars wreck the gold rush.

In the meantime, the rest of us are going to have to scrap and fight for any crumbs that might fall from the power brokers' tea service. Wish the Tea Party well? I don't think so.

The inept left

I've said it over and over again: the shallow, milquetoast liberalism restricted to progressivism on social issues (identity and gender issues, for instance) and hobbled by dependence on partisan Democrats will never be a broadly inclusive movement. It can never be more than a limited, status quo echo ignoring basic reform of power structures and larger visions of justice.

But don't take my word for it. A history professor provided a comparison of American populism, left and right, in last weekend's New York Times, and he effectively articulates the limits of liberals that block progressive goals:

the left must realize that when progressives achieved success in the past, whether at organizing unions or fighting for equal rights, they seldom bet their future on politicians. They fashioned their own institutions — unions, women’s groups, community and immigrant centers and a witty, anti-authoritarian press — in which they spoke up for themselves and for the interests of wage-earning Americans.

Today, such institutions are either absent or reeling. With unions embattled and on the decline, working people of all races lack a sturdy vehicle to articulate and fight for the vision of a more egalitarian society. Liberal universities, Web sites and non-governmental organizations cater mostly to a professional middle class and are more skillful at promoting social causes like legalizing same-sex marriage and protecting the environment than demanding millions of new jobs that pay a living wage.

A reconnection with ordinary Americans is vital not just to defeating conservatives in 2012 and in elections to come. Without it, the left will remain unable to state clearly and passionately what a better country would look like and what it will take to get there. To paraphrase the labor martyr Joe Hill, the left should stop mourning its recent past and start organizing to change the future.

I've been told before that a local journalist once described me as "to-the-left-of-left". If the reporter said that to my face I would reply that there is not much left here to be left of. There is no popular movement for challenging the system. I may be "to-the-left-of-left" but it is meaningless relative to what passes for progressivism: fractured, reactive and desperate; dependent on party wonks and politicians who could take or leave movements or the interests of regular people.

Watchdogging for any progress on nondiscrimination beyond the shallow symbolism of council votes

Almost exactly two years ago the local GLBT tabloid hailed the council vote for adding sexual orientation to Metro's nondiscrimination policy:

Sponsored by freshman Council member Megan Barry and co-sponsored by nine other members, BL2009-502 ensures that Metro employees who feel they have been discriminated against based on either or both of these issues now will have redress within the personnel system.

Not so fast. Discrimination watchdogs have been testing the rhetoric that catapulted Megan Barry into the social progressive pantheon against the reality of existing Metro policy. Passage of Barry's bill turned out to be the easy part. Implementation? Not so much.

Take Mike Peden's case: he has been looking past all of the hoopla and pronouncements of success since passage of BL2009-502 and he is alarmed by the slow walk of implementation. About 10 days ago he sent me an email with a link showing that the Nashville Area Metro Planning Organization's expressed hiring policy in an announcement of a planner opening did not include gender identity or sexual orientation.

Here is how the relevant section of the nondiscrimination statement was printed on August 23 on the MPO site:

Equal Employment Opportunity Employer

The Planning Department does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, sex, color, national origin, religion or disability in access to, or operation of, its programs, services, and activities, or in its hiring or employment practices.

That motivated Mike to start contacting Metro Planning staffers and council members to get answers on why both Planning and the MPO were dragging their feet after two years. And those answers did not come easily, quickly, or clearly.

Mike started with the compliance officer of Metro Planning. He asked her the straight-up question, "Which statement [the MPO site's or the Metro government's site's ] is correct for your organization?" The compliance officer, Josie Bass, replied that the MPO's site was correct. She told him that the organization met the minimum federal requirements under law but that could be changed at a future review. Not satisfied, Mike responded, "Is the person being hired for this position an employee of Metro Nashville? If so, then shouldn’t Metro’s statement apply? Are you an employee of Metro Nashville?" Ms. Bass sent back a single "Yes." Mike asked her to clarify what she was saying "yes" to and she wrote back, "Yes, they are a metro employee and yes, Metro non discriminate statement does apply." At that point Mike shared his confusion with me and I have to admit I did not understand how the Metro policy could apply when Ms. Bass had said before that the MPO statement met minimum federal requirements.

In the meantime, Mike contacted CM Jason Holleman and at-Large CM Megan Barry about the loophole. They did not exactly clarify the issue for him. CM Holleman wrote that while MPO used office facilities it was not exactly a "Metro entity". Holleman also said that not all of MPO employees' salaries are paid by Metro and thus they are not classified as Metro employees. Mike's correspondence with CM Barry included the following judgment from council attorney Jon Cooper:

If Metro is the one hiring these employees, then yes, the nondiscrimination policy in Sec. 11.12.130 should apply. However, the MPO is really a creature of federal law. It is comprised of representatives from the federal, state, and local governments, and represents seven counties and the cities within them. So, it is not just a Metro organization. Just because Metro employees work with the MPO does not mean MPO is bound by our nondiscrimination policy. It only prohibits the Metro Government from discriminating in employment practices.

Mike replied with the clear statement, "I would just like an answer -- yes or no -- either they have the policy or they do not." Both Barry and Cooper stated unequivocally that they do not. Mike still does not get it because all of the employees of MPO are listed as Metro employees.

In the wake of all of this I went back to check the webpage where the MPO opening is advertised with Planning's nondiscrimination statement, and lo and behold, someone had revised the statement and added "gender identity" and "sexual orientation" since Mike had first noticed the webpage on August 23:

Equal Employment Opportunity Employer
The Metro Planning Department, on  behalf of the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, creed or disability in admission to, access to, or operations of, its programs, services, or activities. Discrimination against any person in recruitment, examination, appointment, training, promotion, retention, discipline or any other employment practices because of non-merit factors shall be prohibited.

I don't know how much influence Mike's tenaciousness had over the re-writing of the statement, but he remains dissatisfied with the limited reach and loopholes of Metro's nondiscrimination policy.

I agree. It's not the vote, but the implementation that matters most.

Hollin wins the final memorializing showdown and Gotto does not know when to leave well enough alone

A few weeks after conservatives CMs Phil Claiborn and Jim Gotto (a Republican) took down CM Jamie Hollin's attempt to honor some high school students who organized protest against the General Assembly's "Don't Say Gay" bill, Hollin struck back at his last meeting as CM tonight and won approval for the memorializing resolution.

Even this evening, Gotto got up to speak against the resolution based on the pitch that memorializing resolutions should not identify controversies with particular groups. He equated it with bringing MRs supporting the Tea Party. That is a rather convenient argument for the Republican to make given that in previous years he has sponsored MRs that express preference for parochial groups in controversial settings.

In 2009, CM Gotto joined other theologically conservative CMs and co-sponsored an MR endorsing the National Day of Prayer, which is an event promoted by a national evangelical Christian organization. Gotto's resolution promoted a sectarian group's agenda for wedding governance and religious observance. Anyone who maintains that religion is not controversial has never engaged in discussions about religion.

In happier times saving Christmas
for Christians
with memorializing resolutions

In 2005, CM Gotto co-sponsored the "Saving Christmas" memorializing resolution which "affirmed and supported the use of the words Christmas or Merry Christmas, instead of non-descript, generic terms such as Happy Holidays ... when referring to Metro Government events or activities traditionally associated with Christmas, such as the Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony". Not only is the annual "war on Christmas" debate controversial, but it is often sensationalistic and designed to get press coverage. The same week that Gotto's MR was approved by the council, Gotto gathered with conservative talk-radio host Steve Gill to celebrate passage of the resolution in front of Metro's tree and voracious news media.

So, for Jim Gotto to oppose CM Hollin's resolution honoring some students because they stood up for GLBT is sanctimonious and cynical, especially given the context that council conservatives set for opposition to Metro's nondiscrimination regulations on contractors: nondiscrimination would burden "Christian business."

To deepen the hypocrisy, CM Gotto announced earlier tonight that he could not "in good faith" vote for Hollin's MR. However, he once proclaimed that memorializing resolutions in general were a waste of time and  not worth the paper they were written on. If these bills are worthless, then debating them is meaningless and there is not faith, good or bad, that would ever prompt us to consider them.

Been in the storm so long, children

"Don't say gay" photo credit: Jamie Hollin

First, let me say that the State of Tennessee is on the wrong side of history by foiling Metro Nashville's attempt to enforce non-discrimination and by even entertaining "Don't Say Gay" legislation to bar homosexuality from being mentioned in public school classrooms. Tennessee is expressing that which is ignoble about American history.

Those high school students who have shown up to protest the State of Tennessee at legislative plaza are not only on the right side of history (if progress still matters), but they are attempting to show the General Assembly the way to our future, when sexual orientation and gender identity will make no difference in employment in government or the private sector (save for those backwater, culturally-impoverished specks who are too needy of aliens to fight to value mutual respect with people different than them).

Ku Klux Klan attacks Freedom Rider

Having said that, I cannot agree with the way Civil Rights Movement history continues to be distorted to support the protesters in Legislative Plaza, at risk of minimizing the profound and rare sacrifice of the 1961 Freedom Rides. A few weeks ago Tennessean columnist Gail Kerr, who seems to take her editorial cues from opportunistic political insiders, started the strained analogy, comparing today's picketers with yesterday's Freedom Riders.

Last Saturday morning U.S. Congressman Jim Cooper seemed to echo Kerr in the Tennessean, “It reminds me of the Freedom Riders in the ’60s .... We haven’t had that kind of spunk and gumption displayed by a young person in Nashville in a long time, maybe half a century.” The Freedom Riders spunky? That is without a doubt as big an understatement, as huge a disservice as Rep. Cooper could pay them. They had the courage to brave beatings, police intimidation, arrests, imprisonment, abandonment and death threats. We usually don't associate these extreme conditions with "gumptious" picket lines in America's circumscribed freedom zones. My Democratic representative seems to be dumbing down the supreme costs of the radicalizing necessary to confront and expose the hatred behind discrimination.

That's not to say that today's non-discrimination protesters have no parallels with the Civil Rights Movement or any other social protest tradition in America before or after the 1960s. Like contemporary protesters, civil rights protesters marched in Nashville (Jefferson Street). Street protests and picket lines are an important part of any social protests, and they often require the gumption of youth.

Beaten when FBI gave the Klan 15 mins on a bus

But the scope, commitment, and discipline of the 1961 movement were much larger than today's protests. The Freedom Riders had spent months in trainings sponsored by movement halfway houses like Highlander Folk School, which coordinated meetings in Monteagle, TN and locally at Fisk University. The legendary Rosa Parks was trained at Highlander. Vanderbilt Divinity student James Lawson started organizing students across Nashville in 1959, training them in nonviolent tactics and organizing lunch-counter sit-ins in the face of humiliating and dangerous conditions. For his part, Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt, and wrong not made right until 2006 when Vandy apologized and hired him.

So, when compared to the Civil Rights Movement, today's protests would have to be considered a first step in a long process rather than full-blown reincarnation. The Freedom Rides were not a spontaneous reaction to a single piece of legislation. They were inspired by an earlier 1947 staging designed to desegregate interstate travel. Then they were incubated and developed over years in places like Nashville by young, savvy students who committed to the discipline of nonviolent civil disobedience and who trained, drilled, and practiced as if they were conducting a war. It was that discipline that prepared Freedom Riders to endure the state-sponsored intimidation and imprisonment that I have yet to witness today's protesters face.

No doubt legislators like Stacy "Don't Say Gay" Campfield are on the wrong side of history. They are on the side of discrimination. Tennessee Republicans (and more than a few Democrats) are not much different that the pre-Civil Rights generation of Tennessee leaders who allowed or encouraged segregation. Jim Cooper's own father, former Governor Prentice Cooper, presided over a "separate-but-equal" school system that staked whites to an advantage over African Americans.

Fisk student John Lewis & other Riders

Republicans like Campfield are gearing the education system against GLBT students in the same way now. And students should be applauded and supported for protesting and attempting to change that.

But if they are going to follow the Freedom Riders, they need to be aware of the true costs: in discipline over time, in perseverance across a long arc of history, and in the risk that they may face harm and ill treatment rather than the mere inconvenience of choosing the picket line over the everyday diversions of youth. In the words of the old slave spiritual and freedom song, the riders were in the storm so long. Jim Cooper does not do these students a service by suggesting that they have attained the stature to which they may aspire. He should have called them to something even higher.

This Metro contractor discrimination brought to you by your Tennessee Chamber of Commerce

Odd that private lobby groups, like the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, so invested in bringing in more jobs from corporations outside the state have been so instrumental in pushing legislation sailing through the State Senate that increases the chances that companies that have progressive hiring policies might avoid us. Local author of a council bill that would have required Metro contractors to provide workplace protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity reflects on current events:

It wouldn’t be as embarrassing if any of the arguments in support of the legislation held even a drop of water. They don’t. It’s been a campaign for the record books contrived on homophobia.

I am glad Nashville, for a limited time only, was able to show the world we are an inclusive city notwithstanding the acts of the majority of our state’s legislature. Options are being considered.

I look forward to the forthcoming data showing all the increased production of jobs and tax revenue as a result of its passage (at least the jobs saved as a result). The proponents of HB 600/SB 632 owe us that much.

The easy thing to do in this situation is to blame the Republicans. While they deserve a large part of the blame, they could not do what they do if it were not for a red-state culture that promotes or soft-pedals the regressive tendencies of growth and enterprise in Tennessee in the first place. But anyone who expects more from TNGOP is a socket-set short of a full toolbox.

Keep in mind that both the Nashville and Tennessee Chambers of Commerce, two of the more locked-in, mainstream lobbies, oppose the Metro initiative. That makes this prejudiced legislation legitimate. These bills are not just the anomalous products of fringe right-wingers on family and traditional values councils. They were belched from the very center of the wealthy business interests who fight every single regulation that comes down the chute, including ridiculously easy ones like requiring government contractors to obey some rules that nobody outside government has to follow.

On that score, Democrats share some of the blame, and not just those voting for the state bills. Social progressives, in particular, who refuse to see any inconsistency between their embrace of untrammeled, unregulated, unbalanced growth and the private sector's will-to-power that rejects obligations share the blame, too. Maybe if some Davidson County Democrats had fought for a few other healthy constraints on the "business community," the latter might not be so emboldened to do what they will. Naively given inches, they take miles.

GLBT community organizers have done nothing that I can see to work with other groups fighting discrimination and the ill-effects of growth on poor and minority communities. They have gone their own way and hitched their wagons to politicians who seemed to side with them even when they would not fight for others. As the Metro ordinance goes down at the hands of the General Assembly, they have no broad coalition to call upon for assistance. Don't pity them, because they've been good about taking care of themselves. Let them believe they can get along fine without the rest of us.

In the end, until we start approaching Chambers of Commerce as powerful special interests who lobby against workplace reform (that is to say, until we put them in check instead of deferring to their networking opportunities for individual achievement) they will continue to be brutish. Let's hope one day red-state Tennessee, excluding most Republicans, wakes up and reels in some of the latitude it gives these bullies.

It may take a mogul to move the Mayor

I was struck by sequence of events in the process by which Mayor Karl Dean made the decision to do the right thing on nondiscrimination and Metro contractors (as unpacked in the Tennessean). Apparently, it took a mogul to help the Mayor decide:

Nashville music mogul Mike Curb and Mayor Karl Dean unexpectedly crossed paths [in February] on separate business trips to Southern California.

Erica Gilmore leads on nondiscrimination requirement for Metro contractors but likely to no avail

CM Gilmore quarterbacked the nondiscrimination bill to passage last week over the opposition of conservative CMs:

Jim "Judgment Day" Gotto

What the report does not show is conservative Jim Gotto--who is also a Republican state representative in the Assembly--suggesting that a nondiscrimination requirement might have lead Metro to avoid hiring the highly specialized water filtering services of a company during last May's flood. That's right. Mr. Gotto insinuated that our very access to clean water in a catastrophic flood depends on Metro not having an apocalyptic ordinance that would require city contractors to include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policy.

Memphis council member played race card in tussle over blogger nomination

There has been a buzz today online regarding the liberal Memphis blogger, Steve Ross, whose name was nominated and then withdrawn from consideration for an opening on Memphis's Charter Commission. Usually affable blogging journalist, Trace Sharp, is livid about the disparaging way CM Joe Brown referred to Steve:

His nomination to the Charter Commission in Memphis was a great thing. A progressive blogger who doesn't go after people with pitchforks, who backs up his arguments with hard stats that he is diligent to make sure are accurate. And he can remember everything politically after many of us have gone on to something else. This is not a defeat, quite frankly, because someone with sense is going to see his value and he’s going to get a bigger and better gig in the future.

What completely infuriates me is that Joe Brown, and others, just don’t get that Steve Ross is not just a “blogger.” He’s a businessman who is participating in the state of his city. His traffic, according to him, is basically comprised a great deal of community leaders reading his research (stuff they could have done themselves quite frankly).

So when Brown decides to say the word blogger as a slur, it pisses me off.

And the progressive blogger was apparently replaced with somewhat a bit more conservative, so there is that but that’s another story for another day.

However, the story doesn't end there. CM Brown (a Tennessee State University alumnus) was spoiling for a pissing contest with a fellow CM who nominated Steve, and he brought his manhood into the debate. And the story doesn't end with the pissing challenge. CM Brown also drew attention to his own blackness and the nominating CM's whiteness on top of the gender challenge. Go to the tape via Michael Silence:

In case you missed it, CM Brown blurted out:

"I’m a real man. "I’m a real black man. I hope you are a real white man."

It's obvious to me that CM Brown started a cock fight with overtones of racism because he sees the appointment to the Commission as his own gendered and racial turf to defend. This had nothing to do with democratic process or progressive ideals. It's the twisted idea that one guy needed to defend a possession he thinks he's entitled to against another and would do so along racial lines despite the fact that race was not the issue here. Steve's nomination should rise or fall on its own merits without degenerating into such a race-baiting cock fight.

First Lesson in Mounting a Metro-wide Campaign: Know Thy Audience

Council member and declared candidate for Juvenile Court Clerk Vivian Wilhoite is underestimating the political acumen of organized GLBT voters if she believes that showing up to their victory party at the Loews Lyric Room to celebrate passage of the non-discrimination ordinance vote will be enough to assure their support in the next election even as she left council chambers without recording a vote on the NDO. Gladhanding tends to need an assist from some pluck, but pluck among council progressives is in short supply.

UPDATE: Emily Evans corrects the record on Vivian Wilhoite's absence during the NDO.

Lipstick Liberal

There are liberals whose progressive streak is more substantial than skin deep. Then there are those liberals who wear liberalism superficially, like lipstick.

Recently a friend from District 19 approached me to say that Council-at-Large member Megan Barry called asking her to mobilize neighbors to direct 19's hesitant CM, Erica Gilmore, toward supporting the non-discrimination bill sponsored by Barry and due for second reading next week. Being the good progressive, I would usually support this bill openly and enthusiastically. CM Gilmore would by now have grown weary of phone calls and e-mails urging her to vote with Barry. Enclave would have a long subject thread on it.

People who read me know that I lock on issues like a fully-loaded American Stratfordshire Terrier.

But not this time. Not on this bill. But not because of the issue.

My motivation is my belief that CM Barry is a lipstick liberal, prompted less by abiding progressive principles and more by safe choices and prospects of kowtowing to the Mayor's office.

CM Barry seems to be burning all of her political capital on this issue. She's not used any for the ones for which I've advocated. In fact, after her early opposition to bargaining with Predators, issue after issue she has receded into the background rather than taking a strong progressive stand (unless Mayor Karl Dean does so). Barry baited us to join the fight against Tygard's LEDs, then she switched to acquiescence. At her inexplicably least liberal moment, she supported the Mayor's regressive stormwater fee structure that taxes smaller, greener property owners more than the big, blacktopped boys. And then she had the audacity to blame another council progressive for making her vote unprogressively.

If she were a man I'd call her "Mini-Karl." Perhaps "Mini-Karlene" is fitting.

I'm sorry, fellow liberals, but it is the ethos of the nondiscrimination bill sponsor that has been the obstacle to my ringing endorsement of it. Any encouragement to support the Barry bill comes across like Lt. Kaffee cajoling LCpl. Dawson to accept the government's plea bargain instead of fighting the good fight. I feel like I'm being asked to make one safe choice after a string of risky ones many consider untouchable. And like LCpl. Dawson (whom writer Aaron Sworkin describes as "a man who would rather die than breach military protocol"), I feel like shoving my hands in my pockets and balking in spite of my commitments to progressive issues like nondiscrimination.

So, I haven't written CM Gilmore to encourage support and I don't know if I'll join this fight. I see a certain wisdom in choosing to sit this battle out.

Frankly, politics and social justice are mutually bound mechanisms. Ideals are fine, and as Reinhold Neibuhr wrote, they leaven politics. But they are no substitute for balance and mutuality. Many of those supporting Barry's bill have not been supportive of my issues like providing more family-friendly urban environments with strong schools and welcoming parks. They've been quiet on saving Bells Bend and opposing LED billboards. Local politics is not a single-issue, zero-sum game. It comes down to "you support my issue, I'll support yours."

Single-issue arguments do not motivate me to mobilize, especially given the lipstick liberal disposition of the bill sponsor. You want me to support this bill? I would like nothing more than to trump council conservatives after the conservative fiascoes of the previous council. But I'm going to need more than appeals to conscience.

Either express support for the issues I believe in or find a substantive liberal sponsor who is not just using a single progressive issue cosmetically to satisfy her future Democratic Party aspirations. I require something more profound than the triflings of lipstick liberals to pull me on board.

Planning's Support for May Town Center Highlights the Trickiness of Planning Commissioner's Strictly Land-Use Appeal

I want to return to the claim made last week by Planning Commissioner and former CM Stewart Clifton (on the subject of LED billboards) that the Planning Commission should only allow issues of land-use rather than public opinion to influence their zoning decisions. Keep in mind that "land use" can mean anything as basic as "approved, legal use based on zoning" or as nuanced and open to interpretation as "modification of the natural environment." It is difficult to tell which meaning of "land use" that Planning clings to the exclusion of any other factors, but it seems to me that the farther Planning moves from strictly legal terms to interpretative frames of modification, their views of "land use" become more open to public scrutiny and criticism.

The more I read of Planning recommendations for developing agricultural Bells Bend, the more disingenuous qualities behind strong claims of "land use" over public feedback stick with me. Take the Planning staff's justifications for May Town Center development based on region-wide employment patterns. In a section on job sprawl they mention a recent liberal think-tank's policy paper on jobs migrating out of central business districts region-wide. Hang on. In a democracy, policy recommendations are not simply mandated by planning elites by fiat. Instead, employment policies should be up for public consideration and argumentation, especially if the land use theories supporting those policies have more to do with modification of what is perhaps the largest natural environment in an American urban context.

To discourage job sprawl to exurban satellite campuses, Metro planners assert that the rest of us must stop looking at planning from the level of Metro Nashville and instead see it from the region-wide area of Middle Tennessee (including the 6 donut counties around Davidson):

If the question is approached from a Downtown Nashville perspective, with the scale being the distance from Downtown, May Town Center is clearly on the edge of currently developed land in the northwest corner of Davidson County. If, however, the scale for comparison is the Middle Tennessee region – which is the scale considered for future population growth and the area within which air and water quality impacts will be felt by development throughout the region – the proposed May Town Center site is more accurately considered “inner ring” development.

But several significant problems emerge from planners claims.

First, planners claim to remedy the problem of sprawl by shifting the focus to the level of sprawl. That makes no sense to me. The logical way to plan to mitigate sprawl is to narrow the focus of "scale" and promote development in a limited, bounded scope. By placing Bells Bend in an "inner ring" (in the archaic fashion of the old Chicago school of urban sociology?) Metro planners are framing it relative to sprawling developments outside of Davidson County. So, how can they possibly propose to mitigate sprawl by defining development by sprawl, and by promoting a development that is indisputably sprawl when the aperture of our scope closes in tight on Nashville?

Second, even if we accept the premise that job sprawl warrants high density corporate campuses closer to the urban core to balance exurban job growth, why should that justify paving and building over Bells Bend? The built environment of May Town Center could fit into New York City's Central Park and still leave over 300 acres of green space. Using the same logic that Metro planners use, would the boroughs of New York City stand in better stead with a centralized job-producing corporate campus in Central Park? The planners' region-wide approach also defies their own developer-friendly logic at this point. Couldn't Bells Bend serve as a region-wide analogue to Central Park? While Metro Nashville may have commensurate green space at Bells Bend Park, wouldn't larger scale assumptions see a totally green Bells Bend as a benefit that fits the Middle Tennessee region? And wouldn't it be most advantageous to have that large green space in what planners have defined as the region's inner ring?

Finally, planners are begging the political question of community when they insist on framing the problem of jobs region-wide instead of by Metro Nashville. Whether we define ourselves as Middle Tennessee or as Nashville is not simply a planning conundrum. It is a matter of identity, definition, and allegiance. These are all highly interpretive questions of what our community means to us. They will not be settled simply because a specialized courthouse elite dictates what we must be. In a constitutional democracy, answers emerge from reasoning together in public, and the elite class must convince rather than co-opt.

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?

You are your own geographer as I am mine:

Rather than presuppose that a specific set of officially defined geographic boundaries is a correct way of capturing a citizen’s context, let study respondents define the boundaries for themselves, through a series of steps capturing what towns and cities people identify with most, from a local scale to a more global one.

While one might quibble with the methodology, the results are certainly intriguing so far. Based on the responses of over 50,000 contributors since 2005, the current map shows a fascinating patchwork of influence-areas that are not highly consistent with well-known geographic conventions such as state boundaries ....

Just how valid is it to cluster voters or citizens by state or by media market, as I have done in some of my own work, when citizens’ ‘perceptual’ regions may look so different?

That must put me somewhere near "neither ... nor"

In the span of 4 days, I have been both accused by a tabloid editor of being a yuppie gentrifier and maligned by an "urban pioneer" for trash-talking yuppie gentrifiers. No worries here.

English Only as a Test Case for Claims of a Competitive and Growing "New South"

Chris Kromm raises some important arguments against the northeast-dominated corporate media's spin on election results in the South.  We should not deny the possibility that states like North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida represent a significant, if not sustained sea change in conventional interpretations of the conservative, Republican leanings of this region.  And besides, the fickle media elite may just be in denial of their own embeddedness with Bush Republicans during most of the first decade of the 21st Century.

Kromm does not really confront the deepest red southern states (like Tennessee; he only touches on Alabama) in his post.  Despite Kromm's inattentiveness to Tennessee, it is in places like Nashville (even more so than Memphis, which fits into the blue swath of counties that line up south down the Mississippi River to Vicksburg and Jackson, forming the end of "majority-minority" counties that stretch across Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia) where the claims of the competitiveness of liberal ideas will be tested, and right soon.

Metro Nashville is a blue urban island, voting 60% for Barack Obama, rising out of a wide conservative sea of suburban, exurban, and rural red counties.  If Democrats cannot rise up to fight regressive policies like the Metro charter change referendum that would force Metro employees to provide services only in one language, we would have to call it a strike against Kromm's thesis about a "New South" tipping point.  It would not be insignificant because a New South requires progressive victories in its most remote urban outposts.  And we should also be concerned about Kromm's thesis that the South is gaining more clout even as one of its powerful metropolitan areas supports bigoted policies like English Only.

Kromm's analysis of the political arena in the South is limited by his strict focus on the parties rather than trans-party ideological clusters (conservative, moderate, liberal), so any Democratic control or win for him looks progressive.  As I have argued, it is a mistake and a misunderstanding of arenas like Tennessee, where Democrats are frankly and generally not progressive (there are a few exceptions), to stress party affiliation strongly.  When the Democrats look Republican-lite, what difference does it make that a southern state would be in play for Democrats?  I believe that Kromm also focuses on party politics to the exclusion of the role that community-based organizing (which claims in many cases to be "nonpartisan") has played in electoral politics, especially in 2008.  A different but relevant question is:  have community organizations, which have been growing nationwide for the last 50 years, made Obama's viability possible or has Obama been the catalyst of their greater influence in this election?

While the debate over various interpretations of the November elections will continue, we need to pay close attention now to local initiatives like English Only as significant indicators of whether the conservative, Republican coalition's stranglehold on the South is loosening.  If white Davidson County voters reject English Only or only support it by a small margin, then we may have grounds to speak of a New South "rising."  But Kromm is correct in maintaining that referring to the South synonymously with whites is not only erroneous, but racist.  We have a pretty good idea of how Davidson County Latinos will vote (and the Kurdish community?).  However, Chris Kromm makes the questionable claim that increasing numbers of mobilized African Americans and Latinos in the South represent new opportunities for Democrats and, by implication, progressives.

While African Americans generally have more positive attitudes about immigrants than whites, they also express greater anxiety, alienation, and competition with immigrants.  While a coalition between African Americans and Latinos may be logical, it is not a given in a deep blue county, and I continue to maintain that English Only will pass or fail on African American votes; that is, I believe it will fail if African American Nashvillians overwhelmingly reject it (if African Americans overwhelmingly support it and it fails or reject it and it passes, I will eat humble pie and concede that I was wrong).  Hence, if English Only in Nashville passes in January (assuming an election is not disqualified by a court) it will weaken Chris Kromm's hypothesis of a New South "rising," at least until the Davidson County immigrant community grows larger in few years.

The Snark That Just Keeps on Giving

Oh. He mentioned Aristotle. He must hold women in low regard.

Republicans Resort to Identity Politics with Palin Pick

Newscoma spanks the identity politics behind John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin:

It’s about her being a woman and that being the home run out of the park. Not her experience or belief system but the fact that “Hey, look, it’s a girl.” That’s the selling point that McCain banked on but when did it become a gender race and not a presidential race about issues facing this nation? A weakening economy, a war, a global uncertainty about the United States intentions, the rights of individuals … are these not important things to be discussing?

I resent that a woman is, once again, being used as a gimmick. I don’t like that. Palin, however, knew what she was getting into so there’s that.

For my conservative friends, I know this is inspiring. For me, it’s just another objectification at this point of a female but I also know you dig her politics and that’s cool.

But for those left-leaning people who are just voting for McCain because he’s got a woman on the ticket, I can only say, look at her track record and tell me, is this what you want one heartbeat away from the White House?

If "identity politics" is one of the most heinous mortal sins exclusive to liberalism as conservatives are prone to argue, then why is John McCain banking on gender and genitalia to get him elected in November? And why are so many conservatives infatuated with picking a woman simply because she is a woman?

While I voted for Obama in the primary, I have consistently been critical of gushing on the "historic" implications of electing an African American, arguing instead that fitness for office should trump identity. When Branch Rickey broke the color barrier in baseball by picking Jackie Robinson, it was only after Rickey had gone out and worked hard to find that player who combined great (though probably not the greatest) skill with restraint, wisdom, and mental toughness. It would not have served the cause of civil rights or pro sports if Rickey had simply exercised identity politics and signed any great African American player. And Jackie completed the historic pivot. Likewise, Democrats should focus less on Obama's African American identity and more on his fitness for the office.

And I'm no less critical of the sudden gush of passion that the GOP has for playing identity politics or of the desperate-housewifed or soccer-momed Hillary Clinton supporters who are willing to be seduced by the latest Republican gimmick. If McCain wins and Sarah Palin is faced with the prospect of assuming the Presidency under duress and the threat of dire consequences, it won't be her vagina that saves us. It will be her experience and skill, both of which are currently unproven.