Be Part of the Crime Solution
The town-hall meeting that the local police union and the Jackson Free Press sponsored last week downtown was eye-opening and sobering. Audience members seemed genuinely flummoxed when they saw the PowerPoint slides of how few police officers are available in a given department at any one time. The numbers are grim—especially considering the naive ideas about crime-fighting pushed by local politicians and media.
[Sue Doh Nem] Refusing to Walk in the Shadow
Brotha Hustle: "Many of you know me as the cutting-edge, forward-thinking and constantly evolving Juicy Juice-selling entrepreneur. Many of you may also know I collaborate and coordinate other business opportunities with my computer-technology-inclined Aunt Tee Tee.
[Braden] Do You Care?
Young people in Jackson are grieving this week- but you didn't see the reason for their grief on the breaking news when we lost another student to violence. In fact, all news sources in Jackson reported different information, and they asked questions that they probably won't bother to follow up on for the answers. Young people know their day-to-day world doesn't make breaking news.
The Other Side
When I was at Neshoba Central back in the 1970s, I would get called to the office quite a bit. The students around me would look at each other, cutting their eyes from side to side. "What has she done now?" was the question hanging in the air. I was editor of our school newspaper (which was printed in the Neshoba Democrat), and one of my mentor/instigators was Ms. Oneida Hodges, who dressed all in black and encouraged me to sing my opinions at the tops of my non-conformist little lungs.
Kill Two Lakes, Enhance The River
A vote this week by the Rankin-Hinds Pearl Flood and Drainage Control District ("Levee Board") appeared to overturn its decision of last July to support a "Lower Lake" plan based, in part, on the Levee Board-sponsored charrette featuring noted architect and city planner Andres Duany and his company, DPZ. We feel that's unfortunate, and hope the Lower Lake plan, if viable and responsible, will still be considered in the future.
[Sue Doh Nem] Gripe, Moan and Complain
Grandma Pookie: "Welcome to the Gripe, Moan and Complain Weekly Business Report with Pookie Peterz. I'm Grandma Pookie sitting in for my very busy grandson. He's preparing taxes for financially challenged citizens, making them eligible for those long-awaited stimulus checks. Something is better than nothing.
[Kamikaze] Let the Chickens Roost
It appears that the chickens did indeed come home to roost. No, not in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright sense. Not even the Malcolm X sense. These "chickens" are a direct product of America's passive attitudes toward race relations. Its longstanding dismissal of the obvious problems between folks of different hues and different histories has now come back to bite it on its hind parts.
[Dickerson] Presidential Politics 101
A word of warning: If you don't want to know who's going to win the presidential election, don't read further.
The Rocky Race to the White House
Warning: If you're considering running for president, there are several pitfalls to expect, as we've learned over recent weeks.
snark >:-(
Given the chance to be the mainstream media authority during a primary with a shocking turnout, The Clarion-Ledger flubbed it, instead displaying how deep its culture of incompetence runs. On primary night, as networks called the election for Obama before any results came in, the Ledger's reporter-on-the-ground, Natalie Chandler, seemed clueless about what she was watching happen in living color.
Pandering for Cheap Votes
Senate Bill 2988, a bill making felons out of employed undocumented immigrants and their employers, is now law. Mississippi Building and Construction Trade President David Newell says the law will help prevent the displacement of working U.S. citizens, while associations that represent employers say a law like this is going to present one more hoop to jump through on the way to filling a thin work schedule.
[Sue Doh Nem] Price-Gouged Victims Unit
bu Sue Doh Nem
Mr. Announcement: "In a recessive economy, opportunists overwhelm financially challenged individuals on fixed incomes with inflated prices. As the price of gas and other necessities increases, poor folk commit desperate acts of retribution. Greed, desperation and retaliation are elements in the stories of the men and women of the Price Gouged Victims Unit."
[Mott] Pulling Hard for Our Future
Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Prize-winner from Kenya, planted seven trees in 1977 in honor of seven women environmentalists. Jailed and reviled for her own environmental activism, Maathai's seven trees became 40 million over the course of two decades, planted by village women in her honor. When she received the call about the Nobel Prize, her first reaction was: "I didn't know anyone was listening." Maathai's story demonstrates power. Her actions generated far-reaching results, even when they were mostly invisible to her.
Seize the Day
What a bizarre, crazy week. As we've been putting together this special Fly issue, dedicated to the madness that is the Mal's St. Paddy's Parade, not to mention lots of loud women running around with padded boobs and butts, we've also been covering the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. To boot, JFP folks have been interviewed by international media curious about what is really going on in Mississippi politically.
Barbour: Reset Museum Decision
This week, the commission appointed by Gov. Haley Barbour to choose a location for Mississippi's Civil Rights Museum voted 22-9 in support of its location committee's recommendation that the museum be located on property leased to the museum by Tougaloo College.
[Sue Doh Nem] A Black Dog Like Me
Mr. Announcement: "On this edition of 'Animals 'n' the 'Hood,' Poochie, the shiny, black, talking and literate dog, addresses a very sobering phenomenon called 'Black Dog Syndrome.'"
[Kamikaze] Rising Above the Muck
By the time you read this column, the cameras will be gone. The reporters will have packed up all their pens, pads and voice recorders, and moved on to Pennsylvania. All the ballots will be counted.
[Williamson] 100 Years of Waste
You flip a switch, and the light goes on. It's like magic. It is easy to forget how much impact electricity has, how it allows us to work at night, stay warm, send e-mail around the world and compute our debts. But generating electrical power has other effects. It is still one of the largest sources of air pollution, although—primarily due to emission controls—the levels of most air pollutants are dropping, according to the EPA.
Dating the Candyman
After exploring Beijing's Chaoyang district for much of the afternoon, my boyfriend JP and I escaped the heat of the July sun, ducking into a Starbucks. The three stories of the coffee shop were packed with foreign and Chinese businessmen, 20-somethings on their laptops, and friends gathered for a mid afternoon coffee break. After scanning the menu, we both ordered plain coffee and found a seat on the second level to check our e-mail accounts.
OurCity: Jackson Belongs to Everyone
Last issue, the Jackson Free Press told you about SafeCity's attempt to make parts of the city into what one JFP reader called on our Web site, "Baghdad by the Pearl." The "watchdog" group wanted to create some sort of bizarre, gerrymandered "green zone" situation that, essentially, would have allowed the Mississippi Highway Patrol and Hinds County District Attorney Robert Smith (who is also a state employee) to run our law enforcement.
[Sue Doh Nem] Foreclosure Folly
Mr. Announcement: "Welcome to the premiere television episode of 'The Finance Pimp Gets His Homes Back.' Our story takes place in a barren suburb of foreclosed homes. Predatory lending, sliding interest rates, the 'War on Terror' and a recessive economy over the past eight years have restructured the lifestyles of the working and middle classes who have returned to apartment living.
We're All Newcomers
Thank you for an excellent article on the challenges, myths and realities of illegal immigration ("Los Cuentos Chinos: Immigration Myths and Realities," Feb. 21, 2008).
[Dickerson] Shame on You, Hillary
The weekend after the Texas debate, I saw Hillary Clinton on television losing her cool over Barack Obama's criticism of her health-care plan. I don't think that I will ever recover from the image of her looking a bit like a crazed televangelist, as she scolded, "Shame on you, Barack Obama!"
'Yes, I Said Shoe Closet'
I can't tell you how many intense business meetings I've been in with a group of dynamic women, negotiating or planning this or that, and suddenly one of us pauses mid-sentence and proclaims, "Where did you get those shoes!?!"
Ask Us Before You Leap
It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Everywhere Jacksonians look, we discover that somebody is trying to slip something by usto benefit themselves in some way that ranges from completely absurd to annoyingly selfish.
[Sue Doh Nem] Caucus, Cabaret and Disco
Boneqweesha Jones: "Welcome to this special edition of 'Qweesha '08!' I'm honored to bring you this historic event and special report—live via rigged satellite—from inside the second-floor office of Big Roscoe, owner of Clubb Chicken Wing. Our balcony camera has a bird's-eye view of a serious political party going on at Clubb Chicken Wing. Correspondent TaaQweema Jenkins is on the scene. Let's cut in on the action to see what's happenin'."
[Kamikaze] Change Is Gonna Come
"Change" has become the buzzword for 2008. I never thought such a tiny word could be so powerful. It holds promise for some, and negativity for others. Ultimately, I've found that those who shun a message of change are usually the ones who will benefit least from it, regardless of its benefit to the greater good. They are the ones who are comfortable with the way things are.
[Gregory] Hello, City Lights
For the past two months I've sat on my new front porch overlooking part of downtown Jackson, and tried to quell the automatic self-doubt that arose in my gut every time I reminded myself that I left the veritable "safety" of Madison County for a town so blighted with rumors of crime that it inspired a bumper sticker espousing the only way to save it: "pray for it."
Pecos Bill and the Haunted State
I participated in my first political debate last night. I use the word "debate" loosely because it wasn't really a debate; it was, in fact, a polite exchange of sound bites, many of them false and a good number of them based on myths about immigration.
Civil Rights Museum Should Be Downtown
Last week, the location sub-committee of the National Civil Rights Museum Commission in Mississippi recommended Tougaloo College as the location of a proposed civil rights museum in Mississippi. While we recognize Tougaloo's extraordinary role in the fight for civil rights in Mississippi, and we proudly support efforts to immortalize the role of both the college and its students and teachers from that era, we submit that it would make more sense for the people of Mississippi that the museum be located in Downtown Jackson.