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Stop the City Council Game-Playing
Here we go again. When the Jackson Free Press started 10 years ago, the City Council members from Ward 1 (Ben Allen) and Ward 3 (Kenneth Stokes) were constantly at each other's throats. It wasn't an intellectual disagreement with occasional laughs; they made the city look like a laughing stock with their constant insults of each other.
Only the Best Will Do
I grew up thinking I lived in the worst state in the country. I wasn't alone: I was surrounded by people with a collective inferiority complex—especially the ones who protested the most about what other people think of us, and how it doesn't matter.
A Long, Long Road
"Donna, you know what? I run Jackson," declared Mayor Frank Melton, scrunching his face up into one of his trademark snickers that are cute and creepy at the same time. "I do it in a weird way, but I run Jackson."
Crossing Gallatin
So the JFP celebrated its fifth birthday a couple of weeks ago. I have long exercised the privilege of celebrating my birthweek and birthmonth, rather than just a flimsy day, so I'm not technically late with my thoughts on this milestone.
Endorsements, of a Fashion
The Jackson Free Press has a tradition of endorsing candidates in our election issues. And considering that we never, ever endorse based on who we think is going to win, our success rate is pretty good—well over 50 percent. Not bad for a progressive newspaper in the heart of Mississippi.
Come All Ye Faithful
In his column last week, The Clarion-Ledger's Sid Salter quoted the fifth chapter of Matthew to justify Gov. Haley Barbour diverting federal money away from low-income Katrina re-housing and into a port project instead. Yes, he said, Jesus cared about the poor, but "God allows people to suffer the havoc of disasters without regard to virtue or vice.
Of Barbour and the ‘Uptown Klan'
It seems Haley Barbour went too far this time. In an interview with the conservative Weekly Standard, he downplayed the terror and racial caste system of his town and our state during the Civil Rights Movement.
New Year, New Start
Recently, the Jackson Redevelopment Authority decided to stop and breathe rather than be bulldozed into making a decision without having all the information they needed for the proposed convention-center hotel. This past week, the organization's board went a step farther.
Hoodwinked! The U.S. Chamber Pulls a Fast One on Mississippi with 'Tort Reform'
It sounded mighty convincing: "Mississippi faces a crisis in medical malpractice insurance." The warnings by industry have been dire: "This is a wake-up call for Mississippi." The reports of doctors bolting the state have been breathless: "It's the harassment of dealing with meritless lawsuits." When the tort-reform hysteria blew up in 2001, Mississippi, it seemed, was finally on top of something: The state's "trial-lawyer cabal" was harnessing "runaway juries" willing to mete out "jackpot justice" and drive all our good doctors and job-producing businesses out of "lawsuit central" (the state).
Scary Burbs
<i>Urban Flight May Shorten Your Life</i>
Last spring, during the media frenzy over crime in the city, I interviewed a Brandon woman who had been the victim of an armed robbery in Jackson. She wasn't physically harmed, but she clearly had been terrified by her experience, and understandably so. But to hear her tell it, life in Jackson was a sheer every-day hell where you put your life on the line every second you spend in the city. And life in the suburbs, she seemed to think, was the most safe and healthy alternative to big city.
School Daze: Testing Madness
As I proctored a classroom full of seventh-graders taking the Grade Level Testing Program (GLTP) test last April in a suburban Jackson public school, I couldn't help but think that some of the children are going to be left behind. The students in this room, although mostly white, were very different from each other. Some were fidgety, others defied any suggestion of authority, one or two were geeky and smart-looking, several seemed more concerned with their appearance than anything else. They all had one thing in common: They seemed extremely nervous about taking the writing exam.
Tough Questions: Gov. Ronnie Musgrove
They said they'd give me 15 minutes. I took 23. In that minuscule amount of time—enough time for sound bites, but not as much substance as I'd like—I tried to pack in as much meat as possible about issues that matter in the state of Mississippi. I really wanted to focus on the No. 1 issue facing the state of Mississippi, the big kahuna that, as GOP opponent Mitch Tyner wisely pointed out at the Neshoba County Fair a week later, will pretty much solve all the other problems if we can get it right. In my interview with Musgrove, and at appearances I trailed him to over the next week to make up for the 23 minutes, I was impressed with the fact that he likes to talk education—even though he's not asked that many questions about it.
Our Boy Trent
Is Lott an anachronism, or does he represent a stereotypical, but true, Mississippi that still denies its racist past?
Chasing Amy
<b>Can Barbara Blackmon Make History?</b>
Read the full transcript of this interview on the JFP Politics Blog.
Dogging Youth
<i>Is Metrocenter Mall's New Policy Good for Business?</i>
When the four young women arrived at Metrocenter Mall Friday, Oct. 25, just after dark, they didn't expect to be carded at the door. Casually dressed in sweats and sneakers, Renata Davis, 20; Stacey Swana, 25; and Danielle Baldwin, 15; came with Andreal Davis, 18, to get her infant daughter's ears pierced. But when they reached the entrance next to Ruby Tuesday's, they met a white-shirted security guard in a big black hat and a member of mall management who asked for their IDs. The weekend before, Metrocenter had launched a new curfew, called the Family First Guardian Policy, that requires people 17 and under to be escorted by a parent or legal guardian from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights.
Idiot's Guide to Cocktails
Looking back over the last couple of decades, I've certainly enjoyed my serious journalistic life. But I must admit that some of my best times, my favorite memories, involved not just having fun, but helping other people have a good time—whether by hosting a fun party, deejaying at clubs, emceeing events or mixing drinks as a bartender. And I don't mean throwing together some vodka and tonic and a hunk of lime. I mean creating and serving delightful cocktails—heavenly and other-worldly concoctions that make your toes tingle and your tongue dance in delight: true golden margaritas; unpredictable martinis; saucy mojitos; and my all-time-favorite drink, the Brazilian caipirinha.
Harvey Talks Back: The 2003 JFP Interview with Mayor Johnson
Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. is having one hell of a year. On the one hand, the Vicksburg native has presided over a city for six years that seems to have shifted into high-gear renaissance mode, or certainly as high gear as re-development has been in this city since harmful out-migration to the suburban areas began decades ago. About everywhere you look in the city, it seems there is construction; dilapidated buildings are being razed; a city that has been left to decay for many years by other administrations seems set on re-inventing itself at a slow, if steady, pace. Yet, there is a dark side.
Radical Crime-Fighting: What is Community Policing?
Police Chief Robert Moore could be the only man in the city who knows what "community policing" really means—and just how hard it could be to implement in Jackson. Yet, he is a believer, talking about it constantly, telling media and residents that it's a different style of policing for Jackson, and one that can take some adjustment and time to implement. It's an integral part of his new five-point plan to fight crime here that he and the mayor announced to the City Council on April 22. Still, no one bites.
Dear Meadville: Thomas Moore Tries To Wake Up His Hometown
Photo of Mac Littleton by Kate Medley
On his July pilgrimage back to his native Mississippi, Thomas Moore got his hopes up. With the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and the Jackson Free Press documenting his effort, Moore went back to his native Franklin County, and over to Natchez, and up to Jackson and Neshoba County, to ask the good people of Mississippi to support his efforts to finally see justice for the murder of his brother, Charles Eddie Moore, and his friend, Henry Hezekiah Dee, by local white men on May 2, 1964.
Bold New Party?
<b>New Dem Head Wayne Dowdy on Faux Elephants and Young Voters
It's hard to get past Wayne Dowdy's name. Through no fault of his own, the new head of the Mississippi Democratic Party—a Millsaps grad, a grandfather and a U.S. congressman from 1981-1989—just sounds a bit like a fuddy-duddy. When I first heard his name surface as a possible replacement for Rickey Cole, I thought, "Hmmm, he sounds, well, dowdy." It's easy to think that a lawyer from Magnolia—way down by the Louisiana border, past the metropolis of McComb, off I-55 and through one red light and on the first corner with his name on the door—ain't exactly going to set off a firebomb in the BVDs of the state Democratic Party. After all, when you're on hold waiting to talk to his secretary, secretary, mind you, the hold music is twangy, old-style honky-tonk. Yes, honky-tonk. I might prefer Conway Twitty to Tim McGraw, but my interns probably don't know who the hell Conway Twitty is.