It’s common in a dysfunctional family for people to gang up on the family member who wants to make things better.
That’s probably how the Metro Charter Commission and Rebuild Government feel these days. In return for suggesting there is a way for our community family to pull and work together, they have been vilified, derided and lied about.
It’s been the political version of whack-a-mole. Every time the latest untruth was corrected, two more would pop up. Because it was next to impossible to correct them all, Charter Commission members leaned how difficult it was to debate the facts because they were on the wrong side of an avalanche of made-up “facts.”
So many people are comfortable in the dysfunction and fight to keep it.
Fear of Facts
There’s the David Pickler approach that says that if someone can just keep making up enough numbers, it’ll sound like the truth. So he says over and over that the charter’s single source funding (mandated by state law) will result in a $115 million tax increase: $80 million or so to meet the city’s current funding for Memphis City Schools and $35 million or so for Shelby County School’s ADA portion.
It’s just so much fuzzy math. The $80 million or so is already being paid by Memphians and it would simply be moved to the general services district. The other $35 million would go to Shelby County Schools. In other words, Mr. Pickler is in the end opposing more funding for his own district after years of saying it needed more money.
Meanwhile, inside Memphis, Al Sharpton parachutes into a local issue once again despite nothing more than a superficial knowledge about his topic. He largely repeated National Action Network’s Greg Grant’s talking points and it was essentially a mistake a minute speech. Strangely, Rev. Sharpton was supposedly speaking on behalf of AFSCME, but someone must have forgotten to tell him that AFSCME ‘s suggestion to the charter was included by the Charter Commission.
The old war horse from New York also beat the drum about diluting the black vote although he’s defending a city government whose Council now under-represents African-Americans and it’s a red herring anyway: African-Americans are the majority in population and voter registration, and its voting strength is destined to get stronger in the next decade. Most of all, if consolidation is so bad, why isn’t Rev. Sharpton fighting to get rid of it in his hometown? We bet he didn’t even know it was consolidated.
Off Track
But playing the victim is an essential part of our dysfunction and conflict feels familiar even if it’s self-destructive. Like the family that fights to maintain the dysfunction, the only thing that brings many of these people together is the idea that they want to stay apart.
So, while Nashville competes with Charlotte to be the South’s #2 city, we’re happy to compete with each other. At a time when we are falling farther and farther behind in jobs, income and talent, we are mortgaging the future by fighting to keep a past because it ensures our dysfunction.
Some people suggest that things aren’t really that bad. It’s a delusion that comes from Memphis and Shelby County being largely off the grid when it comes to national discussions about great cities and the ambitious innovations they’re pursuing to catapult ahead in today’s complex, highly competitive economy.
As long as the dysfunction leads us to believe that Memphis and its suburbs can succeed while the other fails, we are seriously in trouble. As long as the dysfunction leads us to believe that our community can frequent the bottom rungs of key indicators that matter when it comes to a city’s success, we’re asking for disaster. As long as the dysfunction that feeds an attitude of scarcity that leads to a “if you’re winning, I must be losing” approach to civic issues, we are all losing.
It Feels So Normal
A psychiatrist friend was talking to us about dysfunctional families and the difficulty that members have in breaking away from the abusiveness and antagonism that are their constant companions. Ironically, in the midst of a destructive relationship, members fear – and fight – any change to things.
The problems are twofold: one, the family members think all families are like theirs, and two, the dysfunction becomes familiar and comfortable, albeit it hostile and painful.
In this environment, communications is raw and attacks are common, and communications has been used as a weapon so long that family members can no longer interpret each other dispassionately or react proportionally. Instead, every one is forced to take sides in every disagreement, escalating every issue into a controversy that bursts the family at its seams.
As he talked, we forgot for a moment that he was describing dysfunctional families. We thought he was describing Memphis.
Change We Can Believe In
But we didn’t tell him. Instead, we asked: What does someone do to change things?
He said that it’s not easy or quick. The people who use the dysfunction to have power resist change the most. They immediately feel threatened and set up roadblocks and obstacles. If people are serious about changing things, he said, there are several things they have to do:
1) They have to realize that one person’s not in charge of another person’s life;
2) They have to quit fighting old battles, because there are no winners, because every one loses;
3) They have to identify what they want to happen and then change their behavior to make it happen; and
4) They simply have to refuse to respond to the dysfunction or engage in the old combative ways of communicating.
Positive Attention
Maybe, before it’s over, we could actually attract national attention for a change for our ability to transcend our differences and abandon the bomb-throwing behavior that attracts national attention. It’s much more than simple decency (although that would be reason enough). Rather, it’s an economic necessity.
In a world of multitudinous ethnic groups, an assortment of religions, different sexual orientations and collections of cultures, a city that can’t respect its own differences can never connect – or compete – in a world whose overwhelming characteristic is its diversity.
Or put another way, a city that is open, inclusive and tolerant has the best chance of competing for the kinds of jobs – and workers – that matter most in a knowledge-based economy.
The (whole) Shelby County is divided. Consolidation is the true system that can create unity in this community. If consolidation fails I believe its the nail in the coffin for Memphis. I also believe I-269 is going to hollow out the city even more. Economically Memphis is not growing. The suburbs think they are growing, but in reality its nothing more than retail shops and housing development. The Memphis metro area is not experiencing any real population growth either. Most of the population growth is Memphians moving to the suburbs not outside talent choosing to relocate here. Memphis is so divided I’m starting to believe that its a ship that can’t be turned around in the foreseeable future. Any ideas or solutions??
First of all, I agree with your article and am a supporter of consolidation. I have voted for it already and I have convinced several to as well.
Every opponent I have talked to cites their own personal interest in opposing consolidation, ignoring the overall benefits to the community.
With that said, I fault the supporters with political naivety and an amatuerism campaign to get it approved. They apparently imagined that logical arguments would work and all of the hardball opponents would either come to their side or shrink in the face of overwhelming support.
I heard African American supporters speak with opponents. They were, to be blunt, boring. The opponents spoke like it was a revival meeting, whipping the crowd into a frenzy.
It will likely fail but if the courts rule that the overall majority of County voters can pass consolidation, not a majority each in the city and county, then we should try again with another document that gives more attention to the inner city, have opponents of the present plan on the commission to revise it, and enlisted true movers and shakers to promote it, not just a few MUS grads who live in River Oaks.
After months of hearing opponents called racists, stupid and ill informed on this blog and elsewhere, its rich to now read complaints about the tone of the debate on the other side. Why is it that the losers of a fight always blame the winners instead of really considering what they could have done differently?
I, too, voted for consolidation in the end despite real reservations about it. But there can really be no doubt that the effort to pass it has been amateur hour, and not because the pros failed to realize how nasty and evil the cons would be. The opposition arguments should have come as a surprise to no one, yet there was no attempt to meaningful attack those arguments or preempt them at the outset. Selfish or not, many voters will tend to consider issues like this by considering at least to some degreee how it might impact them. The need for consolidation wasnt properly explained before the process began, the benefits weren’t explained when the charter was written, and the hot shot backers didn’t come out until it was way too late and did nothing really to help move the needle. That they could write a charter and start the process to get it voted on without making darn sure, or at least checking to see, that the Democratic party and the african american community would back it is shocking.
Something like this will pass maybe when there is a county wide conversation about the real pros and cons of doing this and real input from the citizens on what the charter will look like with the goal of coming up with something everyone could live with. This wasn’t a converation, this was a lecture.
You can’t confirm support for something that did not exist at the time.
The Save Shelby Now group was formed before the proposed charter had even been laid out- they had decided to oppose the charter regardless of the form it took even while the commission was collecting information to inform the process. At some point the reaction goes beyond anything participation, information and consideration can be called upon to address. We are talking about deeply rooted stances that are not open to considering differing viewpoints.
You can’t poll a proposal? That’s news, because its done all the time. How many polls were taken to determine if the public wanted health care reform before they started in with health care reform? Not too hard to commission a poll that asks are your for it, why not, what would change your mind. The Mayor’s “listening tour” notwithstanding, there was never any real groundswell for this, as evidenced by the reaction of the democrats
Uh, Save Shelby has about $46 bucks in the bank. I really don’t think they were a driving force behind the opposition. People won’t vote for something, particular a change, unless you give them a good reason to. The proponents never did. And if you knew going in that there were entrenched viewpoints, which may or may not be the case, wouldn’t you think that some great effort should have been expended to change those views? And Rebuild Government, fronted by some guy most voters have never seen or heard of, didn’t really try. They just assumed that that the great wisdom of their views would wash over the idiots in the burbs, and when that didn’t happen, they stopped trying and started blaming.
Anonymous: I think you’ve proven the point of this blog post. Thanks.
You are correct, proposals are polled all the time. However, no proposal for consolidation existed before the commission made the final draft document available for the public to view. How do you intend to poll a proposal that did not exist? What you are talking about is polling the concept of consolidation. The fact is that all consolidations are not the same and the charter could have proposed any number of organizations and methods of merging the existing governments. Instead, the charter commission had the audacity to wait until they actually had something to present before anyone really tried in earnest to convince the public to support the idea.
I’m not sure why the financial resources of Save Shelby were introduced as evidence. The point was that there were groups that did receive both press time and community support that stated their opposition to consolidation before any proposal for consolidation had been made. When you have an opinion about something that does not exist, that is an entrenched viewpoint. When you are opposed to something before you can give specific reasons why you are opposed to it (“it” has to be defined first), that is evidence of an entrenched viewpoint. When individuals ignore facts and information and resort to questions and opposition not based on what was presented, but on what they think they know about consolidation, it becomes extremely difficult to make your case.
Anonymous:
If someone – not everybody – is a racist, stupid and ill-informed, what should you call them. We’ve not been surprised by the opposition’s arguments, because we didn’t expect much better from the folks who hang on the present dysfunction for the personal and political gain. We also never underestimated the ability of the suburbs’ far right politicians to just plain lie.
Before the process began, there were six months of meetings led by Mayor Wharton, then there were nine months or so of the public meetings in which the Charter Commission heard from the public and discussed the provisions of the charter, and then there were four months or so of the campaign to get it passed. We’re unclear where the public was when all of this was taking place, because many of their proposals – from AFSCME to the town mayors – were incorporated into the final charter.
We can’t imagine that any poll taken in the past year showed that it fails in Memphis, but the usual suspects who benefit from the way things are now continue to obfuscate and mislead. We’re sure the proponents feel like they are on the wrong side of an avalanche because it’s impossible to correct every mistatement, misunderstanding, or outright lie.
Just because you weren’t part of the conversation, don’t assume there wasn’t one.
I wasn’t part of the conversation true. But I keep myself reasonably informed of the goings on out there in the real world. And if there was a conversation that included, for example, the african american community, it wasn’t much of a conversation. Because they sure seem to be against it.
Look, you can jump on me all you want. I voted for the thing. And if you did too, and if you wanted to succeed, seems to me we might want to look at how this thing became such a failure, so that next time a differnt tact could be taken. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t raised to believe that when I fail, the thing to do is to blame the other side for the failure and to refuse to look at yourself in the mirror and figure out what could have been done differently.
And those racists and idiots you refer to? The way to defeat them is not to call them that and be done with it, its to out argue them. The pro side apparently didn’t do that. But if your view is that the county is so full of racists and idiots that this can never pass, what are we doing?
To the point of our posts, the people who benefit from the dysfunction are the most animated against it. We think African-American voters will see through it. But we’ll see Tuesday.
We’re writing a blog and making observations. If it fails, we’re sure we’ll make some more about what to do next. That’s what we’ve been doing for more than 5 years, and we’re pleased to say that many of our suggestions have been adopted by city and county governments.
We’ll keep plugging away, but to pretend like racism is not a serious influence in this campaign is to deny the sun coming up in the morning. We need to call it out whenever we see, whether it costs us friends or elections. We’ve never said the county is full of racists, but they do elect a fair number of them. 🙂
We heard the other day that the pro side in this campaign has appeared at more than 300 places, engaged in more than 30 debates on TV and radio, etc. We don’t think their problem is to present the facts and outargue the opponents.
We think people’s vested interests – as we have pointed out for more than 5 years – often are first and foremost when it comes time to set the civic agenda and really move Memphis ahead.
Hey in this town racism is a serious influence in just about every campaign unfortunately. But allz I am saying is, when the white suburbans thinks that this deal will result in the african americans running the show, and when the african americans think that this deal will result in the white suburbans running the show, someone didn’t do a very good sales job.
Are somebody did as good a sales job that they can do in the midst of such dysfunction?
Silly consolidation and their supporters. Your ideas lack substance, your arguments are anything but persuasive. Heck, the the latest poll indicates you will los in the city of memphis.
Advice, if you care about Memphis then try improving it. The only ideas you come upwith is to try to annex / consolidate the burbs. If that is your strategy then might spend your time consolidating with arkansas.
One more anonymous person of courage proving smart city is right. And you present the normal sophomoric silliness of opponents and manage to make a mistake with the facts.
Let’s check with the burbs in 10 years when they have blown away.
Fighting the good fight for the right cause is a lot better than your fight for failure. I bet you’ve never done anything to move this community. So I guess you are at least consistent.
Anon 6:10: You make us smile. We remember thinking with one of your previous comments that if Jesus Christ was on the commercial urging passage of consolidation, you’d think that he wasn’t being honest.
By the way, there is nothing about annexing the burbs. The charter actually prevents any annexation without the approval of the people in the area. You sound like a lot of opponents who don’t seem to know that consolidation is not annexation.
So, what’s your idea for turning our community around?
Yeah, that’s what we thought.
1) They have to realize that one person’s not in charge of another person’s life;
2) They have to quit fighting old battles, because there are no winners, because every one loses;
3) They have to identify what they want to happen and then change their behavior to make it happen; and
4) They simply have to refuse to respond to the dysfunction or engage in the old combative ways of communicating.
It’s good to see that SCM’s psychiatrist sees SCM in the same light I do. SCM, you’re not in charge. SCM, consolidation is an old battle — more than 40 years old to be more precise. SCM, you never changed your behavior throughout this entire consolidation debate; you kept calling your opponents names and hurling insults. SCM, you can’t resist engaging in online combat.
Sad, sad. But at least you have a good psychiatrist. Go see him/her more.
Your dysfunction is painfully showing.
This is not an old battle. What we’re doing now is the old battle – people fighting to keep the system that is taking us to the bottom. If you want to race to the bottom, you’re backing the right horse.
Generally, we reply in kind, but we’re not your therapist.
So, what’s your plan to change our downward spiral? Tell us the answer, the specifics. We need it badly. And soon.
Sorry, anonymous, but some of us don’t suffer fools gladly. And if truth is the absolute defense, I think SCM is innocent. These people are everything that the blog says they are.
If it has nothing to do with annexation. That is why the TN attourny general said if it passes the burbs will lose their annexation reserves.
FYI again to any supporters in non consolidated areas, the AT General of TN said if it passes you are owned by the memphis city council (paraphrased, check the CA for more detail)
“these people” may be everything SCM says they are. The question is whether calling them what you think they are is a winning political strategy. Name calling, even if accurate, is rarely a winning political strategy
Maybe dumping the city council is a good idea for a minute.
“1) They have to realize that one person’s not in charge of another person’s life;”
You have to elicit their acknowledgement of that as a fact. Looking at it like that changes the context of their knowledge and the appropriate steps to make it happen, which as your statement reads, is an impossible point to get to.
“2) They have to quit fighting old battles, because there are no winners, because every one loses;”
You have to have them see for themselves what their point of view and action/inaction is costing them and show them what benefit they are getting and let them do the weighing. The costs end up looking like their core values (to them) being betrayed by their own actions and the benefits are small ego boosts. In the long run the costs will kill them and the benefits will fade fast.They will develop the ability to see the ramifications of their choices like never before, whether they like it or not, and it will never go away.
“3) They have to identify what they want to happen and then change their behavior to make it happen;”
Funny, they already do that, except, if they had a hope of ever identifying what they really wanted to happen, they wouldn’t be choosing between two loser propositions all the time.
“4) They simply have to refuse to respond to the dysfunction or engage in the old combative ways of communicating.”
They just have to see that sometimes being “right” about something is the costliest position you can stake out, especially if you can get facts, known numbers and stats, and then don’t, but, still take a position.
If there’s one thing people of any merit in Memphis should know to the core of their being, it’s that there is no such thing as a “trusted resource of information” regarding big issues here, not even friends.
That is not a good situation, it doesn’t say anything good about Memphis, but, it’s a known condition. Not taking it into consideration before staking out a position is a big mistake.
Brian:
Lame.
So once again Anon 6:10 proves the point- that most of the public has little in the way of true knowledge concerning the issue. They apparently did not bother to even read the charter as it stands, or if they did, are not able to comprehend the written word as it is laid out before them.
Other anon- you suggest that instead of labeling the individuals for what they really are (Anon 6:10’s case a rube is a rube) we should argue their point. However, when these individuals are motivated by ethnic bias or they and their arguments are idiotic and uninformed, then how do you propose arguing with them without calling these ideas what they actually are? Can you argue with a member of the Klan without calling them out as ethnically biased? One never labels a question as idiotic, but many of these individuals are not asking questions- they are stating false ideas and notions as fact which only confuses the situation. They perform a disservice to their fellow citizens by preventing an honest period of informing and discussion. In a democracy such as ours, I believe that is one of the greatest disservices one can perform against our community, state and nation. It is subversive at best in that individuals such as Anon 6:10 either misinform those around them in either a malicious or imbecilic manner.
When someone babbles on comparing consolidation and annexation, their position should be called out very publicly as uninformed and ignorant of the issue. They should be embarrassed for not taking the time to read the charter and yet stating an opinion regarding its content. If they read it and cannot understand its meaning, they should not be stating such strong opinions on the matter. If they do so they should be made to feel ashamed. There is no such thing as a stupid question, but we are surrounded by fools with preconceived notions and ideas.
One more thing about name calling- who say’s it’s rarely a winning political strategy? To what election cycle have you been paying attention? The last time I checked, the republicans and democrats did not achieve victory at the polls by simply stating their platform and beliefs. No, they call out the faults of their opponents and place plenty of labels at their base. I think you need to reconsider your stance on politics and labels.
Anonymous: You apparently can’t tell the difference between a blog and a campaign. The blog can call out anybody it wants to, but it’s job isn’t about winning a campaign. It’s about provoking thought – although that seems impossible in your case.
TIME OUT!
HOLD IT!
you guys are getting mean.
Let’s see what the results are tomorrow, then carry forward a conversation about what will replace the City government after it collapses from the negative waves creeping from city hall.
Maybe they should fall back on the 1800’s. vote to dissolve the franchise and become a State ‘taxing district’ again.
Let Gnashville figger it out.
Seriously! Thanks IO. I suggest that name calling might not be the way to go about this and look at the reaction. Urbannut, yes you can argue with an idiot or a racist without calling them that. By actually attacking their ideas. For example, I would not respond to Frank by calling him an unimaginative jerk, which is clearly what he is. I would point out that I am, actually, quite capable of thought, and having thoughts provoked in me, and that his post actually provoked me to think about how many Franks I have known in my life, and how all of them were dorks.
Here’s the thing. I have no reason to believe that any of you are racists or liars, so I don’t know why you should take offense when people who are are labeled as such. We should never countenance racist behavior of speech, wherever it is found, and we’ve said that over and over. As William Buckley once said, that’s not being liberal; it’s just having common sense.
We’ve also often quoted Baruch who said everyone has the right to their opinion but nobody has the right to be wrong on the facts. We’ve been concerned at the intentionality of the misinformation and untruths.
We know people who are against consolidation and they cite the reasons and the research. We respect that. We don’t respect the people who can’t tell the truth and who fall into the bigotry that we all should agree that we want to stamp out.
Interested observer: As we’ve said before, the folks who are obsessed with City Hall seem oblivious to the fact that it’s Shelby County Government that’s driving up our tax rate and its costs continue to escalate. City of Memphis’s tax rate is the same as it was in 1993. Shelby County Government should do as well. If we had to place a bet on which government won’t collapse under the weight of its budgets, tax policies, and policies, we’d put our money on county government, not City Hall.
But finally, to anonymous’s point about arguing with racists without calling them names. We need to admit that we’re not interested. We’ve been trying to talk to racists before you were born. There’s no point in trying to be rational with irrational people or logical with illogical people, so we leave that to Dr. Phil. As for us, we’ll continue to point to racism whereever we see it, as we have for more than five years.
Mary, yeah, I coulda just said “lame”, but, where’s the fun in that?