Serenity Towers Apartments at Highland is a HUD subsidized senior living facility for individuals 55 and up, owned by Global Ministries Foundation and now managed by Millennia Housing Management. For the past several years, MSPJC staff has worked to assist residents who have dealt with everything from bed bug infestations to illegal evictions and intimidation from management.

On December 21st, 2018 MSPJC received a call from a Serenity Towers resident, who had received a FED (Forcible Entry and Detainer) summons to appear in court for eviction from her unit at Serenity Towers, where she has lived for over a decade. She was never given an eviction notice before she was served (as required by TN state law), nor has she received an itemized statement of her alleged debt. She was verbally told by staff that her debt was from unpaid rent last February.

Mid-South Peace & Justice Center then reached out to other residents and began receiving a high volume of calls and visits to our office from residents who found themselves in similar situations. This has been an extremely traumatic experience for these residents, all of whom are advanced in age and in some cases, have a disability and/or mobility issues. One tenant was afraid she would be arrested after receiving an FED summons to appear in court. As it turned out, she had receipts for every month management claimed she hadn’t paid.

On January 3rd, we worked with our board member and local attorney, Lani Lester at Burch, Porter & Johnson, PLLC to accompany tenants to their court date and get as many we could a continuance until January 17th, in order to buy residents enough time to try and find old receipts that prove these alleged debts are baseless. From the original reports of 40-50 people being served summons, by the January 3rd court date, the docket was down to 27 individual, as as many had already produced their documentation to management to show that the alleged debts were not valid. Many others were still on the docket, but had their cases dismissed.

On the evening of January 8th, a reported 50+ 10-day eviction notices were slid under residents’ doors by management, instructing them to vacate their units by January 17th. This included many residents, who already had their cases dismissed, because they were able to show receipts proving they had no outstanding debt at all. Others received these notices despite the fact that they aren’t even scheduled to go to court until the 17th, and have no judgement against them as of yet. These are not legal notices of eviction, but are meant to frighten and intimidate residents, and it’s been effective.

Here is just a sampling of recent news coverage around the evictions:

WREG-Serenity Residents Threatened By Evictions, Advocate Calls Them Unfair

WMCTV-Serenity Highland Tenants Take Their Rent Complaints To Court

The Commercial Appeal-Results Mixed For Residents Facing Evictions From Serenity Highland Senior Apartments

The Mid-South Peace & Justice Center has deep concerns over what we see as chaotic, sloppy bookkeeping (at best) and a flurry of eviction actions, when in many cases these debts turn out to be illegitimate. We also have concerns about those residents who still have not received itemized statements of their debt, which effectively prevents them from being able to make an effective defense. We find it particularly troubling how old some of these debts are, with many dating as far back as last winter. In some cases, residents have even signed new leases since the time of their alleged unpaid rent.

THDA and HUD’s full oversight and monitoring are urgently needed as many of these remaining residents are at serious risk to eviction—and for many going to court or securing legal assistance is not only a hardship, but next to impossible. MSPJC has reached out to and been in touch with HUD, THDA, the FBI, Memphis Area Legal Services, Congressman Steve Cohen’s Office, and a number of other agencies in an effort to support these tenants. This week, MSPJC assisted Serenity Towers residents in forming the Serenity Towers Tenants Rights Committee, a tenant association that will assist residents in understanding their rights and seeking legal representation to fight these unjust evictions. We return to court with residents facing eviction on Thursday, January 17th, and may eventually need funds to cover the cost of legal expenses. Like so much of our work at MSPJC, our tenant organizing efforts do not receive dedicated grant funding, and relies largely on public support. You can support the work of our Renter’ Rights Project today by signing up to become a sustaining member of MSPJC, or make a one-time donation of any amount.

Mid-South Peace & Justice Center then reached out to other residents and began receiving a high volume of calls and visits to our office from residents who found themselves in similar situations. This has been an extremely traumatic experience for these residents, all of whom are advanced in age and in some cases, have a disability and/or mobility issues. One tenant was afraid she would be arrested after receiving an FED summons to appear in court. As it turned out, she had receipts for every month management claimed she hadn’t paid.

This week, MSPJC has assisted Serenity Towers residents in forming the Serenity Towers Renters Rights Committee, a tenant association that will assist residents in understanding their rights and seeking legal representation against these unjust evictions.

Thank you for standing with us

Brad Watkins

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year on behalf of all our staff, board and volunteers here at the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center!

For 37 years, this organization—your organization—has been a consistent force for good in Memphis & Shelby County, working in the spirit of King, Chavez, Day, and Gbowee to achieve tangible results for our community. MSPJC is the only issue-based organization in the region, devoted to program areas that no other grassroots establishments are focused on, and we need you to sustain that work.

In case you missed it in the holiday e-mail clutter, here’s our 2018 annual report, outlining the highlights of all our work over the past year.

[click the image to view the report]

We hope you will continue to be a part of this work by starting the year off with a generous donation will ensure a strong start to 2019 as we recommit to the fight for tangible solutions to our city’s most challenging issues.

Click HERE to make an end of year gift now!

We deeply thank you for all of your support, past and present.

We send you frequent updates on the progress of our Juvenile Justice Project’s efforts to better prepare young people across our community to protect their constitutional rights as they navigate and deescalate encounters with law enforcement, through our unique Know Your Rights Theatre workshops.

So, you may already know that we created these workshops to accompany our comprehensive Know Your Rights Guide that we published and began distributing in 2015, amidst Mid-South Peace & Justice Center’s campaign to strengthen Memphis’ Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) and a national climate of outrage over frequent officer involved deaths of people of color.

After a torrent of requests for our staff to come and talk with young people about their rights, we developed a curriculum that uses interactive theatre to draw upon and center the experiences of participants as a basis for learning. Over the past three years, we’ve facilitated these workshops with over 3000 young people at schools, churches, community centers, libraries, and youth conferences across the City of Memphis. Early on in the project, we began conducting surveys with participants following the workshops to gather feedback and input and gauge the workshops’ effectiveness.

We’ve been crunching those numbers, and they look good!

Out of 2,938 Total Survey Respondents:

• 98.5% or respondents said they had a better understanding of their rights
• 2,229 or 75.8% Identified as Black/African American
• 66 or 2.25% Identified as White/Caucasian
• 140 or 4.8% identified as Latino or Hispanic
• 105 or 3.7% Identified as Multiracial, Mixed, or Other
• 1,234 or 42% Identified as Male
• 1,333 or 45.4% identified as Female
• 86% Said they enjoyed the workshop

[Map shows locations of KYR Workshops Across Memphis]

Our staff believes that youth are the solution, not the problem, and when we dare to challenge popular misconceptions spread by fear mongering for news ratings, and instead validate and uplift the experiences and voices of our young people, they will be self empowered to lead the conversation on solutions to youth crime and contact with the criminal justice system. Part of that work is continuing to arm and prepare Memphis youth with the knowledge to more safely navigate police encounters while protecting their rights. We know it’s working, and we need your help to continue this effective mission. Make an end of year gift today or become a sustaining member of MSPJC.

For more information on the Juvenile Justice Project or to schedule a Know Your Rights Theatre workshop, contact MSPJC Organizing Director, Paul Garner, paul@midsouthpeace.org or (901) 725.4990.

Last year, Coach Clay, World History teacher at Kingsbury High School, reached out to MSPJC staff about working with his students throughout the 2018-19 school year. In June, we began conducting ongoing workshops with his fourth period Freshman class. Every Wednesday morning, members of our organizing and training department visit the class to facilitate exercises that explore topics like privilege and oppression, labor and liberation history, know your rights education, the roles of social change, and more—connecting these topics to the class’ world history curriculum.

Recently, we have also begun introducing the students to guest speakers comprised of local leaders, organizers, and activists to inform their understanding of current events and local issues. This month, we had our friend Sydney from Memphis Feminist Collective visit to discuss MFC’s work, in particular, their role in the Mariposa Collective, working to provide relief to undocumented immigrants being released en masse from detention centers with little to no food or clothing. Just this past week, we welcomed, District 7 County Commissioner, Tami Sawyer, who spoke on a number of topics including #TakeEmDown901’s successful efforts to remove Confederate statues from our public parks, police accountability, and what led her into activism, and ultimately electoral politics. Commissioner Sawyer encouraged youth to work toward improving their school and neighborhoods, and MSPJC intends to be there to provide whatever resources necessesary to support them.

When it comes to our work at MSPJC, one thing often leads to another. Our work around homelessness with H.O.P.E. (Homeless Organizing for Power & Equality), and our members’ experiences with police harassment led us to filing complaints with internal affairs and documenting that process (read our guide to filing a police complaint). This eventually led to our campaign to restore and strengthen Memphis’ Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB). During this three year campaign, calls began to pour in from people who felt that their rights had violated during an encounter with law enforcement. Though from talking with many of them, it became clear that their grasp on those rights were often shaky.

With the collaboration of local attorneys, law students, and community volunteers, we began compiling information into a printed, bilingual Know Your Rights Handbook that we distributed far and wide across the City. The calls didn’t stop though; instead, the inquiries were now seeking someone to come talk to youth about their rights when dealing with police.

To better engage with young people, we developed a Know Your Rights curriculum using improvisational theatre so youth can practice exercising their rights and de-escalate conflict without the real life consequences of an interaction with law enforcement. We began facilitating these workshops for free at churches, schools, and community centers, and in the past 3 years, we have conducted Know Your Rights Theatre with over 3,000 participants, helping them be better prepared, and hopefully avoid contact with the criminal justice system altogether. It was also around this time that MSPJC began hosting High School Interns during the summer through the City of Memphis Youth Employment progeam, training them to facilitate the workshops with their peers.

What about youth that have already come in contact with the criminal justice system? This question led us to broaden our work with youth through MSPJC’s Juvenile Justice Project, working to reduce recidivism and help young people get in compliance with court ordered community service hours by helping Juvenile Court identify and recruit Community Service Site Partners to provide meaningful and restorative, neighborhood based opportunities for young people to get their hours completed, thereby breaking down barriers to compliance like lack of accessible public transportation. We have also hosted several youth conferences that have provided young people the opportunity to complete

Realising that there are many young people who still slip through the cracks, and do end up in the system, in August, our staff began developing and implementing a series of ongoing workshops with youth incarcerated as adults at Jail East. Each session centers around building skills to deal with the emotional trauma and stress that comes with being locked up as a juvenile offender.

With all we are doing, there is still so much to be done, not only to ensure a better world for our young people, but to make sure they are prepared to inherit a world where there will no doubt be struggles to come. We call on you a lot, but that’s because we can’t do this on our own. We rely on the community’s support in order to sustain and grow our work to validate the experiences and struggles of our youth, and support them with the tools they need to find their own voices and and build a future worthy of their dreams.

We invite you to be a part of this work by making a donation of anything you can, or by becoming a Sustaining Member of Mid-South Peace & Justice Center.

Your support means everything to us.

We REALLY need your help.
From Pendleton to Serenity Towers, to Goodwill Villages, to Madison Towers, and in many other apartment complexes across Memphis, the state of our HUD subsidized apartment complexes is an outrage and a shame to our community.

We need your help today to push for part of a broader solution.

Please call Mayor Strickland’s office at (901)636-6000 and tell his office that we….

1. Need more Code Officers for Memphis. Currently the 20th largest city in America has only 30-35 total number of officers. We need at least 15-20 more, to work on weekends or add a night shift to meet the need and we need them this year.

2. As a City Councilman Mayor Strickland passed a RESERVE CODE OFFICER ordinance, which would allow city residents to be trained and deputized as Code Officers. This program, despite being created by the Mayor is not currently active. We are asking that the training be restarted so that we can recruit tenants in our worst complexes to work with code to quickly and easily identify problems on the premises. We stand ready to work with the City on this matter.

3. Call Congressman Cohen’s office at (901)544-4131 and please tell him that the conditions at PENDLETON PLACE APARTMENTS at 1780 Pendleton St, Memphis, TN 38114 are beyond negligence and please ask him to call on HUD for an 100% inspection of the property.

4. Call Senator Lamar Alexander office at Please call Congressman Cohen’s office at (901)544-4224 and please tell him that the conditions at PENDLETON PLACE APARTMENTS at 1780 Pendleton St, Memphis, TN 38114 are beyond negligence and please ask him to call on HUD for an 100% inspection of the property.
                                                                         Every single call will make a difference.

For more information about how you can help donate or support HOPE or those who do the work to combat homelessness, or would like to put on a HOPE shirt and volunteer,  contact Tamara Hendrix, (901)725.4990 or  tamara@midsouthpeace.org.

Now more than ever, we need the support of those who are fortunate enough to have secure housing to stand with our human family who don’t and make sure homelessness to be a priority to our lawmakers!

As Gio Lopez Prepares For Her Next Chapter, She Remembers Her Time With MSPJC

Hello Friends,

Transitions can be exciting and a little sad as well, but in my opinion it is always a sign that we keep on rolling.

After eight and a half years, it’s now my time to continue rolling on to different lands. I’ll be leaving my staff role as G.O.T. Power Training Director the last day of November 2018.

I’m deeply thankful for all the opportunities of growth I have found during my time at the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center (MSPJC). I remember starting as an office coordinator for the Center when the former Executive Director, Jacob Flowers and Education Coordinator, Allison Glass trusted me enough for such an important position.

I’m saying this because when I started the job, I didn’t have any prior experience in this specific field, also considering that I thought my English was very limited.

During the first months in my position, I got more and more involved in the heart of MSPJC’s work, realizing that was something I’d wanted to be involved with since I was in college. A couple years later, I started working directly with Allison (then Training Director) in the training department, where my passion for theatre, art, and social justice mixed perfectly for me, becoming the Training Coordinator in 2015. MSPJC trusted once again in my abilities and my passion, investing greatly in building my facilitation skills and learning as a trainer for social justice. This experience allowed me to serve my community, focus on my personal growth, and get more in touch with my internalized oppression to be able to dismantled it. For this and much more, I will always be thankful with MSPJC.

I’m also proud of how much our training department, G.O.T. Power, is growing, and continuing to serve our community, opening spaces for learning experiences, building our community’s capacity through building skills in grassroots organizing,  and providing support for people doing community work and offering anti-oppression and liberation education.

Bennet Foster, with who I have being working for several years now, first as MBRU Coordinator, and as a Training Coordinator for the last year, will be taking care of G.O.T. Power until a new Director takes my place.

We are exited for the new accomplishments to come!

Please consider making a donation to MSPJC so we may continue to provide affordable spaces for learning on social justice.

Con mucho amor

Giovanna ‘Gio’ López

pronouns: she/her/ella

 

It is that time of year where the seasons change and temperatures dip. For some, this means curling up by the fire with a good book and a pumpkin spice latte, but for those without a home, it means surviving temperatures that put them at serious risk every night. However, then there is Room in the Inn, a growing coalition of churches that host those experiencing homelessness, providing them with a safe place to sleep and get meals from November-March.

However, stay is based a lottery system, as there are a limited amount of slots at each church. We need more churches to get involved so we don’t have to turn anyone away. There are also lots of ways to support RITI as a volunteer placed in one of the churches. They even have weekend shifts if you work during the week. Just log on to roomintheinn-memphis.org or contact Whitney at whitney@roomintheinn-memphis.org. Room In the Inn has become more than just a place to sleep– for many, it’s a home. So spread a little cheer this holiday season and volunteer at the Room In the Inn!

H.O.P.E News

We are enjoying our new space at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church and grateful to Rev. Andrews, Emily, Jasper and his crew for bearing with us as we transition. H.O.P.E. is looking forward to working with our new friends as well as connect with others through this ministry. St. Mary’s offers a nice somber church service on Wednesday and then a sit down breakfast, as well as on Saturday, the Pop Top Ministry. The Pop Top Ministry provides snack crackers, Vienna sausages, granola bars, etc to those experiencing homelessness. Our very own treasurer, Mother Georgia King, is having a drive for these items as well as monetary donations now-November 10th. Please contact Mother King at 901-650-7321 for more details or on how to donate to the Pop Top Ministry.

For more information about how you can help donate or support HOPE or those who do the work to combat homelessness, or would like to put on a HOPE shirt and volunteer,  contact Tamara Hendrix, (901)725.4990 or  tamara@midsouthpeace.org.

Feed the Movement!

H.O.P.E. would like to thank Marcos Pizza for providing pizzas for the H.O.P.E meetings on the 1st Wednesday of the month! H.O.P.E  is a supportive advocacy group for people with the experiences of homelessness. For many groups and organizations offering free food at meetings is a plus for their attendees, but for H.O.P.E. it is a necessity, due to the fact that most often the meal offered at H.O.P.E. meetings may be the only meal they will have that day. Also we would like to thank another one of our new sponsors, Hattie B’s! Please give these businesses your service and tell them H.O.P.E. sent you!

How can you help? You can help by donating prepared foods on Wednesdays to our meeting that afternoon. Don’t have time to cook or buy prepared foods and bring them to our meeting space? We also accept monetary donations towards this cause. Neither of those options seem feasible for you presently? We are also looking for restaurants willing to donate food to our meetings. As always, all forms of donations are completely tax deductible.

If you would like to discuss how you can offer support to HOPE please call Tamara @ 901-254-5964 or email tamara@midsouthpeace.org.

 

In 2012 the Department of Justice (DOJ) identified around 120 issues with Shelby County Juvenile Justice system, many of which concerned disproportionate treatment of youth of color. According to recent findings “nearly half of the items under the equal protection category are in ‘partial compliance.’ Only 25 percent, or eight items in that category, were in ‘full compliance.'” (Commercial Appeal)

While several local officials, including newly elected Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, assure constituents that local oversight will continue, others are not as convinced. “When we say equal protection, we’re talking about African-American and Latino children who are in the system, and they’re being unfairly treated and not receiving equal access to justice, equal access to their rights,” said Commission Chairman Van Turner. “For them to pull oversight at this juncture — it should trouble everyone in this county.”

Furthermore, multiple Shelby county commissioners have expressed concern that they only found out about this change from the media. “This underhanded decision, this underhanded move just really makes me wonder whose children matter,” said Commissioner Tami Sawyer. “And until we can see that all kids do matter, that black and brown kids matter in Shelby County, we’ll have to continue to fight.”

The Juvenile Justice Project is committed to working with those directly affected by the justice system here in Memphis. Too often we see that the difference between intervention and jail sentences depend on skin color and socioeconomic levels. We will continue following this story and working towards a true system of Justice for our youth. Youth are the solution, not the problem!