Archives for November 2013

Greetings  Public Transit Warriors!

Memphis Bus Riders Union (MBRU) has been working on internal structure and leadership over the past few months. We formed our own by-laws, which where drafted by committee and approved by the general assembly at our monthly membership meeting.  We welcome the new structure which will provide a strength of organization for our work in the new year.

Core Organizer Training – Success!

Mid-South Peace and Justice Center held it’s three-day Core Organizer Training from November 8 – 10.  Here are some post-evaluation reflections from training participants:

The most effective aspect about training was the deference of responsibility to the training members. Gio and Allison did a great job facilitating, and the strength of their facilitation was that they empowered the training members to do the work on their own.
-G.O.T. Power Trainee

The Community-Police Relations (CPR) project held the final 2013 neighborhood forums for the Latino and LGBTQ communities. Both forums were well-attended, thanks to hard work by the CPR outreach team.

On behalf of [Tennessee Equality Project] Shelby County Committee, I want to thank you for including us in the CPR forum and for working with the greater GLBT community of Memphis and Shelby County to encourage the first step to better relations between law enforcement and citizenry. It was an amazing night, and we know that understanding was seeded. With a gratitude-

-Anne Brownlee Gullick

Read Paul Crum’s article to learn more about participants’ experiences at the LGBTQ forum.  We look forward to continuing our work in other communities in 2014.

Sharing Stories, Building Trust

Improving community-police relations is a slow process that has begun with sharing stories.  Our partner, Playback Memphis, an improvisational theatre ensemble, has allowed the stories not only to be heard, but to be seen.  Through this process, community members have reflected on how they have felt treated unfairly by law enforcement.  Those working in law enforcement have shared their own stories, sparking conversations that have helped community members understand their professional roles, and have begun to humanize law enforcement officers in some community members’ eyes.

We all acknowledge this work is challenging, but the benefit of this relationship-building process to our community as a whole will lead to real reconciliation.

H.O.P.E. is the name of a Mid-South Peace and Justice Center-sponsored organization whose members are exclusively people currently, or have formerly experienced homelessness. H.O.P.E. has been working hard to develop several project areas that address the issues that are a priority to the homeless community. For meeting times and dates, call 901-300-0006.

For almost a year now, H.O.P.E. members have been organizing around documenting and reporting incidents of police harassment.  Members elected to form a sub-group dubbed Street Watch with the goal of educating the public on their rights and using different methods to document potential cases of harassment, mistreatment or abuse by law enforcement or private security officers. The group initiated a series of Know-Your-Rights Workshops in conjunction with the public defenders office that they have held at different churches and community centers for the past five months.

In light of a recent surge in reports of harassment and the subsequent arrests of those who attempted to record these incidents, Street Watch committee members met to discuss collective responses to these incidents and decided to elect point persons and staffed working groups for Media, Outreach and Research.The group discussed plans for a town hall/community forum within the coming weeks and increasing the frequency of “Know Your Rights” Workshops.The group also discussed potential demonstrations and direct action tactics and messaging and the formation of a Copwatch program to video instances of police misconduct.

Since then, representatives of H.O.P.E., Manna House Memphis, and The Bridge: The Memphis Street Paper have met with MPD Col. Houston and his staff at the Crump Precinct to discuss the bigger picture of the negative relationship that exists between people experiencing homelessness and some police officers who work the area. We also introduced to them materials and a curriculum for Police Sensitivity Training created by Nashville Homeless Power Project and the National Healthcare For The Homeless Council,as well as 60 copies of the H.O.P.E. homeless survival guide. We also had deep conversations about the history of harassment at the Manna House and raised the concerns of the vendors of the Bridge as well as reports from our members about harassment of law abiding citizens at the park owned by All Saints Church. Col. Houston and his staff were respectful,open to dialog and showed our members courtesy. This is but the first of many dialogs but was a very promising first meeting.

H.O.P.E.’s Street Watch Initiative will be hosting its 6th Know Your Rights Workshop: Saturday,Nov 16th at the Memphis Center for Independent Living. 1633 Madison Ave. 2:30-4:30pm. “What are my rights? How do I assert my rights when I encounter Police? How do I file a compliant?” We want you to know!

Feeding the Movement

H.O.P.E would like to once again thank Memphis Center for Independent Living for providing us with space for our meetings while we seek a permanent location. There are lots of ways to feed the movement, and we would like to thank all of our allies for their continued support. For more information about how you can support HOPE or our different project areas, Please contact Paul Garner(901)725.4990, or paul@midsouthpeace.org. Like H.O.P.E. on Facebook!

A letter from Homeless Organizing for Power & Equality (H.O.P.E.):

In the past weeks, we at Homeless Organizing for Power & Equality (H.O.P.E.) have witnessed actions by certain members of the Memphis Police Department and private security guards employed by our public transit system (MATA) that force us to ask the question: “HAVE YOU LOST YOUR EVER-LOVING MIND?!”

We watched our friend, a community organizer with the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, get arrested for filming an unjust arrest of a volunteer worker for Manna House, a service provider of homeless services on Jefferson Avenue. This building and its property is a place of hospitality, and it is considered a church, and as such, it is a sanctuary. A similar violation at other churches in our city (Bellevue Baptist, Mississippi Boulevard, Idlewild Presbyterian or any of the other fine churches) would bring a massive uproar. We ask that all other churches in our great city stand with this small institution and protest this illegal, unjustified, and immoral persecution by rogue members of the Memphis Police Department.

Furthermore, incidents have been reported to H.O.P.E. concerning the illegal harassment of vendors for Memphis’s new street newspaper called The Bridge. For people who do not know, The Bridge was started and is published by Rhodes College students. Stories and articles are written by people who have formerly experienced homeless or are currently experiencing homelessness. Some articles are also written by Rhodes College student staff. Vendors have gone through sales training to become distributors of The Bridge, and their sales are covered by our First Amendment rights.

For those who have forgotten their civics lessons, let us refresh your memory:

The Bill of Rights, Amendment I
Freedom of Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly and Petition.
“Congress shall make no law, respecting and establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The vendors of The Bridge are upholding a grand American tradition, granted to them by the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This is the Freedom of the Press! It is more than just the right of ‘We The People’ to write and publish freely, but also the right to freely distribute that which we have printed. While the distribution of newspapers cannot infringe on the rights of others, such as the right to private property, the right to sell newspapers in the public space free from government interference is a solid American tradition. So solid, in fact, that Thomas Jefferson felt that the newspaper was more important to the freedom of the country than the government itself. He wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

The Bridge is a street newspaper. A street newspaper is defined by the North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) as a newspaper that primarily addresses issues related to poverty and homelessness and is distributed by poor or homeless vendors. Thus, our mission is not only to educate by word and image but also to introduce our readers to the poor and homeless members of our community who sell the paper.

Vendors: The police have no authority to keep you from selling your papers on public property. Always wear your vendor badge!

Mayor Wharton and our City Council need to acknowledge whether these 1st Amendment violations against the poor and homeless in our city are city policy or the actions of rogue officers. If rogue officers are to blame, then they need to be removed from the Police force. This needs to be done quickly, before our great city (already broken) is forced to pay settlements of lawsuits that are sure to come because of violations of our rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution!

The last incident happened at MATA Bus Terminal on North Main Street, Monday 10/21/13. Simply put, a H.O.P.E. member spoke up in support of a young man whom was being cursed, threatened and verbally humiliated in front of his 4 year-old daughter by a private security guard employed by MATA. This guard needed to be called to task for his out-of-control and abusive behavior. This guard threatened our member with arrest, told him that he also works in the jail at 201 Poplar, and promised that after being arrested, our member would have to deal with him inside the jail.

This member of H.O.P.E. has been riding MATA busses for 17 years and says he has never witnessed such abusive and threatening behavior. Police were called and he was banned for life from MATA property, at this guard’s discretion. What it amounts to is that MATA, which is fully funded by our tax dollars and run by a private company, is allowing a private security guard to selectively punish citizens who speak out against this type of behavior. Once again, this freedom to speak out falls under the 1st Amendment, which guarantees “Freedom of Speech.” As this is being written, we can just imagine the lawyers, counting their percentage of those lawsuits.

As this member’s 9th grade civics teacher, Mrs. Smith, taught him: “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”

Memphis, stand up against these types of abuse–Next Time It Could Be You! 

If you believe you are the victim of police harassment please contact Paul Garner Organizing Coordinator for H.O.P.E. at 901-300-0006 or by email at paul@midsouthpeace.org.