Once a month the membership of the MSPJC comes together to get updated on the work already happening and set the direction for future work. This month’s meeting is on February 13 from 6-7:30pm at your offices at 3573 Southern Ave. All members and folks interested in joining should attend. It is a potluck if you can event, so please bring a dish if you are able. If not able, please just bring yourself, we always have plenty of food & drink!
Here are a few of the topics currently set on the agenda for discussion:
- Report back from our current campaigns: H.O.P.E. on plans to establish the Streetwise Inc. Workers Coop and Project Homeless Connect; Community Police Relations will report back on progress to develop a community led vision of how we deal with crime and violence in Memphis; and an update on the Peoples Lobby Day scheduled for March 12, 2013 in Nashville.
- The Center is staffing the Social Equity workgroup for a regional effort to establish a community greenprint vision for our community. We will update folks on our progress and let you know more about the first community meeting for this effort on February 19.
- We have several trainings & workshops coming up to plan for and need membership input and leadership!
If you would like to have an item added to the agenda or have any comments, questions, or concerns, please email us at jacob@midsouthpeace.org.
Hope to see you there!
H.O.P.E. is the name of a Mid-South Peace and Justice Center sponsored organization whose members are exclusively people who are currently or have formerly experienced homelessness. For over a year now, H.O.P.E. has been organizing and agitating around the issues that are a priority to the homeless community.
Last month we ask for your help with the Point In Time Count, which is conducted once a year by the Community Alliance for The Homeless and is required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to retain federal funding for homeless programs. Now we are reaching out for your assistance with another event that will positively impact the lives of individuals experiencing homelessness.
♥ On Valentines Day, February 14, please join us in showing some love for our brothers and sisters on the street by participating in this third installment of Project Homeless Connect 3; a massive outreach and service event to break down barriers that make it difficult to leave homelessness. We are expecting 1000 peoplewho are in need to attend this event, and we need just as many passionate volunteers to help connect folks with services! Check out the 
Back in October, H.O.P.E. members hit the pavement, volunteering with the 
H.O.P.E. would like to thank everyone who came out to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with us! We had a great time with folks from the community and other organizations like 
We watched coverage of the inauguration, screened the documentary, At The River I Stand, and followed that with a round-the-room discussion of the struggle for civil rights and equality for all people and how we can continue this work today. It was a fun way to network with other organizations and hear about all the awesome work that is going on in our community. We also had special guest, Coby Smith, who is featured in the documentary. He is a founding member of The Invaders, which was a militant black power group that was organizing in Memphis during the 60’s and worked closely with Dr. King during the time he was in Memphis. Thanks to everyone who came out and special thanks to
The community-Police Relations (CPR) project of the MSPJC is a groundbreaking effort that is creating a space for dialogue about the real issues between community members and law enforcement, which will ultimately culminate in a plan for action to improve community-police relations. This action plan will include solutions that address all levels of the issue: political, economic, institutional, and psychological.
In the afternoon, community leaders and members of MPD and the Sheriff’s Department met together. As the next stage of CPR is to move the dialogue circles out into other parts of the city through community forums, we discussed the importance of allowing enough time for thorough planning to ensure that these forums are as inclusive and successful as possible. We agreed that we need to accurately frame the community forums, so that members of law enforcement do not feel they are walking into a hostile environment where they will be ambushed, and so that both community members and police will know that they are all going to heard and respected. We decided to create a working group to undertake the immediate next step: to train facilitators for the community forums, which will begin in May at the earliest.
The second half of the combined meeting addressed concerns around media and messaging that had been brought up repeatedly in earlier meetings. The group recognizes that the mainstream media’s reporting – especially that of local television news – presents a one-dimensional, distorted view of both law enforcement and members of the community. The highly sensationalized coverage never reports on any positive events or people from either side, nor on any positive relations or times when community and police work together. And the media do not provide any context for their stories on these topics; there is no examination of the structural, socioeconomic, institutional, or political dynamics that underlie conflicts and negative incidents, such as shootings of police or community members. A proposal was made that we form a working group to start to map out CPR’s media strategy, both in terms of responding to inaccurate, problematic mainstream media coverage, and in terms of producing our own media (e.g. via Facebook or on the radio).
It was very encouraging when at the end of the meeting, over two dozen people volunteered for the two working groups (facilitation and media/messaging), which will be meeting in the coming weeks. Over the next few months, CPR will be firming up neighborhoods, venues, and dates for the upcoming community forums.
Medical and Vision (limited), Housing counseling and placement, Employment services, Benefits (Food Stamps, Medicaid, etc.), Social Security, Substance Abuse and Mental Health, Veterans Benefits and services, Food, HIV/AIDS testing, counseling and support, IDs, Barber Shop, Legal assistance, Donated Goods
G.O.T. Power, MSPJC’s training program, is committed to building our community’s capacity through building skills in grassroots organizing, providing support to people doing community work and offering anti-oppression and liberation education. Here are our upcoming trainings and workshops.
They discussed needs for comprehensive community driven (re)investment in impoverished communities and in law enforcement institutions via police-community programs.Police members present cited barriers they face such as: the prioritization of statistics; the pressure to complete call times as quickly as possible and thus to answer more calls each shift as well as, budget cuts;and reform of current practices of interviewing, hiring, and training of new officers. They also cited the need for diversity and anti-racism training, particularly and more buy-in from elected officials to implement these ideas.
In other news, CPR is encouraged to see signs that the MPD may be exploring a new direction in their law enforcement strategy. This may involve a departure from the Blue CRUSH model of policing, as alluded to in a recent editorial in the 
As a result since the implementation of the Blue CRUSH program, a large number of young people of color have been stopped, and many arrested and jailed, with an average time to disposition of 9-12 months. Others while not arrested are stopped and feel harassed by simply walking in their own communities. Such reactions are sadly growing far too common in the African America,Latino and LBGTQ communities.
We will offer two 
H.O.P.E. is the name of a Mid-South Peace and Justice Center sponsored organization whose members are exclusively people who are currently or have formerly experienced homelessness. For over a year now, H.O.P.E. has been organizing and agitating around the issues that are a priority to the homeless community.
For almost a year now, H.O.P.E. has been meeting at the Manna House every Thursday night from 6 p.m.- 8 p.m. For our members, H.O.P.E. meetings are a safe space to share thoughts, ideas and struggles in a secure, supportive environment. While we regularly talk about the harassment of individuals experiencing homelessness by law enforcement, we have never had an instance at our meetings when that safe space was violated by MPD until Thursday Nov.15. Two MPD squad cars made a U-turn and pulled up on the remaining eight members present. The officers harassed members and eventually issued citations for “obstructing a sidewalk” to three members. H.O.P.E. members have filed complaints with MPD and representatives of H.O.P.E. along with members of the Community Police Relations team have since met with Major Casad of the Crump Precinct concerning the incident. H.O.P.E. will be coordinating a series of meetings, beginning in late January, with our members and officers in the area to begin a process of dialog and improving relations. H.O.P.E. will also be organizing a series of KNOW YOUR RIGHTS WORKSHOPS for people experiencing homelessness and work with our brothers and sisters on the streets to enact aSTREETWATCH campaign to confront and address instances of Police harassment of people experiencing homelessness. This program will work closely with Major Casad and Internal Affairs to ensure that these issues are addressed in a proper manner.
Domestic violence is the leading cause of Homelessness among women and 92% of women experiencing homelessness have suffered severe physical AND/or sexual abuse and we have dealt with issues of rampant sexual harassment in our own homeless services system. As homelessness among those who identify as women is a distinct experience we need an organizing space made up of women to address and confront these issues. Saturday, December 15th marked the first meeting of the H.O.P.E. Women’s Caucus. These meetings work in two parts.The first is a series of women only emotional healing sessions at Caritas Village led by Laura Sullivan where members can share past experiences and mutually support each other. The second is a series of Self-Defense classes taught by the 
The Point in Time Count is an annual count of people experiencing street homelessness on one given day of the year, which is required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to retain federal funding for homeless programs. It is also important that the results from the count provide an accurate reflection of homelessness in Memphis. Volunteers will be talking one-on-one with any unsheltered individual willing to be interviewed. The Community Alliance for the Homeless then use this data to move forward with securing housing and other services. Groups of five will go to certain precincts throughout the city in order to visit soup kitchens, crisis centers, shelters, and other offices where homeless Memphians congregate during the day. H.O.P.E. members, many of whom are themselves currently on the street will be assisting in this years count but we need your help too! The annual Point in Time Count will be Jan. 23, 2013 5:00 am-7:00 pm. you can 
Last month, Memphis Health Center invited members of H.O.P.E. to attend their memorial service to honor the memory of men and women who have died while experiencing homelessness in Memphis within the past year. It was a particularly meaningful event for members of H.O.P.E. who recently lost member, Tommy Burchett, when he died unexpectedly of a heart attack in November. Unfortunately many of our brothers and sisters who die while on the streets have no one to recognize their passing and it is a reminder of why we do the work we do.
We know that the only way we will achieve social change is by building movements comprised of those that are most affected by social problems in our society. This is why it is so important for you to become a member. It is not just about raising mo