Poverty & gentrification in the North End

Metro's map: 20% to 100% people in poverty in the North End

According to a study of poverty in rich countries:

United States poverty rates are at or near the top of the range when compared with poverty rates in other rich countries. The United States child and elderly poverty rates seem particularly troublesome. America’s elders also have poverty rates that are high, particularly on relative grounds. In most rich countries, the relative child poverty rate is 10 percent or less; in the United States, it is 21.9 percent. What seems most distinctive about the American poor, especially poor American single parents, is that they work more hours than do the resident parents of other nations while also receiving less in transfer benefits than in other countries

From Governing map: Salemtown definitely gentrified 2009-2013

Governing's "gentrification" explanation:

lower-income Census tracts experienced significant growth in both home values and educational attainment. To be eligible to gentrify, a tract's median household income and median home value needed to fall within the bottom 40th percentile of all tracts within a metro area at the beginning of the decade. Tracts considered to have gentrified recorded increases in the top third percentile for both inflation-adjusted median home values and percentage of adults with bachelors’ degrees. 

Is there a correlation between poverty and gentrification in Salemtown?

And yes, I understand that retweets do not necessarily mean endorsements

Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?

-- James Baldwin

The masses .... They were in the majority. When the master got sick, they prayed that he'd die. If his house caught on fire, they'd pray for a wind to come along and fan the breeze.

-- Malcolm X

I have not checked with them about their motives, but I'll hazard the guess that council members Emily Evans and Carter Todd retweeted the following because they plan to vote against regulating predatory lenders in less affluent neighborhoods as supported by other council members:

Check the bottom for the diminutive council member retweets.

Interesting to see that a couple of council members may support the idea of hiring African American women to bolster the income line of a company that charges a disproportionately minority, working-class clientele 600% interest. The legacy of usury is littered with the lives of people locked into cycles of debt and poverty worse than when they entered thanks to the paternalistic opportunism of lenders who claim they are providing the masses with options.

In many places it is like a house ablaze:

Of the consumers who frequented the payday store fronts, most were women. People who were divorced or separated were 103% more likely to use the loans, while African-Americans were also 103% more likely to take out the often predatory loans.

“Based on the location of these lenders, it is clear they target minority and low-to-middle income groups, mostly in highly diverse populated areas,” the report states. “If this trend continues, these areas will no doubt be pushed into poverty.”

So, do CM Evans and CM Todd support the idea of barring obstacles to a wealthy lending corporation hiring women of color to help it push other women of color into poverty? The creation of jobs in a business that preys on widespread dislocation (Nashville's poverty level is a crushing 19%) seems like integration into a burning house. And it takes the pressure off the predominately white business elite, who perpetuate a cruel and pitiless finance system, while marketing Nashville as an attractive "it city" on the make.

What about the claims that predatory lenders are doing African American women favors by hiring them? Do we have any stories of Nashvillians, deeply in payday lender debt, who were able to climb out of it after being hired by payday lenders on the salaries at the work hours they pay? Does the news media bother to talk to former employees of payday lenders to get relevant information?

Meanwhile, regulation or not, the lenders will weather whatever comes. They will live to continue to set blazes to peoples' lives and stay free from crushing risk themselves. The absence of meaningful federal, state and, yes, local regulations on lending constitutes wide latitude to for high-interest, self-serving loans that inundate good people made desperate by an unforgiving economy.

The stick in Advance Financial 24/7's craw is the ding their "24/7" brand is going to take by limiting their perpetual operating hours. That is it. The only thing at risk is their marketing brand. This is not a fight over people. It is a company defending their brand.

Otherwise, if they authentically cared about African American women, as their founder shamelessly claims, why not offer them low-interest loans to begin with?

Why not? Because if they did, they could not make huge campaign donations to Tennessee politicians, including some who come through the Metro Council.

Why not? Because if they did, then they would risk engulfing their own houses in financial risks in an unforgiving market. And, on their way down, they might not get too much pity from people they once used on their way up.


UPDATE: Yesterday the lobbyists at the Nashville Chamber of Commerce started flexing their muscle in support of predatory lending companies. Here is part of the letter they sent to the entire Metro Council:

The Chamber opposes this bill [to limit the operating hours of payday lenders] because it is an excessive over-regulation of business .... Regardless of the function of the business, we believe that this type of legislation sets a worrying precedent in restricting the hours in which any business can operate. Furthermore, this becomes even more ominous when legislation appears to target one specific company that operates 24/7. Our members include businesses in this industry; we would not recommend hour be restricted for any of them.

This is another thinly veiled attempt on the Chamber's part to leverage the least amount of resistance to do whatever in the world their members want to do. The majority of Nashvillians who are not members can go to hell as far as the Chamber is concerned.

Where hell lies for many is on the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder. Chamber lobbyists posture as if their member companies are fighting poverty by providing jobs and services that people cannot get elsewhere. But for a group so dedicated to business models they fail miserably to count the actual costs of lending jobs that empower lenders to push Nashvillians farther into poverty. They don't want to discuss the poverty that is generated by the jobs provided. At best they remain willfully self-ignorant of Nashville poverty. At worst the Chamber is running a confidence game so their member companies can continue pimping poor people out of their cash flow.

Over-regulation of business? When has the Chamber championed any regulation of business?

The writers of the letter completely ignore the fact that certain businesses in Nashville are already regulated as to times and even days that they sell their products. There is a precedent already set in Nashville.

It is reasonable to assume that just like payday lenders have paid vast sums to finance political campaigns, they have likely donated a chunk to special interest lobby groups like the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. They're just continuing to fan the flames.


UPDATE: There is an online petition you can sign to tell Metro Council (which votes on February 3) that you support the ordinance limiting the hours of payday lenders. Jump to: http://www.limitpaydayloans.com/

Don't need a study to convince me that poverty is a bigger problem than gentrification in Nashville

I don't need convincing just because I can be labelled a "gentrifier." I encounter individuals once in a while who insist that gentrification is the worst thing that happens to neighborhoods like those in North Nashville. While I do not believe that gentrification--however we define it--is an absolute boon, I don't believe it's an absolute bust.

I tend to believe that the real culprit that destroys the cultural vitality and authentic diversity in established neighborhoods is poverty, untrammeled home values and skyrocketing rent that drive working class people out of our communities. I believe that gentrification, as a tool for building the middle class in diverse communities, can have a positive impact if measured and controlled so that poverty does not pool and concentrate elsewhere.

Now come indications from a national report consistent with my views:

Gentrification is the bete noire of the yuppie: once affluent professionals have settled a previously rundown neighborhood, they get cranky about how others like them are ruining the place. Nashville is the latest in the “gentrification is killing the city’s soul” meme.

Gentrifiers, however, are not ruining the US – or at least, not enough of it.

An exact opposite of gentrification is playing out. Instead of neighborhoods rebounding, they are getting older, shabbier and the people who live there are falling deeper into poverty.

The number of neighborhoods with a high poverty rate has tripled over the last 40 years, according to Joe Cortright and Dillon Mahmoudi, authors of a new report published by City Observatory.

Having voiced my affinity with those findings, I hasten to add that this kind of knowledge can be twisted into an oppressive, dangerous advocacy for growth. Developers and planners could use information like this to justify wanton demolition of existing homes, headlong pursuit of maximized infill and assumed freedom to take as much wealth out of neighborhoods as planning policy allows without a call of conscience. The risk of excusing gentrification is that we give cover to developers without demanding that they address problems of poverty, too.

There is nothing wrong with criticizing gentrification a bit, too. Keeping gentrifiers honest is not a bad thing.

How not to use social media on behalf of your city's water utility

The City of Detroit has decided to ignore the idea that access to clean water is a human right. They have spent the last few months turning off the water of residents who cannot pay even though rates have been hiked to cover some questionable financial choices the city has made over the years. They only started turning off businesses who have not paid--which make up the lion's share of the cost of delinquency--last week. Golf courses in Detroit owe hundreds of thousands in unpaid bills, yet they get preferential treatment.

Sunday Detroit Water representatives took to social media to accuse people who are trying to get water of "stealing" it from their utility, and they looked like thugs threatening their customers on Twitter:

This is worse than bad PR. It reflects the neglect and disdain that increasingly privatized municipal services, heavily influenced by business sector wealth, have for ordinary people living in difficult times. The double standard is clear: wealthy people have need of golf courses; they have no need of people who can't afford to bankroll brokered water. They have no need of universal human rights.

A few reflections for today's ceremonial groundbreaking for a new ballpark at Sulphur Dell

Leading off in the wrong direction: new ballpark's plate will face other way.

This evening Mayor Karl Dean is holding his soiree (today shutting down 4th Avenue and two state parking lots) to break ground on his new underwhelming ballpark for the Nashville Sounds. He has ordered infield dirt and home plate be set up on 4th, about a less than block away from where the new home plate will likely be. Fittingly, home plate is facing the wrong way. It is a metaphor for me on how this process has started on the wrong foot. Token, purely symbolic attempts were made to invite community buy-in. If this project starts going pear-shaped with cost overages or construction delays, Hizzoner and a few North Nashville council members are likely going to regret not getting more popular support before moving forward.

Instead, they have expressed garden variety meanness toward anyone with a critical question. Admittedly, it comes with the territory in politics. You ask questions about the Mayor's rapid bus plan, you get labeled as conservative and anti-mass-transit. You ask questions about the Mayor's Fairgrounds sell-off, you get labeled as anti-neighborhood and regressive. You ask questions about the Mayor's new convention center, you get accused of wanting to hold back growth in Nashville.

Likewise, you ask questions about the Mayor's ballpark and the process he undertook to make it happen in less than 6 months, and your love of baseball is questioned. (In some cases the invective is uglier). What is particularly troubling is when the meanness is expressed in emotional moments by your own council member, whose public comments seem to suggest that she only considers the emails of supporter of projects that she supports. It may be, as Erica Gilmore argues, "a strange kind of love of baseball" that insists that Metro government be accountable to constituents for its capital projects even when they involve the national pastime, but to question people's deeply held devotion to something when you cannot even seem to spell correctly the name of the ballpark whose history you claim to be celebrating in your new capital project smacks of hypocrisy. Questioning someone else's love of baseball or history when you don't seem to have a grasp on either yourself amounts to being the bad sport.

For her love of the game, I'd be interested to know whether CM Gilmore has put her deposit down on season tickets in order to financially support the new ballpark she claims will "revive" Jefferson Street.

Are you crying?
There's no crying in baseball!

That is merely one of the questions I have going into this afternoon's groundbreaking. They deserve answers, not more hyperbole. Has the Mayor done the work on examining the area for archaeologically sensitive sites? Has soil analysis been done to test for contamination? Where will any toxic soil be dumped? What is Mayor Dean doing to protect historic buildings nearby? What will we do about traffic and parking? What are contingency plans for future catastrophic floods? There are a host of other questions I have heard asked that have yet to receive answers. Rather than lashing out at people who ask questions like this, rather than impugning their motives the Mayor's Office and its minions in Friends of Sulphur Dell should offer clear answers. This is baseball. It concerns our neighborhoods. We deserve more than tempestuous politics.


UPDATE: The Associated Press in a story on today's event repeats a meme that a new ballpark will end the 50-year-old deterioration of Jefferson Street. It also makes a claim that I have never read before: that Sulphur Dell was demolished due to the construction of the interstate, which is a dozen or so blocks away from the old ballpark site.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and the Nashville Sounds baseball team are hosting a ceremonial groundbreaking for a new minor league ballpark that will return Nashville baseball to its historic home.

The new park in Sulphur Dell will be near the site of an old downtown ballpark that was demolished more than 40 years ago to make way for an interstate and redevelopment. Those changes cut off the historically black neighborhoods of North Nashville from downtown, helping to drive those neighborhoods into an economic slump.

Residents and officials hope the new ballpark will help revive North Nashville, especially the central business district on Jefferson Street.

It looks like whoever wrote this piece is drawing information from a December report which made the debatable claim that our community "never recovered" from demolition of Sulphur Dell and the construction of the interstate.

The Tennessee Tribune offered a contrasting point of view to the AP last year:

“The interstate was only the beginning of the problem,” said Janice Jones, a retired nurse who lived in North Nashville for 55 years. “These hooligans moved in and starting committing crimes. It used to be safe here 40 years ago. Black folks were supporting each other and businesses were thriving.”

Jones paused to collect herself. “Now they’re over here killing each other and abusing drugs. It’s ridiculous.” Kassir agrees. “We showed unity back then. We supported each other. But somewhere in the years after segregation and Civil Rights, we lost our way and turned on each other. This neighborhood hasn’t been the same since.”

Not everything on Jefferson Street has gone downhill. In 1994, an organization was formed by longtime Jefferson Street residents, business owners, homeowners and developers called Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership to provide a jump-start to Jefferson Street.

I am sure that the Mayor's Office has no problem with the AP notion that a ballpark may save Jefferson Street neighborhoods after 50 years, thus making Karl Dean our superhero, but the facts and the truth seem to be more complex and nuanced. And the Mayor has not been attentive to North Nashville as a rule of his two terms.

As far as I can tell the folding of the previous minor league fanchise had more to do than the building of the interstate with the demolition of Sulphur Dell. And to claim that in 50 years Jefferson Street neighborhoods have done nothing but decline is blind to reality. The AP should get a grip and stop inventing news.

"Cleveland's curse" could be North Nashville's curse if Amp is built

For the sake of argument, let's grant without question the major points east-west connector supporters are giving for building the Amp:

1. Since Cleveland, which some ballyhoo as a success, is the model for Nashville's Amp, the odds are good that BRT on West End will succeed.
2. Amp will increase growth along its corridor because all transit stops drive up the value of nearby land.

Even as I grant these arguments, the reality that remains represents the motive of my opposition to the east-west connector: it is not equitable transit. Proponents can call it "the first step" in regional transit if they wish, but repeating it over and over is no guarantee of more than one step. In fact, the logic of development would encourage keeping BRT rare to maximize the riches along a wealthy corridor. And who would blame East Nashvillians for trying to keep their Amp funds away from the risk of future northward BRT expansion? So, believing that Amp is a first step would be the height of gullibility.

And, ironically, Cleveland provides the case for being wary.

There are indications that Northeast Ohio is having problems expanding past the initial progress they have made. As proud as Clevelanders are reported to be of their BRT line (a.k.a., "HealthLine"), there are real questions as to whether they have the will to expand BRT to spread the benefits to others:

With some minor gripes aside, we all get to witness BRT success everyday. But, has the influx of “choice” riders to the HealthLine whet the appetite for another BRT line?

Certainly, at $200 million for 5 miles of infrastructure and hybrid buses, an award-winning BRT system is not cheap. But, this isn’t just infrastructure, it’s transformative, high-value infrastructure. The economic return is an estimated $4.3 billion for infill and redeveloped buildings on Euclid Avenue. It makes the case for a second act. But is there a will among the leadership at Greater Cleveland RTA, a city in its service area, and at the source of funding, NOACA, to build another BRT line in Northeast Ohio?

It took quite a bit of swimming upstream to get the Euclid BRT line funded (80% was federal and 20% a local match. The case was built more than a decade earlier in the Dual Hub Streetcar plan...).

So much has changed in the world since 2008 — much for the better in transit projects. Nearly every city in the U.S. is clamoring for a new streetcar line — and at least half a dozen, including Dallas, Charlotte and Cincinnati are poised to add lines soon to existing streetcars in Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Denver, and Portland.

Before the recent leadership change at NOACA, observers noted, there was no more juice to do a follow up project at transformative scale like the HealthLine ....

RTA's director of planning, Maribeth Feke, told CEOs for Cities where the transit agency could envision another BRT line. But does anyone else besides RTA see BRT as a catalyst for revitalizing old streetcar districts...? Without a concerted effort to the multi-year planning and development, it's unlikely the region will see another Bus-Rapid Transit line soon.

So, ballyhooed Cleveland has their beautiful BRT line, showcased by many, including Nashville's Amp proponents, but the wealth is not going to be spread around any time "soon". BRT is not expanding, even though the HealthLine garners positive national attention and mimicry.

Cleveland's limited progress does not bode well for progress in North Nashville, where I live.

Now explain to me again slowly why I should support, especially with my taxes, a BRT line that bypasses my community and pumps wealth into already wealthy communities with no guarantees of transit equity? Why should I look to Cleveland and be inspired to support Nashville's Karl Dean's Amp? Why should I wish to subsidize West End wealth when the political will to fight the same fight for North Nashville transit would likely be lacking after east-west BRT is built?

North Nashville may be a payday lenders' paradise, but it is a food desert

From the Community Food Advocates' blog:

there are currently 103,100 food insecure households in Davidson County or approximately 16.8% of the population.This includes both rural and urban residents, the elderly and disabled, and about 29,100 children ....

Four Nashville neighborhoods: North Nashville, JC Napier/Southeast Nashville, East Nashville, and Edgehill/South Nashville, are still considered food deserts

The fact that 30,000 kids live with food insecurity is shameful in a civil society. I would maintain that hunger and want have more to do with poor student performance than teachers or curriculum. Word to the reformers: you cannot innovate privation.

CM Carter Todd, TFA donor, expresses his support for Karl Dean on education

There are many avenues of education reform, but I want to address one in particular: high-quality public charter schools .... we have to create and recruit more great charter schools. And I will stand in support of any reasonable measure that helps make that happen.

-- Mayor Karl Dean in last Sunday's Tennessean

It is noteworthy that CM Todd agrees with Hizzoner's conservative embrace of charter schools and has donated a large sum of money to Teach for America. TFA is a "teacher's pet" of corporate venture philanthropy that strives to remake public education on market-based models and business strategies irrespective of the views of veteran education professionals.

It is also noteworthy that TFA has its own problems. Witness just a snippet of the comments from a TFA alum to NPR last year:

the biggest thing is that politicians hear these inflated successes, and then they buy into the current myth that we've got these old, lazy teachers that need to be replaced with these young go-getters. And that's also not the way it works.

But the huge issue - and the thing that got me, about a year ago, writing on this almost weekly - is the TFA alumni who, after two or three years, leave the classroom and go into a leadership pipeline. Now, there are some great Teach for America alumni that became leaders. They taught for a lot of years, and they became principals and things like that.

But I'm talking about a certain, small class of them. They taught for maybe two or three years, and then they were given the reigns to take over a district - and they have not done a very good job. A prime example is Washington, D.C., where Teach for America alumni are sort of at all levels, including the very top, and they haven't succeeded there. They have a policy of shutting down schools, firing teachers, given bonuses based on what I consider to be inaccurate metrics. And they've sort of bought into the whole corporate reform movement.

Gary Rubenstein points out elsewhere that the corporate push behind TFA and education reform consistently renders those of us who are its opponents (many of whom, like me, do not make enough to offset CM Todd's big donation of $5,000) as "defenders of the status quo". Hardly. Both Mayor Dean and CM Todd are established, powerful politicians who rely on corporate donations in a Republican red state, by definition conservative. Calling themselves reformers in the sense of agents of change, is far from expressing truth in advertising.

The status quo in Tennessee is that poor students and students of color generally end up with poor education while students from wealthy, mostly white families are handed better opportunities. In fact, that is the status quo in America. Neither charter schools nor TFA do anything to change that status quo. On the contrary, charter schools "cream" the best performers from public schools and can move poor performers out. Moreover, education reformers defend the status quo themselves by drawing the discussion away from economic inequalities that keep some students down in the dust while lifting a few others to obscene heights. I certainly understand why: conservative corporate donors do not want to support anything that rocks the boat that brings them their wealth in the first place.

And consistent with the corporate status quo, it is not students who are the primary beneficiaries of school reform, but the few wealthy white guys bankrolling it with their investments; the kind of guys on whom Karl Dean and Carter Todd rely on to keep their powerful positions in Nashville. The Mayor and the Council Member may cheerlead the flipping of education away from public, but at the end of the day let's hope that they are honest enough to admit that it really will not amount to any real positive change for the vast majority of Nashville's students.

Nashville among 40 cities with highest percentage of poverty

According to data published recently in the New York Times, Nashville is listed among the 40 US cities with highest poverty. It is 33rd. Among its "peer" cities (that is those we regularly see it compared it to) also among the 40, here is how it compares:

St. Louis, MO	27.8%
Memphis, TN	26.5%
Atlanta, GA	26.1%
Denver, CO	21.6%
Indianapolis, IN	21.1%
Nashville, TN	20.8%
Austin, TX	20.8%
Kansas City, MO	20.4%
Greensboro, NC	20.1%

While Nashville is 17 percentage points lower than Detroit, the most impoverished city, it is still 5 percentage points higher than the national rate of poverty.

One of Nashville's indicators of our city's answer for lowering the poverty rate, public education, is at present driven by market models of reform. Public schools are being privatized as charter schools and being flipped to private boards of directors. Others are being reorganized into "academies" influenced by individual CEOs. The current climate does not invite discussions of the impact of poverty on school performance or Metro solutions to mitigating the impact.

Instead, under the influence of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, a special interest group that enjoys direct access to MNPS administration, the focus is on the test scores of public schools as the strict measure of performance. The Nashville Chamber is not just a lobby group, but a lobby group that has received hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to subsidize its influence.

But the Chamber is so focused on selling its product, Nashville, that considering the problem of poverty will not fit into it's latest marketing strategy "Business is good." Given the numbers on poverty, marketing strategies for fixing public education seem more like a Chamber-serving diversion, but if I were in charge of their marketing wizardry, I would tweak it a bit for the sake of realism.

Adapted for truth in advertising. Hence, not likely to be seen on billboards.

Nashville's latest showing in the poverty stats could be much worse, but it is not where it should be, either. In an era of increasing income disparity, relocating businesses or economically booming bigger than other cities will not reverse our poverty rate. It will not close up cracks that poor people slip through. Instead, the greater wealth generated will be hoarded at the top, not spread around to give more people access to opportunity.


UPDATE: The Urban Institute finds that income inequality in the States grows:

In the past several decades, income inequality in the United States has increased dramatically. Over the same period, year-to-year variation in individual incomes—or income volatility—has increased more modestly, while Americans’ economic mobility—movements up or down the economic ladder—has changed little.

Inequality and equality can take many forms: equality of opportunity is desirable, but equality of outcomes (like money income) might not be, if the inequality motivates entrepreneurial activity and hard work that benefit society as a whole. Some advocate focusing not on income inequality but on poverty.

On the other hand, the greatest increases in inequality have come at the top, with implications for policy and politics, as most of the country’s resources are concentrated in fewer hands. Tax policy, asset-building policy, and policies directly affecting low-income working families are among the most salient levers.

Scrambling to stay ahead of last week's children in poverty report

Friday I passed on news of Tennessee's inglorious ranking as one of the worst states for large numbers of children in poverty. There has not been much news media coverage of the report here in Tennessee; at least the coverage has not been proportional to the scope of the calamity. The Knoxville paper quoted a state official whose response was predictably conservative (Nashville's daily merely reprinted it instead of reporting on poverty in Davidson County):

The concern is there are reduced opportunities they have to be successful in school and in life," said Linda O'Neal, executive director of the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth.

"I think it's important for us to realize we have be strategic to help families and children to be successful ....

"This tells us where we need to provide these kinds of investment, like parents need jobs, and other things that will help families and children," O'Neal said.

Some of the areas where help is needed are family resource centers and supplemental nutrition programs, she said.

People can help the problem, O'Neal said, by volunteering, mentoring, talking to their legislatures to make sure resources are receiving proper funding.

Wow. What an uninspired plan.

The national advocacy association for municipalities, the National League of Cities, attempted to get out in front of the report by emphasizing existing community services intended to address the problem:

Despite the severe pressures on municipal finances in the wake of the recession, cities are continuing to lead the way in efforts to reduce concentrated poverty and help families become economically self-sufficient.

For instance, a number of cities are central players in local, neighborhood-based initiatives that seek to replicate the innovative poverty reduction strategy developed by the Harlem Children’s Zone, even when they have not received funding through the federal Promise Neighborhoods program.

Other cities have taken comprehensive approaches to financially empowering local families by connecting them to key tax credits and work supports, mainstream banking services, savings and asset-building programs, alternatives to high-interest payday loans and financial education.

While sounding a little more inspired than the State of Tennessee's tenuous response to the exploding problem of children in poverty, NLC showcases a program in Harlem that is focused mostly on an education reform hybrid: half charter schools and half public schools. But even that program is made to wait on federal funding.

Trickle-down solutions like enlisting more volunteers and expanding charter schools (which sap resources from existing public schools) are little more than timid and flawed diversions to funding quality education programs and safety nets for less fortunate families.

Tennessee among the 10 worst states for children living in poverty

The Anne E. Casey Foundation released news of a study of US census numbers from 2000 and 2006-2010 that finds that concentrated poverty has been on the rise as has the number of children who live in the areas of concentrated poverty.

Even more troubling for us is that the study finds that southern children are more likely than kids in other parts of the US to live in areas of concentrated poverty.

Most troubling for us is that, with Tennessee having 13% of its children living in areas of concentrated poverty, we are among the states exposing the highest number of children to concentrated poverty. And Tennessee almost doubled its exposure of kids to impoverished areas in 10 years.

It is also worth noting without surprise that there is a racial component: only 3% of all children living in areas of concentrated poverty are white.

Try as we might to sell Tennessee as an attractive destination for families to live and to work, our state is becoming an increasingly risky place for children to live.

Still an arrogant nation on the wrong side of world revolution: an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam"

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression, which has now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisers" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago, he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."


Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.


A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

The real threat to our children goes ignored by education reformers' "report card"

The Nashville Chamber of Commerce, the preeminent and wealthy business lobby group, released their latest "report card" on Metro Nashville Public Schools. I only found one mention of poverty and it was in reference to Teach for America, which the Mayor indicated last May is a stop-gap for the loss of professional teachers due to budget constraints. The report's two comments on "low-income students" are relegated to an appendix and a glossary like footnotes.

Conversely, I found no references to wealth or the upper class. Such omissions insinuate that affluence does not have influence over the quality of education of truly advantaged students.

While the Chamber of Commerce may slight the ill affects of poverty on student achievement and try to shift more blame to teachers and families, some observers refuse to ignore destitution and pauperism as real threats to student achievement. Strong assumptions about and faith in the American meritocracy hinder real reform based on guaranteed equity of opportunity:

The first step to education reform, then, in the U.S. is to acknowledge some sobering realities about our society as we move further into the second decade of the twenty-first century:

• Childhood poverty in the U.S. (about 22%) is both relatively high when compared to other countries similar to the U.S. and inexcusable in the wealthiest society of all human history.
• Upward mobility in the U.S. has not materialized, and remains something to which we should aspire—but is not something we have achieved.
• The economic and equity gap between the top 1% and remaining 99% is growing, and thus threatening our goal of meritocracy. That 1% maintains disproportionate control over wealth in the U.S. and by extension disproportionate control over politics, commerce, and (most significantly) public discourse. The 1% must perpetuate a faith among the 99% in meritocracy as a reality to preserve their status.
• Childhood poverty is a subset of adult poverty, employment, and wages. Even if we decide to address childhood poverty and the conditions of those children's lives, to ignore adult and family conditions is to ignore childhood poverty still.

Ignoring the reality of the underdevelopment in the communities of many public school students and denying widespread paucity and the shrinking middle class, the Nashville Chamber of Commerce is not engaging in authentic education reform, but merely morphing a new separate-but-equal system oblivious to increasing income disparity. Rich kids will keep getting smarter; poor kids will be held back.

Where will Stand for Children - Tennessee stand in 2012?

Earlier this month, Stand for Children - Tennessee had a strategic planning session for 2012, and then about a week ago they held a fundraiser/holiday party. I don't know exactly what they have up their sleeves for next year or how much money they raised to help them implement their plans.

But before you buy into this organization's stated commitment to children, take a look at how they operate in other states:





It seems to me that children's issues have been used as a Trojan Horse to sneak in other economic and education policy agendas that have little to do with children's issues. Stand for Children - Tennessee is a partner under the Metro Schools umbrella with the local business lobby group, Nashville Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has been influential in the growth of local charter schools, in increasing investment opportunities for for-profit initiatives, and shifting the discussion away from debilitating poverty and to teacher performance.

We need to pay attention to SFC - TN in 2012 and monitor whether they go the troubling direction of other Stand organizations and bow to local special business interests instead of to the grassroots.

Low-wage families require more assistance than just moves to new neighborhoods

A 15-year study of families who moved from high-poverty to low-poverty neighborhoods finds that they did not necessarily enjoy access to greater opportunities:

[The "Moving To Opportunity" study group’s] special mobility assistance didn’t enable families to gain and sustain access to high-opportunity neighborhoods. Although many moved to better housing in safer neighborhoods, few moved to neighborhoods served by high-performing public schools. And few spent more than a year or two in low-poverty neighborhoods. Rising rents, problems with landlords, and difficulty finding the next apartment all pushed families back to less desirable neighborhoods.

In other words, they didn’t really move to opportunity. It turns out that helping low-income families find, afford, and hang on to housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods requires more help than anticipated. Building on the lessons of MTO, mobility assistance programs in Dallas, Chicago, and Baltimore are now offering more hands-on help (with both the first move and subsequent moves) so families they serve can move to and stay in safe neighborhoods with good schools and abundant opportunities for both kids and adults.

It seems to me that helping low-income families move to greater opportunities requires governments to spend more money providing and sustaining supportive infrastructure (parks and libraries) and truly public schools. Also, without some sort of regulations on the apartment market, I don't see how working-class families will survive higher-income neighborhoods, where the atmosphere is more of a free-for-all than fair-value.

Can anything good come from public housing? Verily.

If you followed yesterday's national "Day of Action" by Occupy Wall Street, you are aware that there were lots of dramatic moments: occupiers bottlenecking all points of entry to the New York Stock Exchange, California sit-ins at Bank of America, arrests in Atlanta and Portland, and marches and/or bridge occupations in several cities. Perhaps the most dramatic moment of the entire day occurred when giant projected images appeared on New York City's Verizon building towering over a scheduled concluding march across the Brooklyn Bridge (by a crowd that was estimated to be between 32,000 and 45,000 protesters).

Protest messages and themes were projected on to the large building from a hidden location that kept both police and news crews guessing. The light show provided an uplifting contrast to the mood of the protest, and the surprise of this ballsy tactic capped off the effectiveness of the day perfectly.

But more impressive than the tactic itself was the story of how the projectionists gained access to a place seemingly outside the suppressing clutches of NYPD. That access was granted by an unlikely hero who generally does not have the power to grant access for others to much of anything else:

Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There's a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn't say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully there. But then I got one call from a sane person Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.

I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.

I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.

Her parting words were, "let's do this."

She wouldn't take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she'd been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.

"I can't charge you money, this is for the people," she said.

She was born in the projects. She opened up her home to us.

She was in there tonight with her 3 daughters, 2 sisters. The NYPD started snooping around down on the ground while the projections were up, it was clear where we were projecting from, and inside it was festive.

"If they want to come up they're gonna need a warrant!," her family was saying. "If they ask us, well, we don't know what they are talking about!" They were really brave and cool.

In my opinion there is a common human tendency to root for the underdog, and Ms. Vega's story is that she was the underdog who made possible Occupy Wall Street's highest moment in an already high-flying day of action. Yesterday was historic and a working-class mom helped add a bold exclamation point.

Was it really a "real controversy"? I'm still waiting on a "real controversy"

Not sure why Phil Williams mentioned me along with two leaders from the Republican and Democratic camps during the Twitter chat about Bill Haslam's crackdown on Occupy Nashville. The Governor bungled the overnight occupation of Legislative Plaza, and he turned a small upstart demonstration with practically no strategic accomplishments, bearing an uncertain future into an ire-raising constitutional fight for civil rights. Supporting Occupy Nashville's right to stage on public property was a no-brainer.

While I applaud former TNGOP spinmeister Bill Hobbs for taking a strong stand in support of Occupy Nashville, this question was bound to divide Republicans, many of whom have not lost all their senses about the people's right to protest. Sure, some token party apparatchiks spoke in favor of the curfew, but there is always room for both craziness and posturing in the public discourse.

No Tennessee Democrat is going to support the curfew with a Republican Governor fumbling the ball. Their electoral chances increase the more Bill Haslam screws up. This is not to suggest that no Dems support the curfew on principle, but so many Democratic officials are financed by the big shots that Occupy Wall Street is taking on. So, supporting Occupy Anything cannot be easy for those plugged into the party system. Governor Haslam did the Democrats a favor last week by giving them an easy choice. If Phil Bredesen had done this we would hear a lot less from Democratic Party supporters, who seem more attuned to social issue controversies, rarely raising a peep to questions of wealth, poverty, and economic justice.

However, I can't fathom why I'm mentioned. I have little or no connection to the parties. The last time I volunteered to work to elect Democrats was 1988. The last time I considered a Republican worthy of my vote was in high school, when I was too young to cast a ballot (the indiscretion of youth). I consider myself an independent with a profound distrust in the parties, and thus in the ballot (even though I do vote in nearly every election). Maybe Phil Williams considers me the extreme liberal in this group and the most predictable one to support Occupy and bash Bill Haslam. That would be a rather uneasy, fleeting Kumbaya with TNGOP and TNDEM.

There was no real controversy. It was an overwhelming majority against Bill Haslam. He was bound to back down. Of course, now that the Haslam Administration has backed down, there still is no controversy, which for me is part of the problem.

I admit that I be would wrong to say that Bill Haslam was the sole catalyst of the dust-up over access to Legislative Plaza and the consequent ascendance of Occupy Nashville. In fairness to ON, their courage to face arrest and jail, their tenacity to return night-after-uncertain-night to occupation, and their unimpeachable commitment to social change also contributed to their win over the State of Tennessee.

But I do think the strategic choices they make fit the efforts of the party wonks and of the mainstream journalists to frame their protest strictly in terms of electoral politics while leaving economic questions out of the equation. A WPLN story yesterday reported that ON leaders are going to focus more on their group's identity and the perceptions created in the media. They wrote a nonconfrontational letter to the Governor asking for collaboration with his team on the occupation. After hearing that Vanderbilt College Republicans were going to come out to protest their protest, ON leaders baked literal cookies and put out the proverbial welcome mat. This afternoon Occupy Nashville will march to Nashville Electric Service of all places.

I'm confused as to how any of these actions support ON's stated goals to challenge corporate personhood and the political influence of corporations. The Nashville Chapter says that it exists to support the Occupy Wall Street movement, and yet it chooses different, narrowly political targets than those on Wall Street. OWS NYC has sent several waves of protesters to the headquarters of Goldman Sachs. OWS Oakland closed down the Port of Oakland for part of a day. Yet, Nashville leaders are marching on NES and patronizing Vandy frat boys with cookies.

In contrast, the law student arrested during OWS NYC in front of a bank in the video below personifies a core organizing principle of Occupy Wall Street in his impassioned and personal exclamations about foreclosure:





Tomorrow has been declared a national day of protest against the large banks called Bank Transfer Day. It will be the culmination of a month that has seen 650,000 people transfer their funds to credit unions and local banks in what could be one of the largest mass acts of divestiture in US history. And yet, what has Occupy Nashville chosen to do today? March on NES, which is essentially an arm of government (Power Board members are selected by Mayor Karl Dean and approved by the Metro Council).

The problem with protesting government is that big business owns government. And the political parties are the servants not of people but of the corporations who fund them. Focusing on government is like focusing on the symptoms rather than on the illness itself. That said, the NES protest does fit the conventional slots for partisan politics in Tennessee even as OWS claims to be an unconventional protest. As such it detracts from this weekend's focus on banks. In my opinion, Occupy Nashville should try to be less of a podium and spotlight for Tennessee Republicans and Democrats to frame their campaign messages and more of an alternative protest along the lines of OWS protests.


UPDATE: President of Tennessee Young Democrats fawns on Occupy Nashville. My guess is that he hopes to flip the protest into votes for well-heeled Dems come election time.


UPDATE: The Occupy Nashville Facebook page posted a video of a visit to their camp from the NES CEO earlier today, where occupiers try to make clear their reasons for marching on NES and he tries to make clear his motives for misusing funds. Note one of the commenters replying to the video pointed out that his salary still puts him in the 99% that Occupy Nashville wants to advocate against the 1%. Interesting quandary.

Retrospective: a little North End labor history on Labor Day

Warioto Cotton Mills in 1915
(incorporated in 1905; now the Werthan complex)

The labor history of North Nashville is not easy to find but there are some accounts online like this one:

“I got my first job when I was thirteen years old, working from six in the morning ‘til six at night. . .six days a week, making fifty cents a day,” recalled Josie Coleman .... She was referring to the summer of 1914, when she left her family’s double-log home in Spring Hill, Tennessee, to work in Nashville. Her father Jessie, a farmer supporting ten children younger than Josephine, drove the girl and her shawl-wrapped belongings ... to the city in a mule-drawn wagon.

The previous few years had been unfortunate ones for ... Tennessee farmers. Texas fever, a disease caused ... by tick bites, had invaded the state and killed or quarantined most livestock. That calamity, compounded by the summer drought of 1914 and Maury County’s epidemic of hog cholera ... brought the farm to a standstill. Thus, when Josie’s uncle ... reported in glowing terms on the ready market for labor in industrialized Nashville, first-born Josie decided that Nashville was the place to be ....

Her first job was at Hartsford Hosiery Mill on Twelfth Avenue North at Harrison Street [near what what is now Marathon Village]. She and “lots of other young girls” and women worked for fifty cents a day, six days a week, feeding the machinery that turned out long-length ribbed stockings for boys and girls. She threaded loops of cotton and wool on the large needles of a pre-set pattern or form; the needles created “everything. . .the toe, ribbing, and ends" .... The stockings of white yarn were later dyed black ... by sulphuric dyes. This process was performed away from the processing factory, since the dye was extremely toxic. “And that dye really did smell,” Josie laughed ... “I don’t see how those folks stirring the dye vats stood that job!”

.... her father sold the Spring Hill farm and brought the family to Nashville, buying a residence in the 1700 block of Fourth Avenue North [now Salemtown]. Josie moved in with the family and obtained a job with the H. G. Hill Flour Mill on Van Buren Street [Germantown]. At ... sixteen, she acquired a “better paying job” with the Tennessee Manufacturing Company on Eighth Avenue North [now Werthan Lofts]. She began by sewing sacks of starched calico cotton used for packaging flour and meal. “Ladies really loved those sacks,” she laughed. “When they were empty, the sacks were washed and the stitches cut out so that curtains and clothes could be made from them. I’ve wondered if the ‘free’ fabric ladies got when they bought flour wasn’t more important than the product!”

Plagued by agricultural malaise and drought, a rural generation--many of whom were children--were forced to move to North Nashville for wages even lower than those that had already motivated workers in other industrialized cities to strike at great risk because they did not keep up with the cost of company rent a century ago. It is hard to say whether the farm girls moving into North Nashville were aware of strife like Massachusetts' Bread and Roses Strike of 1912, but they may have been so desperate that it might not have mattered.

While the labor movement was not strong 100 years ago (and likely discouraged by company bosses) here in Nashville, a social welfare organizing movement that built and sustained settlement houses for factory workers was robust. The Warioto Settlement House was founded to care for workers' young children (as we saw above Josie was herself a child laborer), to provide education opportunities, and to prevent diseases.

The building that contained another former settlement house designed to aid and socialize laborers, and otherwise provide "mediation" between rich and poor classes in rapidly changing North Nashville still stands at 10th Avenue North and Garfield Street (now in the Buena Vista neighborhood). The "Flower Mission" building was built more than a decade before the Warioto Cotton Mill incorporated and 2 years before the Pullman strikes in 27 other states that resulted in our annual national observance of this day, Labor Day.

A stretch to ignore all the factors that keep kids in poverty while emphasizing "access to great schools"

In this interview with the Stand for Children Executive Director on a New England morning show, both the journalist and the director seem to dance around the causes of rising childhood poverty to get to the SFC mantra of "access to great schools". Both overreach in their attempt to reconcile rising poverty with another poll of public school parents who express satisfaction for their local schools.





Public schools are prone to be used as a scapegoat for poverty in this country when in reality it is caused by broad systemic and market-based inequalities of opportunity in this country.

A representative with the foundation that conducted the poverty studies insisted on the PBS Newshour last night that childhood poverty can be fought with more a robust unemployment insurance system, child tax credits, vigorous pre-natal and childhood health care, and a commitment to education in a broader sense than "access to great schools". I would add to those remedies a more equitable wage system, perhaps a "living wage" for families with children. We should not underestimate the impact of our market system on the shrinking middle and working class as the wealthy continue to sock profits away for themselves rather than paying fairly for labor.

To a certain extent Stand for Children seems to thrive off dissatisfaction with public education and propensities, both conservative and liberal, to blame the institution for a host of ills in American culture. So, I'm not surprised that both the director and the sympathetic journalist were turning cognitive cartwheels trying to deal with the fact that parents are generally satisfied with their local schools.

The organization requires a state of crisis in need of superheroes in order to attract more resources, but the crisis of poverty isn't easily attributable to villainous public schools. We already have a better, more comprehensive explanation for the causes of increased poverty that is also more consistent with findings on attitudes toward schools.

Black and white, poverty and wealth: side-by-side look at demographics at Eakin vs. North Nashville elementary schools

Germantown south of Monroe Street and Hope Gardens were once zoned for high-demand Eakin Elementary. Here are the West Nashville school's demographics:

Source: ProPublica. Click on to enlarge.

Compare to the demographics of three North Nashville public elementary schools recently maligned in the media:

Source: ProPublica. Click on to enlarge.

Source: ProPublica. Click on to enlarge.

Source: ProPublica. Click on to enlarge.