Meet Gerry

If anyone thinks that the current state of affairs with regards to Gerrymandering are related to singularly Republican governance, think again. In Jersey City a blue city in a largely blue County and State the current map was pressed through with little transparency and public input. It breaks apart an area that is largely an area with residents who are of color, largely Black and Hispanic, and is in the process of undergoing a massive gentrification due to its location near Liberty Park and the Downtown core of Jersey City, a once working class city now defined by high rises and even higher rents. The two office towers that once housed many white collar banking, finance and other high end businesses are now largely empty and a new redo of another lost out on an Amazon contract leaving it also now largely empty. So where the workers are is one issue and the other is who is living in these expensive towers with rents equivalent to Manhattan ones? You got me and that over 7,000 units are near completion I question if and when they will ever generate a needed occupancy rate to satisfy developers and investors. Well unless they are getting extensive tax incentives regardless so that is not an issue.

But where I used to live in Nashville, Tennessee along with Memphis are the outliers in the state where it is as deep as red as you can imagine. I had long said that most municipal governance was largely superficial as the State Legislature was always quick to override any independent laws or policies that either city would enact to meet the needs of their residents. And this with a State that has the lowest voting record in the country, 50th and with regards to registration 47th, it demonstrates how a minority already rule a majority. But it has not stopped them from enacting challenging voter laws that are strict with regards to voting itself (ID required), early voting and of course Absentee Voting. And then today they announced their new plans to divide Nashville, located in Davidson county into three distinct regions, literally moving some of it into other counties adjacent to Davidson. So in other words you are voting in another county and the irony is that defining the region by counties is the key to measuring one’s identity and status. Where you are “from” and “who” your people are matter a great deal in the South, much more than one would think. And this crosses both race and economic lines.

And with that the long term “Democratic” Rep. Jim Cooper has decided to not run for re-election. I put that in quotes as Representative Cooper was not a Democrat in conventional sense much like today’s Republicans who are not Trumpers. The survival rate and need for donations often put one in a special category and that is the key in Tennessee, again a deep red state in a deep red part of the country. His brother is the current Mayor of Nashville and with that provides another example of how the family dynasty issue also is one of import when it comes to the power brokers in that part of the world. And the exodus continues like this across the country in both parties as the redistricting that is happening is to address the changing dynamics of the country in regards to growth and of course isolate and segregate any possible block of votes that lean to the liberal side of politics. Again, not all minorities are lobbed into one group but when you look at the historical patterns of voting you can see how influential it is to Politicians when seeking votes and in turn developing legislation that could benefit said populace. God forbid we have a well turned out voting electorate that could place into office a decent individual willing to work for and in behalf of the community they serve.

And while I point to Nashville as the most egregious I cannot stress enough that here in Jersey City we largely had a very unchallenged Mayorial contest, he has in the City Council a group called “Team Fulop” who without recourse vote in line with whatever his long range ambitions and plans are. This a Mayor who has been largely absent in public of late, even during the election, and especially during Hurricane Ida that under normal circumstances would have been the death knell for any other politician. He is a total tool of Developers and has no sense of responsibility to any resident who is not of money and certainly of color. I cannot wait to move out of the city as no one should be paying the taxes, even secondarily as renters do through rent increases, for the idiocy of this man’s ambition. And I felt that way in Nashville and have never been happier that I left. I have no problem with New Jersey but I can keep this plan at least local-ish and remain in the area.

So read this article in the Guardian about the Gerrymandering in Nashville and the reality is that this is a prototype for anyone who is State Leadership to do regardless of what color the politics lay.

Bombs Away

Yesterday when I heard a bomb had exploded in downtown Nashville my first thought was, shocking, no, not really. Again I have no love loss for the area; however, I do not wish anyone to blow up the town the Tornados can take care of that, the Cumberland flooded a decade ago and it can do an equally great jo, in that Mother Nature, the Lord, in a way that the residents of the region accept as truths, versus those of science. And that Tennessee is number one in daily pos Covid cases fits that as they have never seen a number one list that they can refuse to mention. The Religious crackpot Plumber/Governor who has eschewed mask regulations continues to do so despite his own wife contracting Covid. The idiot former Beauty Queen Senator Blackburn continues to issue droplets of idiocy as we wind down the year and the end of Trump, so a bomb in the middle of its city where the driver of the largest portion of their economy is just another anal wart in a city reeling from the pandemic. Again, I have nothing good to say about anyone there, well maybe a few, but this is not something I understand in the least.

My first thought was Timothy McVeigh and then I realized it was in a commercial area off the main strip but still an essential street as all streets in Nashville that run along the city are one way, and 2nd is a street I know well. I patronized many of the businesses along that area, and few actual residents do, but Mike’s Ice Cream and Rocket Fizz Candy are mainstays. The Hooters seen in pictures is where I often disembarked my bus and walked up Commerce street to get a coffee on the way to the Y. I liked 2nd as it was in fact “less touristy” but that entire areas is well known as a high crime area and the problems faced my many workers and businesses was an issue that dominated discussions I had with them after witnessing a robbery in a liquor store one day, being the victim of endless petty crimes (as I lived on 4th Ave S) and being aware of the many sexual assaults that were the result of one too many cheap beers provided at the honky tonks just below the bombing area. The symphony hall, the more elegant hotels, and restaurants that align the area are untouched. So this particular location I find is less McVeigh and more Ceasar Sayoc, another misguided Trump idiot who decided to load a van with explosives that he was busy distributing to perceived enemies of Trump,, but was thankfully caught before he managed to do serious harm. And this bomber wanted to eliminate casualties, while still doing damage, with an announcement to vacate the area. So there was a point or message and then in my Nancy Drew way I found this: The Nashville Fire Department Fire Marshal was fired Tuesday for reasons including performance and insubordination, the department’s top officer said.

And while this is a coincidence I have found that many firefighters are often arsonists and while again this is not an accusation I do find it well “odd.” And again Nashville is hardly a liberal bastion despite belief otherwise, this is still MAGA country with most of the visitors very proud members of that cult and have no issue with a place that accepts if not values their beliefs – in God, Trump and Guns. Nowhere did I live embrace such hypocrisy and idiocy like Nashville and use religion as their mask to cover their true faces. And while I have little good to say I question what the purpose of catastrophic damage to things and people (including their homes, businesses and livelihoods) do to validate your hate. It is sort of like how we are in hysterics over children and distant learning, with numerous articles declaring that this was the Lost Generation. Sure a year ago we were in arms over childhood bullying, trying to adapt to teaching social emotional learning in curricula and worried about kids wandering in schools with guns to commit violence. Teen Violence was actually studied by WHO in between Covid studies. Remember those days, as in about 365 days ago?

Anger and rejection prompted many of the mass shootings and we have had some shooting reports of late, in two cities at malls, and one was what? A Teenager. These stories immediately hit the new, but as it is not the topic du jour, as it is not Covid, not a vaccine nor a weather problem, crickets. Again teen violence folks. Or how about Police Violence, we had a shooting by Police of a black man in Ohio just this week. Or this man also in Ohio just a week prior. That George Floyd thing is still a thing right?

The issue is about violence and the inability of lawmakers to ever fully resolve the issues over guns. So we take the streets to somehow resolve conflicts with a vigilante justice. Then when a family member is on drugs or has a mental health breakdown we seem to think that the same folks who shoot first ask no questions ever will be the one to resolve the issue. Areyoufuckingkiddingme?

So why Nashville and why announce the bomb if you wanted to do real damage. You clearly don’t but you want attention and man we are attention seeking nation. While I lived in Nashville I used to say to the people I knew, “Misery loves company and boy are you people miserable.” That type of grievance seeking and endless wallowing in self pity was a common trait and it is more infectious than Covid. The endless parade of having versus have not is very evident in Nashville, the city is literally ringed by public housing forcing those residents to look through the glass of how a city is being built without their inclusion. It is a city divided by money first then race and they use religion as some type of bridge to accommodate or allow the misconception that they are not racist. No they are however, classist and they care about one color, the one of money, green.

Again I go back to my many conversations with workers that are in the shops that align 2nd or nearby and how then in February of this year how they hated living there, they had moved with the belief they would find a good job, only to be paid barely a minimum wage, the cost of living out of reach and that the tourist trade, the bridezillas were horrible. They, as I felt, we were hostages, only I just paid my ransom to get out. The violence by the kids in Nashville was rage, the endless petty crime and vandalism also rage but this crime is not from them. This is from someone with access and availability to acquire the tools needed to build the mobile bomb and in turn construct it. This is not someone who is a poor fragmented isolated member of the poor community, but it is someone with rage. I saw a lot of that there and I too had a lot. I just left and not a day goes by I am grateful I was able to.

So now the kids and owners of already struggling businesses will have to add to the list recovering from tornado, covid and bomb to an already bursting at the seam one. And the carpetbaggers will arrive to I am sure take that burden and that list from their hands. That is what they do, they sweep it all under their carpets and later cut them up to make bags to carry the money away with. That is Nashville, a pipe bombers dream.

**ETA***Since I wrote and posted this it appears that in under 24 hours the case has been “sort of kind of solved”. Maybe in a Richard Jewell way or not but the suspect is a white. man 63 who is assumed the bomber which was a suicide mission or again not with issues over 5G. Gosh again, I knew it was not a social or political thing given the odd choice/location in front of an AT&T data center. The headquarter building a block away, designated the Batman building would have been the target for a bigger statement but this was not that. A few blocks north are all the federal and state buildings so again not political and the busy strip of Broadway just a few blocks behind and that is the money maker so no, not economics. It was, however, another example of how fucked up Nashville is. What I find interesting is how quick they found a suspect in the southern “burb” of Antioch, which is surrounded by poor families largely those of color. Again where a Church was located and shot up by a nutfuck and the home of the Waffle House where a lunatic shot and killed several patrons in a some attempt to prove his manhood over Taylor Swift. Two cases I forgot about despite the high profiles and the 23 hour manhunt that dominated the news over the Waffle House killer and the hero who stopped the shooting. Another individual whom has largely disappeared from the limelight after being center stage for the months that followed that incident. Nashville has so many “incidents” it is exhausting to keep up. Sadly the Governor Plumber will not get his wish to declare it a national emergency and have to forgo federal dollars to fix the small business decimated along 2nd Avenue. This is another hypocrisy by the red states, the eschewing of Government intervention and legislation but when it comes to money its hands out. A perpetual state of agita that I saw again and again there. Even the headlines in the paper discuss the PPP money given to the state, the disaster relief money and of course the next anticipated stimulus package and who and how much they will get. They get it alright. But if they don’t it doesn’t really matter as the checks and cash will flow as that may be prime real estate and Carpetbaggers never saw a disaster that they did not like. So wait for new shiny things to replace them and make Nashville “it” again. Well until the next incident.

School Ya

When I opened my New York Times this morning and saw this front page article I nearly peed myself. A state of which I am becoming familiar with age and any time I see the word Education and Tennessee paired together.

I have made no secret about the State or its’ state of the schools here in Nashville, abominable is the first word that is clean comes to mind. I know of the Tennessee Promise program and Drive to 55 to push education rates up from the decades old 33%. I have also said that it will be a generation before we will ever see the state’s population to embrace higher education as with it means an entire change in one’s philosophy and belief system. It could lead to higher order thinking skills and critical analysis that would in turn lead a state to be governed and run by the actual 70% who are open minded toward change and all that “liberal” stuff versus the current 30% (no irony that is the equivalent of the educated populace) who override any progressive laws or ideas in which to improve the quality of life for the residents of the State.

And again in Tennessee all things are about the County in which one lives and the “richest” county in Tennessee is finding funding difficult to expand their schools. And given the way schools are funded throughout the United States the convoluted equation often means the richest gets the least as they have alternative funding sources – The PTSA. In the Seattle area the richest suburb was Bellevue and it has acclaimed schools with wealthy parents happy to fund raise and support public education. While in Seattle, a growing city and increasingly more expensive one, struggles. And its schools, like Nashville, are largely poorer student composition, more Immigrants, Special Needs which changes the funding equation into a higher order Physics level one but in turn does little to actually serve all the children equally. It is just not possible.

And in the tale of two cities I see here the higher order kids get a superior break as the schools are highly segregated, challenging to get into but highly public. And then the private schools for the wealthy just like Seattle have the choice a check away. Different but not necessarily better just different and more expensive. And their path is clearly marked which for public school kids that is one rough pot holed road.

Or how about a return to the Little House and the Prairie Days with the one room school house. As this one in New Jersey is. Clearly Chris Christies lambasting Teachers has more importance than ensuring schools have adequate resources in which to function.  Again, this is across the country but some are more egregious than others.  No wonder tubs wanted a job in the Trump Administration it could not be worse.  Well the Trump Administration makes Bridgegate seem lame in comparison.

The Promise is an amazing program and ironically quite liberal sort of like Rommneycare that evolved into Obamacare but who cares right? The idea that it matters who thought of it and who in turn implements it seems to be the real reason many great programs fall to the wayside. So while I feel positive that encouraging kids to go to College even for two years and being open to the idea that learning is a lifetime adventure in which can carry on through adulthood as the Promise has expanded to include that as well, I want to point out that the early numbers of this program once again reflect the racial diaspora that dominates.

Current stats are at best showing that it serves white kids great, Hispanic and black not so much. We don’t have data on the kids who are not brown and Spanish speaking as despite the reality is we have the largest population of Kurdish refugees in the country we also don’t have the Pacific Islanders and Native Americans that can change that data. And thankfully the Asian population are as invisible as ever and of course believed to do well as that is “their” culture. Again, any time you add a pronoun or article before the noun, you have a problem.

I was at my Tailor this week and she was sharing me a story about her twin grand kids whom she raised until this last year when her daughter, their mother, decided to become active in their lives again. They moved in with her and transferred schools. The boy wanted to have a girlfriend and both mother and grandmother said fine but he needed to work to pay for said girlfriend so he got a restaurant job at Oprymills, the large retail mall. He was able to have flexible hours but also decided that the money was better so he dropped out. His sister who was going to College and looking at many schools including UT at Knoxville, the religious diploma mill (pure speculation on my part) Trevecca and Cumberland with plans to be a Teacher. They all want to be a Teacher as right now the State is also massively advertising that profession everywhere. It also explains the schools and the quality or lack thereof of Teaching that I have encountered. However, in true fashion her graduation nearly did not occur as she neglected to do the final papers in her English class. As a result of this it was down to the wire to pass the class and get her diploma. Her explanation was that she was busy with her extra curriculars and did not have time. And when I pressed Grandma on the grades she was a solid D student up until that point. I have no words, other than “When will my pants be ready?”

I have said this over and over, Toto we ain’t in the North anymore! But the push towards Education is one that begins at Pre-K and even those numbers aren’t great but again this starts a family on track to see growth, potential and from that opportunity. No education will not cure poverty but people can and by being educated they may actually become active in ways to rectify that situation. The best way is via voting, finding candidates to run who are advocates not shills for corporations. You need critical thinking skills and optimism for that to happen.

I am not sure what the end result of this Promise will be but to think that Tennessee will end up with 55% of its population educated by 2025 is lofty and again not sufficient enough time frankly as this will take a cycle of a generation in which to value the concept.  As this is the South and the anger, resentment and resistance to change runs deep here in the red sea.  They not only revere the past they live in it.

Kan U Reed This?

I have been hard on my new home town and state with good reason – the people here are not only ill educated, they are illiterate.

Yesterday, I met another transplant who was from Massachusetts, the number one in education in the country and he has lived here 3 weeks and questions that decision every day.  I am from number 5 in the country, Washington and have lived here 6 months and know that while I made this decision facts in hand, I am ashamed of what I see and the kind of person I have had to become to cope.  His sell by date is 3 years and mine is 4 but I have the medical issues that are my primary concern and that will take time.

His first question was when I told him why I was here, he goes are you sure?  My response: They are not from here.  That is my marker to determine how soon I will likely hate you.  And by “here” I mean anyone from Tennessee,  I am generous with anyone from other Southern states as I don’t have the energy or desire to cast that wide of a net.  And irony that many of them are the nicest kindest people who are curious or at least seem so when I talk to them.  I cannot say that about the native Tennessean.

One of the things we spoke about was the idiocy rate.  He heard that 1 out of 11 are illiterate. And that about 25% were functionally illiterate.  I confirmed that and shared my experience in the public schools here that fairly confirm the reality that only 25-30% of Nashville residents possess post secondary degrees in a town littered with Universities and Colleges while the State itself has equal percent of residents with such. 

And in turn it explains the low wages, the lack of services and infrastructure as without a strong tax base that wages provide, the reliance on fees, fine and sales tax to fund a municipality let alone a State makes that a challenge.  And again this is a red state and they cannot even manage to pass a gas tax without it becoming a partisan roadblock.  A tax that has not been raised in over a decade and roads that are now chock full of cars and vehicles due to the growth they so proudly proclaim in every newscast.  Eventually you need to fix shit and this State refuses to do anything that would actually force employers to raise wages and in turn examine public transport that could offset this personal expenditure.

Public transport is associated with poor people and poor people are usually of color and that is why bus transportation is largely demeaned and ignored.  I have had my white hairdresser claim she would get lost on a bus while my black neighbor said she would never ride a bus as in Los Angeles (where she lived for a hot minute she is actually from here) they were horrible.  Yes comparing Los Angeles to Nashville is an equivalent measure.  I said she was from here right?

The lack of education is truly a problem and the State wants to fix it but given their history it means nope, it will be half assed and half done.

To understand how essential literacy is this site explains this in detail

And the State of Tennessee is quite aware of it:

It’s something many of us take for granted. Reading. But thousands of adults in Memphis and throughout Tennessee struggle to understand the words around them.

“They can’t read a newspaper headline, they can’t fill out a job application, they can’t read the labels on their medications,” says Wilson McCloy of the Memphis Literacy Council. “They just have a lot of trouble and they have other people do things for them when it comes to reading something.”

21% of the adult population in Tennessee is at a level one literacy rate. According to the National Institute for Literacy, adults who read at Level 1 can not pick out an intersection on a map, locate two pieces of information in an article or fill out an application.

“Around 130,000 people are not functionally literate in this community,” says McCloy. He says knowing how to read is a powerful and important thing in any community, “to encourage literacy and to learn how to read gives people that power back to take care of themselves and learn about whey they want to learn about.”

 In Davidson County where Nashville is located has approximately a 12% illiteracy rate.  And for the record we have about 26% of our population that is African American.    According to the Chamber of Commerce, one in eight Nashville residents over the age of 16 cannot read.

Am I making a strong parallel?  Yes and again this is class based as the amount of private schools enable most of the white residents to send their children there.  And while they may not be stellar in comparison they are likely to at least read – functionally.

And this does not account for the immense growth in a population here that are foreign born and that too is leading to further problems functioning and assimilating into the culture.
   

Add to this increasing resentment towards these people that crosses races and incomes you have a problem that affects the community overall. And you are seeing this on the National stage as well. I have said this is about money first and race/ethnicity second. Religion plays into when that stage as in the Preacher uses it to espouse values that again reflect a bias or belief that is often in contradiction rather than continuity to the greater value that the dogma itself says.

Money is the racial barrier to equality and in turn those who have it do not want to part with it. I get it, I really do. But it comes a point that we are not seeing the forest for the trees. When the economy was at its worst, post Vietnam, post civil rights, equal rights issues that were about women and gays were rising, we also had a rising crime rate. It opened the door to what became the prison nation. I fear we are there again.

I see immense crime here in Nashville, of course only the stabbing/robbery of a 23 year old blonde Nurse made the national news but the petty crimes, bank robberies and random violence almost all in housing projects provides fuel the fire that is burning down the house – the White House. And yes it is almost all exclusively in poor and minority communities but the murder in the white home gets the attention again it shows we are not communicating or even remotely understanding the long range problems that exist in said communities and how to repair them.

Instead of looking into history with dark colored lenses look to history for programs that brought work and in turn served America’s best interests. The very state in which I live, Tennessee, during the depression devised the Tennessee Valley Authority that brought much of the infrastructure that still stands today, although in need of repair. The WPA or Works Project Administration was another, The CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps which built and maintained our many parks and other agencies that still stand today, including Social Security.

When I heard the Education Secretary’s new gaffe about how historical black colleges were examples of choice in Education, I immediately thought: Yep you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. I suspect almost all of Ms. DeVos education was secular which may explain one or two things about her views, nor clearly does it make her smart. You can have a degree but intelligence is not attached to the diploma.

Expensive private schools litter the roads here so if they were serving the community our literacy rate, our graduation and college rates would be higher. They would to some extent artificially inflate the rate of Nashville’s stats. If in fact 40% of the children here do attend private schools that is enough to push it up a notch and clearly they too are questionable in their achievement.

But in reality there are not that many and right now Nashville Public Schools are over 85,000 enrolled and of that number 75% live in poverty. So how do you manage to overcome life challenges in a 7.5 hour day? You can’t.