Protest in Nashville and the conflict avoiders

It has been an eventful 24 hours on the social protest front. 170 organized protests occurred across the United States in the wake of the grand jury acquittal of Ferguson, MO cop Darren Wilson in the shooting of Mike Brown, a teenager.

I-24 shutdown. Photo credit:
Ferguson Grand Jury Candlelight Vigil

One of those protests happened here in Nashville, generated by a Facebook group and expanded after 200 were gathered at the downtown police station last night. How a Tennessean reporter interpreted the next sequence of events:

Then, at Commerce Street and 5th Avenue, around 8:47 p.m., the demonstrators talked among themselves and decided to lie down for the first time. By this time, people were walking from various side streets to join the protesters.

In the middle of one intersection, one woman turned to the protesters, raised her hand and asked: "Are you ready to lay down for Michael Brown? Are you brave enough to lay down for him?"

This scene played out at several intersections along the city, but no instance of protesters moving toward a high-traffic thoroughfare was more dramatic than when protesters left the intersection of Woodland Street and Interstate Drive and started up the entrance ramp to Interstate 24.

The reporter also wrote that the police did not attempt to suppress the demonstrations, but did try to talk protesters out of going on to the interstate to no avail. I-24 was blocked for awhile. Protesters eventually left on their own. Police restraint and nonmilitarism drew the predictable hail of ire from local conservative social media.

So, Metro Police deserve credit for showing protesters respect. Will they continue to do so if protests here reoccur with what will inevitably result in rising pressure from business special interests and red-state conservatives to crack down?

Compare last night's protests and shutdowns to a letter published two days ago by Nashville Unites leader Bishop Joseph Walker, III. I do not see how this letter calls anyone in Nashville--beyond people most likely to take to the streets in protest--accountable for making our city a better place to live. Instead, it seems to single out the protesters and it gives movers and shakers the benefit of the doubt:

A Grand Jury in St. Louis County, Missouri has made its decision. Ferguson Police Office Darren Wilson will not be indicted for the killing of Michael Brown. I know this will pain and anger many in America, particularly African Americans. But I implore you to think and pray before you react.

Today, we must reach out, not strike back. Turn your anger into productive energy. Speak up and speak out, but don¹t scream. The physical and verbal violence has got to stop. We have the power to end it by starting substantive conversations in our communities.

Today, think about Jesus's message of peace and understanding. Then put His message into a modern context. Move from the street to the sanctuary ­and bring the entire community with you. Wherever you are in America right now, go to your churches and invite others whom you perceive to be the other to join you. Invite law enforcement in. Invite a broad spectrum of community leaders in ....

We have begun this process in Nashville by forming Nashville Unites. It encourages ongoing dialogue between communities, law enforcement, educational institutions, and governmental and non-governmental organizations. It aims to establish and promote shared goals for a better city. Nashville Unites represents organized momentum towards understanding.

Let today¹s decision out of Ferguson be the day we stop the useless posturing and finger-pointing on all sides. The time has come to reach out and invite each other in.

Unless you have a broad definition of "sanctuary," you would have to confess that last night protesters in Nashville did not heed Bishop Walker's call to bring it into church. Protesters essentially invited police into dangerous roadways to block traffic and temporarily halt commerce, transit and entertainment in the city (not the first time this has happened in Nashville).

And who can blame them? Nashville Unites was formed several months ago. Instead of getting out ahead and being a drum major, that organization has been incremental at best, quiet at worst about police militarization and brutality. It is street-level invisible. Why should protesters feel any need to heed such a letter? They pushed the limits of the possible last night and exercised some power.

Preaching peace where there is no justice is offering sedatives to those who would otherwise organize to claim their place at the table. They have been cut off from opportunities and equal rights. They need leaders who will help them focus anger and frustration in empowering ways rather than deadening the bounce. The Nashville way of politics seems to be: "Let's all act like we get along, collaborate and pretend there are no problems. Those dissenters? Ignore them and they'll stop. Nothing to see here. Move on." Speaking truth to power is highly risky in a city that strives to shield its power networks of patronage with a window-dressing of popular togetherness.

For the first time in a long time, Metro Nashville is starting to get tested by popular protest. It should have been tested by the local Occupy Wall Street movement, but that protest failed to challenge the Courthouse and Chamber of Commerce. I am curious to see whether these demonstrators can keep it up and how the police decide to deal with future shutdowns.

As long as I am ending this post with conflict avoiders, it is worth pointing out that the 2015 mayoral candidates continue to run silent on this question. What will it take for them to come out of hiding?


UPDATE: During an interview with reporters on last week's Nashville Ferguson protest the police chief said that if Nashvillians want to express their thoughts in a public forum "even if it against the government," their 1st Amendment rights will be protected and "be treated fairly by the police officers involved." Asked if Metro Police would "be more assertive" in cracking down on future protests, the chief said that they evaluate each situation individually and "have the most appropriate response possible."  Here is the entire interview:




It is worth noting that the reporters' questions were bent toward assumptions that protesters should be controlled above all else, and they asked no questions about militarization or when police would consider it necessary to use military-style weaponry on nonviolent protesters. It is clear to me that the local news media is bent more toward law and order over justice and protection of rights. They constitute one more source leveraging cops to misbehave and crack down on dissent and on organized interruption of business-as-usual.

The gang of three and their weak tea

The last time we saw the 3 mayoral candidates--Charles Robert Bone, Jeremy Kane and Megan Barry--together in North Nashville it was 3 months ago for the town hall meeting held in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. In August and then in September I pointed out that none of three had said anything meaningful about how to deal with either the militarization of police or the problem of police brutality in predominantly African American neighborhoods.

I'm not aware of any promises or policy proposals that any of these candidates made on the subject in October. Now, after 100 days, on the eve of a grand jury decision on the shooting, with Missouri in a declared state of emergency and protests planned around the nation (including Chattanooga), these candidates made a second appearance in North Nashville this week. Nothing has changed. They still offer scant insight regarding what they are willing to do to deter a Ferguson from happening in Nashville.

Not only did they fail to address the question again, but their solutions for equality of prosperity leave something to be desired:

Bone, who spoke first, said investment and attention on downtown Nashville isn’t being felt in all neighborhoods, even just five miles from the city’s core, where the forum took place.

“In many respects, we sit 50 miles away,” said Bone, an attorney. “As a city, I think we should have the obligation to keep our foot on the gas, but at the same time to be very intentional about taking the investment and that prosperity that some of us are seeing and pushing it out to communities like Bordeaux and North Nashville.”

Barry...was unequivocal about the state of the city: “There’s a lot of work still to do.” She briefly spoke about economic investment, education, social justice and transit.

“Neighborhoods are what knit all of this together,” Barry said. “I will make sure the neighborhoods we cherish exist even though all that economic development is coming.”

Taking only a slightly different approach, LEAD Academy charter school founder Kane used his time on the microphone to recount his family’s involvement in underserved neighborhoods.

He said that while the candidates agreed on Nashville’s needs, the difference would be the solutions they pursue. He said he has the track record in the school he founded and in his community service.

He said he wants to make sure the city’s reputation for nonprofit giving, entrepreneurship and strong faith improves all places.

What each of these candidates is offering North Nashville is not bold. It is weak tea for our edification. The vision for governing our communities must be larger than the trickle down strategies of Mr. Bone. The next mayor has to do more than merely make sure that neighborhoods "exist" amidst exclusive prosperity, as CM Barry suggests. Mr. Kane's claims that philanthropy and entrepreneurship are answers to preventing the destructive side of economic growth seem short-sighted, paternalistic and unsound.

These are all just the extension of Mayor Karl Dean's policies and practices, which have not been good for North Nashville. No less significantly, they still do not offer anything to address police militarization and brutality, which are issues that continue to be important and unresolved to North Nashville residents. Do these candidates really understand their audience when they come into our community? They all seem more at home in West Nashville.

The gang of three minimize the disjuncture of Metro Nashville's financial investments in big business downtown and the shrinking resources for services to neighborhoods outside of the Courthouse sphere of opulence. Many of our communities are dislocated from the rising wealth focused on the tourism, hospitality and entertainment industries. Unchecked economic growth, leveraged by self-serving developers, tends to cause untrammeled gentrification of North Nashville neighborhoods, driving folks of more modest income out while dismantling diversity.

With that kind of dislocation, police may be more prone to mobilize to protect the movers and shakers if movements appear to protest the injustices. With whom will Metro Police identify in neighborhoods bypassed by subsidized wealth? What kind of patience and forbearance will cops show for people who orbit far and away from the inner bands of Music City influence?

We can be sure that Metro Nashville will protect its huge investments in Nashville's wealthiest private enterprises. Local government cannot afford to lose its corporate welfare wager. Will the police follow suit? How they will treat the 99% as well as dissenters remains open to question. But let us be crystal clear: they have the firepower to suppress popular dissent, especially non-violent civil disobedience, if they choose to; they have a militarized arsenal suited for urban warfare if necessary.

And Ferguson showed that when cops march against protesters a good number of innocent bystanders and local neighborhoods are dealt the unjust collateral damage.

For Nashville's mayoral candidates to continue to fail to address the capacity of Metro Police to exercise different standards in North Nashville neighborhoods than they do elsewhere indicates to me that none of them is truly serious about being mayor of all of Nashville.

Ferguson will stay on our radar. When will it appear on theirs?

Today is the one month anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown and none of Nashville's mayoral candidates have put forward policy ideas on police brutality and militarism in black communities

Photo credit: Al Jazeera America

One month ago today Michael Brown was shot dead by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer. It was an infamous event that ignited anger and concern around the nation. There were mass protests around the country, especially after militarized St. Louis County police cracked own on organized local demonstrations. Social media coverage blew up and forced city politicians hundreds of miles from St. Louis to deal with the fallout. The federal government is currently investigating how police handled the shooting and the social protests with the possibility that any militarized police force that has used military weaponry against protesters could be forced to return the grants.

In late August local congregational leaders in Nashville sponsored a standing-room-only town hall meeting in North Nashville marked by unease, consternation and qualified support for Nashville's police department, their double standard toward non-white communities and their own military arsenal gained through federal government grants. Police officers were prompted to account for the ways they have used military weaponry in service of the public.

That meeting was attended by the candidates who have announced their desire to take over the Mayor's Office next year. One would think that after Ferguson shook the country and after the shock waves were felt in Nashville that this all-white slate of candidates would be articulating some kind of policy options for checking militarized policing in Nashville. Maybe I have not looked in the right places, but I cannot tell that they have proposed any changes to the Nashville status quo. Maybe they believe the don't need the votes.

I searched local news feeds.

And I looked at their websites. This is what I found there as of today.

School reformer Jeremy Kane is otherwise a blank slate. He says nothing about his policy ideas on the issues, preferring "to hear" your ideas for Nashville on his website. He has an air-brushed PR video on the main page that basically retreads Karl Dean's three-headed campaign hellhound: education, law enforcement and economic development. He adds reformer jargon to public education like "collaboration," which is typically code for "privatization" (subsidizing private enterprise with Metro revenue that would otherwise be used for public programs).

I cannot find any evidence that candidate Kane has said a thing about policing Ferguson or the militarization of police forces. Does he believe that charter schools are the answer? He attended the August 21 town hall meeting on Jefferson Street, but his only response to that was to thank the organizers of the event on Twitter.

Megan Barry has gone farther than Jeremy Kane in giving some detail to policy questions on her website, but those details do not seem to be updated in the last month with all of the unpleasantness arising from the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson. In her public safety meditation, she vaguely refers to the justice system "treating everyone the same". She makes no specific reference to racial inequality when she fleshes out what she means by that. She says nothing about curbing the excesses of police militarism and brutality even as she touts her council votes in support of increasing the number of cops on the streets, which is only a good thing if cops are treating everyone even-handedly (as we heard at last month's town hall, they are not).

Candidate Barry offers no indication that she supports citizen advisory committees to watchdog the actions of police armored to the hilt with weapons of war. And I have already pointed out that she seemed to deny that the injustices of Ferguson are likely to happen in Nashville based on nothing but a metropolitan structure of government. As if individuals who work for Metro government cannot make bad decisions.

For his part, Charles Robert Bone has been quieter than the rest on the question of race, police brutality, and military toys for cops. Mr. Bone seems satisfied in his website comments with the direction Nashville has taken on public safety, and so I am growing to expect little illumination from him on how he would address policing problems that affect North Nashville more than other parts of the city.

So, we have three candidates for the county executive seat, none of whom have committed any public promises that they will order policies that protect communities from militarized police. A month after Michael Brown was shot dead (according to witnesses with his hands in the air), weeks after the protests shook our country and North Nashville held a town hall meeting, how can Jeremy Kane, Megan Barry, and Charles Bone remain unaccountably quiet on what they might do to forestall the repercussions of these troubling times? How can they vie for the most powerful seat in Nashville without any clear ideas for preventing Ferguson from happening in Davidson County?