Reflections on the Metro Police Chief's Christmas message

Many here are now well aware of Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson's open letter published the day after Christmas on the news page of the Metro government website (and then in the Tennessean). Since it has gone national, many outside of Nashville have seen it, too.

Perhaps it gets so much attention home and away because of the marked contrast between the Chief's tone and that of police in other places, especially in St. Louis and New York City.

We should positively reinforce accommodating and tolerant stances of police to protesters. Cops should respect freedom of speech, assembly and dissent. Steve Anderson deserves our thanks for acknowledging as much and distancing his department from law-and-order, shoot-first rightwingers who fail to see that even police officers have organized in order to protest, shut down major roadways and expressed civil disobedience when they believed they had the right to.

Perhaps we are so desensitized by cop violence in African American communities, by police donning anti-mine vehicles and military armor to crush popular dissent, and by thin-blue-line hubris in general that we shocked into viral elation by the words of Chief Anderson, which are no more than what we should expect and demand from the police.

While Chief Anderson is getting unqualified praise for his remarkable letter, there are caveats to his arguments and qualifications to the popular response that deserve expression.

Let's start with Chief Anderson's comments in the letter (all in bold from here on) about the peaceful nature of protesters:

Here in Nashville, persons have gathered to express their thoughts in a non-violent manner. I thank all involved for the peaceful manner in which they have conducted themselves .... None of the demonstrators in this city have in any way exhibited any propensity for violence or indicated, even verbally, that they would harm anyone.

Protesters, while disrupting business-as-usual in downtown Nashville, have indeed been non-violent and MNPD restraint is laudable. However, the Nashville protests have not reached the national notoriety via the news media to attract more opportunists who are drawn to the attention every robust social movement draws:

In every vibrant progressive social movement there comes a moment when a psychologically or emotionally disturbed person, an agent provocateur, or a political extremist commits an atrocious act that is seized upon by the State and/or the political Right as a means of attempting to discredit or outright repress the movement. The action, committed for whatever reason, is sufficiently heinous that confusion develops within the movement and the movement can lose both its momentum as well as a segment of its less committed or more ambivalent supporters.

In his comparison of recent events in NYC to backlash against protest movements in history, Columnist Bill Fletcher, Jr. insists that there will always be those drawn to movements who strive to be vicious regardless of the higher purposes of the protest. In every snowballing protest, extreme and disturbed people attempt to wreak havoc. Nashville has not reached that point, yet. We have not seen violence toward people or property during the protests. Even when state police moved in with their typical heavy hands and stopped protesters from shutting down interstates, protesters restrained themselves.

Photo credit: Ferguson Grand Jury Candlelight Vigil

Let's be fair to other cities. That does not make Music City exceptional when it comes to social protest. It could mean that we have not reached the crisis point or made the progress to gain the visibility that other protests have. When we are rocked to a scale of Greater St. Louis, New York City or Los Angeles and we still don't attract more destructive personalities, then we can claim to be different. The real test for Nashville will come if we are visited by the disturbed, the provocateurs and the extremists.

That is the actual point where police restraint and tolerance will be challenged. We should acknowledge that even as we applaud Metro Police for doing the right thing. If such an unfortunate event were to land in front of Metro Police, would they use it as a pretense to shut down, undermine and attack legitimate protesters (and in the case of Ferguson, innocent neighborhoods)? We do not know yet because we are not there yet. Social protest in Nashville is not currently at a crisis pitch.

Then there was this exchange between a complaining letter writer and Chief Anderson (bolded) about Mayor Karl Dean, which I thought was odd:

I also understand that you get direction from the mayor's office, but these actions are putting the department at disharmony from the majority of the citizens. At some point you are going to have to answer this question to yourself - "Am I following or giving orders that help or hurt the community?" In closing, if these recent actions have been due to pressure from the mayor's office, please reach out to the people of Nashville, there are many who will gladly contact the mayor's office as well ....

While I certainly appreciate your offer to intercede on my behalf with our Mayor, you should know that the Mayor has not issued any order, directive or instruction on the matter with which you take issue.  All decisions concerning the police department’s reaction to the recent demonstrations have been made within the police department and approved by me.  Therefore, any reasons or rationale supporting your proposal as what would be the best approach for all of Nashville, and not just a method of utilizing the police department to enforce a personal agenda, should be directed to me.

I do not claim to know the identity or motives of the emailer to Chief Anderson, but in case the letter was not written in good faith, in case there it was an attempt to drive a wedge between the cops and the mayor, it is worth keeping the specter of partisanship on the table as a motivating factor. There is evidence that the Tea Party, those in the Republican Party establishment and NYPD union leaders have stirred the anti-Mayor de Blasio pot, including organizing conservative cops from all over North America to attend the funeral of Ofc. Rafael Ramos and turn their backs on cue when the Mayor arrived.

Acknowledging how effective the GOP and conservatives are at online organizing, I would not put it past them to encourage one another in the various cities where protests are occurring to try to pries and polarize government executives and police departments. I am positive that red-state Tennessee Republicans are no different.

Does the letter to Chief Anderson reflect party coordination? Maybe not, but it is consistent with the strategy now afoot, the agenda conservatives flash. Karl Dean has widely-acknowledged aspirations to higher office. The complaint letter does not pass the smell test of nonpartisan innocence and thus it is not above the charge. Someone may be attempting to make some dirt stick on a Democrat.

But make no mistake. Mayor Dean is the CEO of Metro government. He has embraced that brand, particularly when it make grants him executive airs. One of three unwavering Dean campaign commitments in two elections was to public safety via Metro Police. I have heard him tout Nashville's lower rates of violent crimes on his watch. While all of the decisions on how to respond to protesters may have belonged to Chief Anderson so far, to insinuate that the Mayor will not cross the line at some point is to be disingenuous to the reality of the Metro Charter, which gives Hizzoner control over MNPD. There is no great distance between mayor and MNPD.

I am not sure it would even take a coalition of police brass, Republicans and Tea Party flunkies to push Karl Dean to lean on Chief Anderson if the protests grow as elsewhere.

Local business interests centered in the Chamber of Commerce and the Nashville Business Alliance along with wealthy campaign donors might provide the efficient cause of the Mayor stepping in to change the tolerance MNPD has shown local protesters. I hardly see him taking the risk Bill de Blasio did to provoke ire: criticizing a judicial decision not to indict an officer for his fatal chokehold on an African American man and expressing solidarity with the bereaved family. The conservatives pounced on de Blasio for that.

What do risk and solidarity mean to Mayor Dean? He did not even change his schedule to attend the North Nashville mass meeting to listen to community anger in the wake of Michael Brown's slaying in Ferguson, MO. He could not even risk the symbolism of being present. I can easily see Hizzoner putting pressure on MNPD to limit protests if they grow in order to avert risk with the business class. I cannot wrap my brain around the day he might take the stand that Chief Anderson did for the rights of Nashville protesters.

But at least the Chief is leading Metro in the right direction. He deserves credit for that.

Another boring postmortem on this election past

I used to care more about electoral politics than I do now. I still go to the polls and vote as I did the day before yesterday. But the power of the two parties, the influence of campaign finance to predetermine elections, the blame segments of rightfully uninspired voters get for not casting a ballot and the shoving aside of everyday politics have all soured me of any enthusiasm for what is cynically called "participating in democracy".

I go to the polls, but I do not begrudge otherwise well-meaning folk who do not. I may still go to the church, but I, like many of you, have lost the religion.

Nonetheless, there is something instructive about the drubbing the Republicans handed the Democrats in Tuesday's mid-term elections. It is instructive for what it can tell the little blue island of Nashville, which is afloat in an even more deeply red state: progressives have got to curb their triangulation with the right and start taking bold stands on economic issues that affect people's everyday lives.

Prominent Nashville Democrats clearly set themselves apart on social progressive issues like immigration, reproductive rights and gay/lesbian equality. But on the economic questions that hit blue-collar working people the hardest in an environment where the wealthy are the only segment to have bounced back from the recession nicely, these Democrats either are no where to be found or have consistently acted to undercut economic equity.

And Tuesday was a cautionary tale. Democrats with few exceptions were soundly defeated by the GOP. Why? Because running primarily on social progressive issues like reproductive rights may not get them all the way to the finish line with voters, and there are indications that support Democrats have enjoyed among women in the past eroded in this election cycle.

When Democrats dealt with economic questions they did not connect with voter concerns:

At the root of these concerns...are stagnating wages and the failure of the recovery’s gains to achieve wider, more equitable distribution. Democrats campaigned on a range of economic issues — the minimum wage, pay equity, student loan affordability, expanded pre-kindergarten education — but these didn’t cut through people’s economic anxieties, because they didn’t believe government can successfully address them.

“People are deeply suspicious that government can deliver on these problems,” Mellman says, in a reference to the voter groups that continue to elude Democrats. “And they are not wrong. We’ve been promising that government can be a tool to improve people’s economic situation for decades, and by and large, it hasn’t happened.”

Some Democrats may talk the talk of fair economic distribution, but many walk away from reforming power structures that make it impossible. Talking up what government can do and then walking away when the time is ripe makes disbelievers out of all of us. I frankly wonder whether Democrats collectively care about the cynicism they engender.

Furthermore, incremental campaigning proved to be a loser altogether on Tuesday. Democrats fall back on incrementally progressive initiatives like the minimum wage (which is not a livable wage) hikes; then guess what? The Republicans tactically soften on the issue and peel off votes the Democrats must have to win.

So, beating the Republicans and energizing voters requires boldness both on the campaign trail and in the halls of government.

Last year I pointed out that mayoral candidate Megan Barry (who has curiously been branded by some in the news media a "super progressive") has not done herself any favors with Nashville's king-maker class by being an incremental progressive on social issues while consistently voting in council to support business special interests while placing greater burdens on working men and women in Davidson County.

CM Barry's split-minded progressivism is emblematic of what is wrong with the Democrats. They are so busy triangulating to shore up their social progressive wing (against the Tea Party) while pandering to the pro-growth, pro-business lobby that they leave themselves open to Republicans. Even if Ms. Barry becomes mayor, she will govern much like Karl Dean has, and Mayor Dean has governed like a Log Cabin Republican. Ms. Barry will be forced to compromise with state Republicans who will be in no mood to broker deals for a blue atoll dwarfed by red-state upwellings.

Neither of those prospects are good for Nashville progressives as much as we may feel lucky to cling desperately to whatever is cast off from the wreckage. We should settle for nothing short of boldness.

Kerr errs on Amp opposition

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the hoop-like excuse that Metro Transit apparatchiks may have held "public hearings" before they settled on "the AMP" (east-west bus rapid transit connector) is no reason to believe that those hearings were effectively conducted for the public. Tennessean Gail Kerr comments this morning, "There were early public hearings on whether we should build a bus route at all, but there were sparse details at that point." This may seem minor to some, but it confirms my view that the process is more rigged to keep the public uninformed and destablized so that stronger trump cards can be laid later. The public hearings were designed to keep us guessing, not to bring us on board to reach a consensual decision in which everyone won a little of something.

The only other interesting point in Ms. Kerr's column is the ironic encouragement of people to attend public hearings now, as if the process is substantively different than it was. She seems to be merely saying of the latest hoops, "It's real this time around." I suspect that what is real is the opposition the Mayor is facing from the neighborhoods down low and from Tennessee Republicans up high. Four late-called community meetings seeking input looks like a mad scramble to lend legitimacy to a limping bus line.

Otherwise, Kerr's column is unadulterated garbage. She calls those of us who advocate a northward leg "snooty" because she alleges we believe that buses should serve mostly "lower-income people". Nope. I advocate a northward leg because it would serve mostly people. Not corporations. Not tourism. Not wealthy campaign donors. Not property owners with maximized property values. Nope. I believe that mostly average folks of various incomes are whom a Charlotte Avenue line would serve. Her preconceived notions about who lives in North Nashville may make her the "snooty" one.

But what ultimately makes Ms. Kerr's hard copy not even worthy of chucking into the compost heap is that she expects opponents of the AMP not to differ in their motivations and in their strategies for expressing dissent to an east-west connector. She bases her assumptions about the resistance on an email thread "obtained" by a couple of reporters. That's right. An email thread. One of the more mercurial, fluid and volatile forms of communication; an email thread. She relies on that to opine that opponents are not unified, to insist that we are "disjointed".

But Ms. Kerr is confusing her snapshot of a lack of consensus on how to respond to the Mayor's next gambit with a lack of purpose or a lack of solidarity. And keep this in mind: Ms. Kerr herself was coached by a PR firm in the past to flip talking points to Tennessean op-ed. By such flack standards, democratic consensus may appear to be "disjointed" and lacking in a common goal. It is not the failing of opponents of the AMP that they have different views on how to get to the shared purpose of defeating an east-west connector. It is Ms. Kerr's own failing to step outside of a world where coordinated selling points are spoon-fed to journalists.

Blog chatter: are charter schools faux reform?

I've been frankly disappointed by the deafening silence among Tennessee Democrats on the question of privatizing public education by means of charter schools. As far as I can see very few are bucking the White House, which is firmly committed to "education reform" via charter schools. Instead, they seem more interested in the partisan game of slamming Republicans for vouchers rather than acknowledging that their own milquetoast party often offers nothing bolder than GOP-lite education policies.

So, I sit up and take notice when a Tennessee Democrat goes against the grain. Trace Sharp has honest questions based on her rural experience for her fellows who advocate charters and others:

• Was collective bargaining for teachers dispatched out of the way to set charter schools in place? (In my opinion, the answer is absolutely yes.)
• Why would a for-profit company be better for school children than public education?
• How will data on the actual retention skills of information of students be measured? If charter schools don’t have to follow the regulations of public schools, what is their model and WHY is it better?
• Once again, if a county only has one or two high schools, what determines which one will be a charter school, which one won’t and how will public funding be distributed? There are a lot of counties with only one or two high schools that go back back to the consolidation that occurred in the early ’90s where small, community schools closed and moved to larger-based schools.
• Who will monitor the profits of the charter schools? Who will regulate the curriculum?

It is clear to me that privatization of public schools is the extension of Republican logic that business models are the solution to social problems and policy challenges. Democratic support of charter schools strikes me as a kinder and gentler form of rejection of government services, the utter resignation of the idea that public education is by definition guaranteed to all comers. They may use buzzwords like public-private partnerships, but privatization is more like leveraged buyout. They may shroud it with non-profit philanthropy, but it is remains private enterprise with all of its limitations. The Godfather of charter school philanthropy is Bill Gates:

[Bill] Gates' leveraged philanthropy model is a public-private partnership to improve the world, partly through targeted research support but principally through public advocacy and tax-free lobbying to influence government policy. The goal of these policies is often to explicitly support profitability for corporate investors, whose enterprises are seen by the Gates Foundation as advancing human good. However, maximum corporate profit and public good often clash when its projects are implemented.

(And I won't even go into the problem of the reactionary funders of school reform as Trace ably did; go read her post for that). Business models for education do not simply solve problems in public education.


As Molly Ivins used to say, business excels at creating wealth. That does not guarantee that it does everything else well (although it can buy enough public relations experts and political strategists to brand it a cure-all). Business models also invite new problems, like treating people strictly as either consumers or commodities, like reducing all good (classically a broader moral and social idea) to financial goods. Private companies and wealthy individuals buy greater influence while besieged and beleaguered communities, parents, teachers and students have only their own bodies with which to fight, assuming they have the time and energy to do so.


The private enterprise end of the private-public partnership naturally pushes the process to let entrepreneurs take control. As a result public education gets sold off to the highest bidders, who like Bill Gates, also wield political clout. Nashville lawyer Jamie Hollin underscores the problem:

No matter how nice candidates are, how long or how little they’ve lived in the community, whether their kids go to public school or not, whether they work for a company already receiving public tax dollars through contracts, how brilliant they may be, who they’ve worked for or with in the past, or who endorsed their candidacy, the ultimate goal of the monied-interests behind them is privatization. And, there’s lots of money to be made in privatization ....

I am not willing to completely dismantle the public school system in Nashville like the individuals and groups supporting these candidates are so hell-bent to achieve.

While Nashville abdicates to a kinder and gentler form of school reform, other cities like Philadelphia are moving with ruthless, heartless efficiency to privatize public schools. In a letter to Philly's school district "recovery" officer, a mother of children in district and charter schools calls education reform what it is, a conservative expression of the shock doctrine:

You’re not speaking to me with this brand of disaster capitalism that tries to shock a besieged public with unproven, untested, and drastic action couched as “solutions.” You’re not speaking to me when you invoke language like “achievement networks,” “portfolio management,” and “rightsizing” our schools – and say not a word about lower class sizes or increasing the presence of loving support personnel or enriching our curriculum.

You’re not speaking to me when you plan to close 25 percent of our schools before my son graduates high school. You’re not speaking to me when you equate closing down 64 schools – many of them community anchors – as “streamlining operations,” yet you’ll expand charter populations willy-nilly despite a national study showing two-thirds of Philly charters are no better or worse than District-managed schools.

You’re not talking to me when your promises of autonomy come minus any resources, and when the best you have to offer parents is “seat expansion” – which just means larger class sizes without extra funds.

You’re not talking to me when you say all schools are public schools. They are not.

We are indisputably facing a real crisis in education. As author Naomi Klein points out, crisis destabilizes communities, throws people off their guard, forces us to grasp desperately for answers, and in some cases, to panic, which gives wealthy, powerful and patient special interests the chance to rush in with sweeping "reforms" that tend to favor them more than the grasping masses. Likewise, conservative agendas rush in to fill the vacuum. School reform is no different. It is not a community-based, democratic or (regardless of what its adherents claim) progressive model of education, but a business-oriented, charity-bent, venture-philanthropy-funded model of keeping underserved populations compliant to the larger social structures that define their place in the first place.

The cost of appeasing the other side

I'm willing to give the captains of Metro Nashville Public Schools the benefit of the doubt, and believe that their embrace of charter schools to this point has been an attempt to save, not destroy public education. The only thing is that the conservative champions of charter schools, vouchers, and private subsidies are intent not on saving public education but burying it in the graveyard of privatization.

Even so progressive education reformers still seek to compromise; they find spots and resources for charter schools. But it is a slippery slope. To put it another way, support for charter schools allows the camel's nose to duck under the tent flap. After that, there is nothing to bar the rest of the beast from coming in the tent.

So, why should they be surprised?

School Board Chair Gracie Porter says she was “somewhat shocked” by how “aggressively” the state is moving on charter approvals. She says as charters pull funding away from the district, “we are still expected to perform as the same level, even with less dollars.”

At the same time, Porter wanted to make clear: “Metro School Board is not against charters. We want the best charters that we can possibly have. And we also want our children across the district – not just in charters but across the district – to really be successful. Oftentimes we hear that it’s us-and-them. I don’t view our system as us-and-them.

Rather than feeling wounded or victimized, we must quickly learn the lesson that there is no compromise on public education. Charters prepare the way for further privatization of public education. For Ms. Porter to respond as she did to the distinct probability of politics in red-state Tennessee was unrealistic. And simply trying to restate a liberal Janus-faced approach that invites charters, but not too many charters, is setting oneself up to be beat in the future.

Wake up and smell the coffee

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Annie Dillard, once described "high church" folk like herself as prone to "saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten the danger." Her point: folk falsely rely on an unwarranted, even false sense of security and unawareness that their comfortable assumptions could turn against them and devour them at any moment.

When I hear otherwise reasonable people get appalled at Rick Santorum winning the Tennessee GOP primary yesterday or responding with consternation to news that some GOP legislators, including former CM Jim Gotto, see a UN conspiracy to take over Tennessee cities through community planning, I ask myself, "How can someone stick their head in the sand to the point that they fail to predict the dangers inherent to a red state?"

I mean, come on. Santorum (if not Newt Gingrich) is the perfect magnet for conservative Tennessee voters, and they are legion. It is an undeniable fact, nearly self-evident, that Tennessee is conservative red-meat for Republicans. Surely, the small enclaves of progressives, who clutch together like refugees on rafts, see that. There is always the possibility of collective self-denial.

Moreover, anyone in Middle Tennessee who has watched Jim Gotto on council knows him as a partisan right-winger and Church of Christer: a volatile mix that makes one prone to see the world as black-and-white, as us-against-anyone-who-may-disagree, as take-no-prisoners. Mr. Gotto has been one of the most uncompromising and ruthless politicians I have ever seen. So, his recent flirtation with rolling back local autonomy over planning fits his MO. It also benefits a lot of potential wealthy donors; that point was made when the Nashville Chamber of Commerce supported Gotto's bill before furiously back-pedaling away from that support yesterday.

Maybe someone like Karl Dean or Diane Neighbors should have done more to upbraid him when he was spouting off in his tenure as council representative on the Planning Commission. And "progressive" Metro Council members should be grilled on how they let Gotto get away with running unopposed for the powerful position of Planning Chair in the first place. (Perhaps because he busted his butt for the same developers and developers' lawyers and developers' lobbyists that "progressives" rubbed elbows with?)

So, I'll not feign righteous indignation at yesterday's GOP primary results or at the antics of our red-state General Assembly. The worst mistake we can make is responding as if these are people who will listen to reason spoken down to them from atop pedestals of forgetfulness and false security. We live in a dangerous state. It is a Machiavellian state, a Hobbesian state-of-nature where battles for supremacy knock down the scaffolding pretension constructs.

The second worst mistake we can make is the favored strategy of the Democratic Party, which seeks compromise with partisans who are not interested in compromise and who do not have to compromise since the voters here have given them absolute control of the state and significant control of cities like Nashville. Taking the middle road and becoming half-way conservative will not satisfy right-wingers. They'll just shift the goal posts to prompt liberals to shift half-way again. Giving them too much credit is fatal. They swarm like a plague of locusts, and with indifference they will destroy everything around them in the name of redeeming it for a divine kingdom on earth.

I do not want to seem to too hard on progressive rationalists. In fairness, I'm a recovering Southern Baptist who watched the plagues of fundamentalists swoop in and mow down green fields of moderates' lives, leaving little but stubble and despair, even for those who hadn't a liberal bone in their body. I see the same pattern manifesting with wave after wave of Church of Christ CMs who come through the the Metro Council bent on making Nashville a cultural battleground safe for their constricted litmus of Christianity and for their tight band of politics.

But if some want to believe that moderation can happen here or that they can work with the current leadership to produce progressive results, I wish them luck. They're going to need it.


UPDATE: Jamie Hollin notes the hole the Nashville Chamber of Commerce dug for itself:

We should all take some measure of comfort in the fact the Chamber is incapable of getting bills through ....

equally beneficial to citizens, they left the sponsor, Rep. Jim Gotto and by extension–Red Tape Brigade–Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, high and dry. Leaving sponsors out to dry is a no-no in politics. I suspect they will be suffering from retribution or it will at least cost them in other ways.

Flip the script

Despite the hype and drama with which the media builds up the primary election season, the gravity of electoral politics is countered by broader-based social movement politics. Matt Taibbi's analysis is on target:

It takes an awful lot to rob the presidential race of this elemental appeal. But this year’s race has lost that buzz. In fact, this 2012 race may be the most meaningless national election campaign we’ve ever had. If the presidential race normally captivates the public as a dramatic and angry ideological battle pitting one impassioned half of society against the other, this year’s race feels like something else entirely.

In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.

Word is that Barack Obama is trying to redeploy the community organizers around the country whom he relied on to win his first term. However, if they joined in the 2011 occupy uprisings are they going to settle for another GOTV effort that primarily benefits the 1%?

What separates Democrats from Republicans?

The fact that a goofball like Michele Bachman has a few dumb ideas doesn't mean much, in the scheme of things. What is meaningful is the fact that the belief in total deregulation and pure capitalism is still the political mainstream not just in the Tea Party, not even just among Republicans, but pretty much everywhere on the American political spectrum to the right of Bernie Sanders.

--Matt Taibbi, Griftopia

I'm still surprised when I hear people whom I consider bright, who call themselves progressive robotically repeat cliches about government getting out of the way of business. The Tea Party is more mainstream than many would care to admit.

Haslam will likely choose the Tennessee Democrats' way, because it is cheaper to charter

Education blogger, Jim Horn ponders the quandary Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam faces on the question of vouchers for private schools:

Haslam's more guarded approach to dragging government to the bathtub to drown it represents the most dangerous kind of post-partisan maneuvering, whereby both sides of the aisle of the corporate jet come together to toast the reign of corporate government and the further aggrandizement and continued control by the 1%ers.

In terms of education policy, the former neolib Gov. Bredesen handed off to Haslam a plan designed by the Gates, Broad, and Walton Foundations and approved by their boy, Duncan, to make Tennessee the poster state for corporate education "reform," from uncapped charter growth to unceasing value-added testing to replacement of urban professional teachers by the [Teach For America] missionaries to the unfettered growth of online diploma mills for high school kids.

The dusting off of another reform of 50 years ago, school vouchers, has left Haslam in somewhat of a pickle. If Tennessee is going to follow the [Business Round Table] script for unrestrained charter growth, dependent as such a plan will be on tax dollars to fund these unregulated and segregated corporate-run testing camps, then can TN, without a state income tax and with sales tax maxed out at around 10% (with local options), afford to open the door to another drain on the state coffers, as vouchers surely will be?

Tennessee Democrats and the education reformers who love them seem to be in a lathered lockstep to oppose vouchers, so they're doing Governor Haslam a solid in the form of a chance for an easy retreat from his party's reckless right-wing. But the Democrats already failed to bar the door to vouchers by advocating the corporate privatization of public education through charter schools. As far as I'm concerned the Dems have no credibility on the subject of vouchers outside the Governor's Office.

Governor Bill Haslam, State of Tennessee to crackdown on free assembly, free speech tonight at 10:00

Yesterday evening a little after 5:30 an email notice went out from the Occupy Wall Street (Nashville chapter) protesters warning:

Occupy Nashville has been told it must vacate Legislative Plaza druing the nights starting at 8pm tomorrow (Thursday, 10/27), although they had earlier agreed that Occupy Nashville had 1st Amendment rights to stay there.

Rooftop photo, taken this afternoon, of "unsafe" Legislative Plaza

Today Republican Governor Bill Haslam announced to the news media that OWS protesters have until 10:00p to vacate the Plaza, a public space. The Governor has instituted an unprecedented 10p-6a curfew rationalizing "criminal activity and deteriorating sanitary conditions" as appropriate causes. Haslam declared an "occupied" Legislative Plaza as "unsafe for the protestors, state employees and everyone who works, lives and enjoys downtown." A local micro-blogger responded by tweeting that a small group of dissenters has caused Governor Haslam to overreach and declare a state of emergency.

It is clear from the photo of the protesters above that they are more of an annoyance to the chamber of commerce than a threat to the public. While I have questioned protesters' decision to occupy Legislative Plaza for other reasons, it is obvious to me that Bill Haslam and his GOP cohort are using the occasion of other crackdowns around the country to make a rag-tag group disappear. You had to know that unconstitutional suppression was coming because Tennessee's wealthy, political elite are tired of tolerating the unwashed and the uppity. This curfew and permitting process are designed to destroy the dissent of people who are already shut out of the halls of power.


UPDATE: Here's a photo from a visit I made to the Occupy Nashville camp a couple of weekends ago. There were not many campers around, but their ambitious democratic declaration was posted on modest cardboard at the camp entrance.

The frantic quest for any jobs without qualifiers likely creates jobs without security (if any jobs at all)

Tennessee Democrats continue to disappoint as they strive to do no more than compliment TNGOP:

In a phone interview, Sen. Andy Berke agreed [with Governor Bill Haslam [that lawmakers should focus on job creation].

"The number one issue in Tennessee right now is jobs," Berke said. "We're at 9.8 percent unemployment across the state, and we've got to push for answers. We'll continue to talk through the various issues we heard about today, so that we can renew a focus for the next legislative session."

Berke also mentioned the idea of an entrepreneur tax credit—a bill he introduced earlier this year—as an approach to encouraging economic development.

"People are hurting, and we've got to fund ways to move away from the distractions you see too often in the legislature and focus on our most important initiative, which is economic development," he said.

So, we're going to give "microbusiness" breaks so that they have more money and we can hope that they create jobs that will sustain employee's livelihoods. It does not seem to matter what quality of jobs they create as long as even a minimal degree of economic development occurs. At most the expressed expectation is that the bill will help generate at least one new employee at unstipulated compensation at each microbusiness that qualifies.

But the bill also seems to have a loophole: microbusinesses have a choice between creating a new job or two or generating a new investment or two. Investments include items like purchasing buildings, paying legal fees, and advertising and PR. In fact, no new jobs have to be created at all for microbusinesses to get the tax break. But it looks like the Democratic Senator is at best hoping that incentives gained through creating some TV spots or paying for lawyers will encourage owners to create jobs for Tennesseans.

All in all this bill disappointingly appears to be GOP-lite: give more breaks to industry framed with wishful thinking or unmerited faith that owners will hire more people to jobs that may or may not be sustainable. Sen. Berke's bill is good for the small business owner, but not necessarily good for the little guy (without respect to gender). I understand that Democrats in a red-state have to take what they can get, but let's stop pretending that this bill is about jobs. Jobs may or may not happen in trickle-down scenarios. When owners are given money back they do not necessarily generate jobs with it.

In the meantime, working class people need jobs that help them pay the cost of living. They also need jobs with salaries that help them pay for childcare so that they can go to work. They need security in this insecure market; the kind of security that Democrats strove to achieve after the Great Depression last century. Today's Democrats fail to address those security needs because they are focused exclusively on untrammeled economic development as the ultimate elixir, just as Republicans are.

Jerry Maynard said he's no rubber stamp, but he can't distinguish how he's not a rubber stamp

I want to go back to June now that the council election is over to part of a mid-summer radio interview where CM at-Large Jerry Maynard did not exactly keep cooly cool with a couple of critics:

Maynard: I wanna be around for the next 4 years to make sure we fully fund education .... if we get the wrong people on Metro Council, we will not support fully funding our schools, and that is the number one priority that we should have as a city: ... to support our school board, to work with them on reform, to work with the Mayor .... I've got my own ideas. One thing I would like to do is to bring college students as mentors and tutors in or middle schools ....

Caller #1: As far as the past four years, Metro government hasn't really done anything about education except put lip service to it. And I really feel like a lot of the council and you yourself are rubber-stamping.

Maynard: Rubber-stamping for the school system?

Caller #1: For Karl Dean ....

Maynard: That's cute ....

Caller #1: ....We've got no repercussions, no consequences for ill actions and we have certain ones who don't want to speak on it in a real manner. The writing is on the wall. There is no accountability, and King Dean and the rubber stamps is what rules

Maynard: That's a cute little statement, but let me tell you something .... if you think that all we were doing was the rubber stamp, then I would say look at my record .... [giving developers financial incentives to build workforce housing in the "urban city"] .... keeping guns out of our parks. I've done some things regarding being elected and it hasn't just been rubber-stamping anybody.

Host: Alright we got another caller ....

Caller #2: ....You sound good, sir, but there's no substance. All I hear is words but we see no results. You talk about you interested in public education. Where was your voice when all these Metro employees lost their jobs? These jobs were outsourced.

Maynard: That's the school board, sir .... Since you want to say all I want to do is talk, so let's make sure the talk is straight .... Metro Council cannot tell the school board what to do with the money once we give them the money .... Let me let you get to know since this is the "truth zone" .... Dr. Register said, "No" [to Maynard's request to save the jobs if council could find the money] .... He tied the hands of the Metro Council [by signing contract without giving them a chance to find money] .... Now you can talk that I did not have a loud enough voice. Go back and look at the tape .... So, this is not a fiscal concern it is a policy decision .... Now, because I'm not on the school board, I can't tell Dr. Register what to do. The Metro Council can only pass the budget.

Caller #2: You're a Metro Councilman at-Large. Call a press conference. Do something other than just talk....

Maynard: So, a press conference would do what?! What would a press conference do? [Change of topic: exchange about David Torrence and whether the Mayor's response on Torrence was lacking]. Let me say this: My name is Jerry Maynard. I'm running for council at-Large. I'm running for re-election based on my record. You can call it "rubber-stamp" if you want to. Listen, this council and this black caucus that I've served on has been more effective, and I'm sorry that your head ... I don't know where you've been. You been living under a rock or something.

First of all let's agree that if CM Maynard had not lost his composure during the phone call he probably could have avoided the disingenuous reply that he is somehow running independently on the merits of nothing but his own record. Fact check: not only did Mayor Dean endorse and campaign for CM Maynard, but he raised funds for the Maynard campaign. The at-Large CM sounded too full of bravado for someone so utterly dependent on coattails.

And why shouldn't the Mayor go all in to help him? If you listen to the interview before and after this particular exchange, you will hear Jerry Maynard wrap himself up in Karl Dean's coattails by pimping the Mayor's pet projects: construction of the Music City Center, the unpopular plan to put a health care center in a mall, the scheme to redevelop the Fairgrounds, a ballpark at Sulphur Dell. So, the fact is that Jerry Maynard has rubber-stamped every single significant project this Mayor has proposed and enthusiastically campaigned on them. He never broke with or questioned the Mayor's Office when it could have mattered. To the contrary, I'm not sure he stood up to the Mayor as an opponent on anything at all. The projects he takes credit for independent of the Mayor are financial incentive offers and volunteer projects that the Mayor has never opposed. That is likely why he never denied the charge of rubber-stamping even though he tellingly protested too much about it.

Finally, it seems obvious that he wants to have it both ways on education. Jerry Maynard wants you to know that he is pumped about making sure that "education reform" (another Dean priority) continues from his position on the Metro Council, but his brightest idea is to organize volunteers to mentor and tutor. As noble a cause as that may be, he does not have to be a CM to do pursue that mission. While he would not have campaigned with the slogan, "I really have no influence over Metro public education," he had no qualms about trotting it out to use on his critics. CMs should not take strong stances on government issues that they really have no power over in the first place. Even influence over the funding mechanism for Metro Schools is mostly limited to an up-or-down vote on a budget proposal. So, for all of Jerry Maynard's talk of being there for schools, when push comes to shove he has to concede that CMs cannot do much more than talk about supporting education. So, how are the callers wrong?

This interview made clear that Jerry Maynard cannot take criticism of his ties to the Mayor's Office and turn off the juice long enough to focus on how he distinguishes himself from Mayor Dean. After a third critical call from Antioch came in later he accused his critics of being "Republican tea party folks" who are being prompted to call in. As if either Democrats or independent voters could not possibly be dissatisfied with CM Maynard's coziness to Karl Dean. Think again, Mr. Maynard.

HT: Genma Holmes

Gotto's stupid teabagger trick just barely nosed out the spoken inanities of a couple of progressives last night

There were some high-flying moments at last night's council meeting (like CM Mike Jameson quoting Christian political realist Reinhold Niebuhr during the opening prayer), but a couple of progressives' comments brought the meeting right back down to the lowest denominator. In my previous post on last night I underscored Jim Gotto's foot-in-mouth disease during discussion of honoring students for their "Don't Say Gay" protests.

But a couple of progressives did not exactly measure their words with respect to the truth before opening their mouths. First, in his speech to the council as a the shoo-in candidate for criminal court clerk, Howard Gentry said, as if it were a worthy goal:

I will run the office like a business.

If I'm not mistaken, this is the same logic that John Arriola used to run the county clerk's office and to run afoul of taxpayers. Arriola expressed an unfettered profit motive to bring money in. He marketed "gratuities" as "fees" (making people believe that they needed to pay for products and services they might not otherwise choose to pay for) and he monetized just about everything he did. He had stylish and hip new signs designed to lure more customers. He maximized and tricked out his ride to work. The profit motive runs business; the profit motive ran Arriola's tenure. In other words, Arriola was more CEO than clerk.

Shouldn't the officer of a Metro office be looking to run the office less like a business and more like an institution accountable for the public good? Gentry's comment was a clear pander to the business interests that dominate the Courthouse, but frankly the prospect is frightening.

The second inane progressive comment of the night came from Dean Teamer and outgoing CM Erik Cole, who contrasted Jim Gotto's self-reference of a Republican trying to hold a "corporate citizen" (assuming that corporations are individuals!) responsible, by trotting out this gem:

You now got a Democrat standing with developers!

Let's revisit CM Cole's recent past, shall we? He supported the Mayor's plan to build the most expensive capital project in Nashville's history, a developer's dream, the Music City Convention Center. He supported the Mayor's plan to sell off a huge tract of public Fairgrounds land to wealthy developers to make a lot of money on an office park. Even if Erik Cole ever stood against developers, those two projects alone bury any pretense of forward thinking opposition he ever expressed against untrammeled growth. But let's be clear: you do not get anywhere in the Davidson County Democratic Party without the habit of standing with developers. The most powerful and wealthiest Dems are in knee-deep with developers. For Cole to suggest otherwise is to concoct an urban myth. And it was pretty darn self-serving in what it implied about Erik Cole beyond its utterance.

I can always count on local progressives to give local conservatives a run for their money in the cringeworthy foot-in-mouth department.

Tennessee teachers' caucus "very contentious" on Obama endorsement

The Labor Notes blog mentioned the state's labor union contingent at a recent meeting of the National Education Association. Tennessee Education Association was reportedly more factious than they indicated on their website:

major controversies at the gathering in Chicago last month received national visibility. First was the early endorsement of President Obama’s re-election bid, advocated by the national leadership despite some resistance from several state affiliates, including the California Teachers Association.

Most of the debate occurred within the state caucuses, which was very contentious in some states, such as Tennessee ....

The context for the union’s debates is all too evident. Public education is the major battlefield not only over adequate funding for public services but also over the very ideology of government: How do we value government-run services and the workers and unions who provide them?

Teacher unions are portrayed as rigid and intransigent, attempting to protect members (often the most senior) who are “incompetent.” We are labeled as obstacles to “real reforms” that would help students and parents, many of them facing blatant economic and racial discrimination.

Rarely do we hear about how curriculum has been bastardized to conform to numbing standardized tests or about how charter schools are massively subsidized, taking public money while showing little accountability to the public and fighting teachers’ attempts to unionize.

Instead, the ills of public education are supposed to be solved by instituting divisive merit pay to reward “good teachers,” undermining seniority, and ousting “bad teachers.”

All this, while more and more working-class young people are pushed out of the education system and have their opportunities severely curtailed. At the center of these policies is the Obama administration and its Department of Education, using its “Race to the Top” funding mechanism to further this agenda.

Some of these themes that so concern labor are air-brushed into a Gates Foundation-funded marketing video, which includes comments from the TEA president, a gaggle of Tennessee Republicans and a few red-state Dems, and Francine Hunt, a leader with Stand for Children, which was one of the sponsors of this video.

Truth For A Change from TN Truth on Vimeo.

That is quite a production. We will see if the glossy, feel-good expectations materialize or whether "education reform" saps resources, maintains a firmly stratified caste system that allows only a few without wealth scant chance to succeed and eventually lowers the boom on the teachers it includes in it marketing campaign now. And campaign is the right word. This is a political campaign and the teachers unions should be concerned if not just a little unhinged.

Republicans and Democrats play political football with the Fairgrounds ballot

You knew this had to come. You cannot mobilize this many people to stop a Mayor's initiative dead in its tracks and leverage a referendum on the August ballot against that Mayor's wishes without a political party trying to co-opt the momentum for its own self-interests. This time it's the Davidson County Republicans, lead by CM Michael Craddock, trying to leech the momentum that the opponents of Dean redevelopment started.

Not only are the Republicans encouraging ratification of the Fairgrounds referendum, but they are using it as pretense to hawk council candidates friendlier to them than the CMs who robotically vote with Mayor Dean. It is a transparently cynical ploy that insults the intelligence of Nashville voters. Parties are parasites.

Tennessee Republicans don't even bother to couch the carnage behind fake jargon like "education reform"

At least with Republicans it's clear who the enemy is. They're the destroyer of worlds:

Tennessee teachers are losing their collective bargaining powers while corporations can now contribute directly to state and local political campaigns under two GOP bills signed into law Wednesday by Republican Gov. Bill Haslam ....

The Tennessee bill abolishes collective bargaining now conducted in 92 of 136 school districts .... It replaces traditional bargaining by affiliates of the Tennessee Education Association with a concept Republicans called “collaborative conferencing.”

Under the plan, school boards would be required to meet with teacher representatives approved by local educators. They could only strike limited agreements on some wage and benefit issues ....

But local school boards are under no obligation to agree to enter such agreements.

“The more we dig into the actual contents of this legislation, the less we like it,” said Jerry Winters, chief lobbyist for the Tennessee Education Association. “I think there’s more politics behind this than education reform.”

So, we rescue effective teachers from the execution-style politics of Republicans only to hand them over instead to the slow twisting-in-the-wind of Tennessee Democrats' "education reform"? Neither party is going to save good teachers or public education. But maybe the extremist TNGOP will hasten a more revolutionary organizing from the grassroots to beat back the partisan hooks.

Tennessee Chamber of Commerce: Wash, Rinse, Repeat

So, Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Haslam has now quite predictably signed the Republican bill that quite predictably kills Metro Nashville's ordinance that would require all of its contractors to include sexual orientation and gender identity in non-discrimination policies. With the ballyhooed "twitter campaign" supplicating the Governor for a veto and thanking corporations for their support, things were setting up as another Democratic Party fight with the GOP with businesses, company-by-company, walking away from responsibility for the mess.

Bennett is running as a red-state council member

So much for the idea that council members are nonpartisan candidates. Karen Bennett sent out invitations to a fundraiser sponsored by doctrinaire conservatives like Jim Gotto, Ron Ramsey, Jim Hodge, Robin Smith, and Lee Beaman.

Charter schools: emblematic of our zero-sum culture

A relevant exchange between father and daughter in last season's HBO series "Treme," set in post-Katrina New Orleans:

Sophia:      Where'm I gonna to go to school?
Creighton:  Tulane's working on something for faculty kids. Lusher.
Sophia:       Lusher's not a high school, Daddy.
Creighton:  They're adding high school.
Sophia:       Plus it's public.
Creighton:   Not anymore, it's charter.
Sophia:       Where are they going to put the high school?
Creighton:   They're taking over Fortier.
Sophia:       What about the Fortier kids? Where are they going to go?
Creighton:   Somewhere else, I guess.
Sophia:       That's not fair.
Creighton:   Probably not. That's where we're at now. You want to go to school in New Orleans? So this is how it works. It's a zero-sum world, honey. Somebody wins. Somebody loses.

Part of the reason why I am so appalled by Democrats' support of charter schools is that it is pompous, yet poorly disguised social Darwinism that helps a fraction of the children that require help. It's a zero-sum equation packaged and branded as an opportunity for a disadvantaged generation.

Yet, because of government subsidies, a lot of Democrats (let alone Republicans) stand to make a lot of money off the charter "movement," which exploits the desperation that many parent feel about public schools. I don't know which is more despicable: Republicans, who celebrate the zero-sum game, or Democrats, who participate in under the guise of helping a tiny sliver of the truly disadvantaged for the empty symbolism and the economic opportunities.

About Tennessee Republicans' attempt to micromanage Metro Nashville

An Enclave reader writes to express dissatisfaction with the failure of the press to draw out the hypocrisy of a Williamson County Republican's attempt to kill Metro Nashville's non-discrimination ordinance from the top-down in the General Assembly:

Did you know State Representative Glenn Cassada opposed the Metro anti-discrimination ordinance against GLBT and wants to overturn it?

Did you know Cassada doesn’t live in Davidson Co?

Did you know Cassada has worked for the Pharmacy giant Merck/Schering Plough in the animal health division of for the last 23 years?

Did you know Merck/Schering Plough has its own diversity program for both employees and suppliers (http://www.merck.com/about/how-we-operate/diversity/employee-diversity.html)

Did you know Merck/Schering Plough celebrates it number 9th position in the Top 10 companies for GLBT employees (http://www.merck.com/careers/life-at-merck/diversity-recruiting/home.html)

Did you know the company Cassada works for has its OWN supplier diversity definitions (http://www.merck.com/about/how-we-operate/diversity/definitions.html)?

If it is not bad enough that Tennessee Republicans look dishonest on this red-meat issue, the Out and About blog points out that they are on the same side of Tennessee history as the 1920s Knoxville Ku Klux Klan.