Victory for Nashville Bus Riders

Power to the People has good news to report regarding the Title VI civil rights complaints that our organization filed in May to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the U.S. Dept. of Transportation against the MTA, TDOT, the Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Regional Transportation Authority. (Title VI is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination by agencies receiving federal funds.)

The FTA has contacted Power to the People and asked that we meet with MTA officials at the FTA's southeast regional office in Atlanta to discuss our complaint.

This is an important development, which took almost three months. Lorenzo Ervin, PTTP's vice president, who wrote the complaint, initially sent it to the FTA regional office in Atlanta. When there was no response, he refiled the complaint, this time sending it to FTA headquarters in Washington, D.C., which then directed the regional office to investigate our complaint.

The date for the meeting in Atlanta has not been finalized, but it will probably be Sept. 10 or 11. If you are a member or a supporter of the Nashville Bus Riders Union (created by Power to the People) and would like to attend this meeting, please let us know as soon as possible. (Our phone number is 720-5468). PTTP does not have the resources to rent a car or a van. However, there is a shuttle service that runs several times a day from the Nashville airport to the Atlanta airport, via Chattanooga. The round-trip cost per person is $138. It might be possible to get a discount if several people make the trip

If you have a car and are willing to drive to Atlanta, let us know. We will reimburse your charges for gas.

To refresh your memory, among the allegations in PTTP's complaints are:

1. The MTA did not properly advise riders of the (then) proposed fare hike and service cuts and failed to hold meetings in South or North Nashville, where large Hispanic, immigrant and African-American communities are located. By MTA's own admission, low income people and people of color make up the majority of bus riders in Nashville.

2. MTA, TDOT, MPO and RTA do not properly advise low income and minority riders of transit agency meetings and planning.

3. The four transit agencies practice economic discrimination by forcing low income and minority riders to pay for fare hikes, while allowing state employees to ride free.

4. The Music City Central hub now under construction is in violation of federal environmental and discrimination laws (e.g., environmental racism).
   

5. Furthermore, the MTA has eliminated transfers, and the bus fare in Nashville is now the highest in the southeastern region of the United States.

The MTA will hold public meetings in late August regarding the opening of the new Music City Central hub. Unlike the meetings held in May to discuss the fare hikes and service route cuts, at least one of the August meetings will be in the black community in North Nashville. For the complete meeting schedule, visit www.NashvilleMTA.org.

The MTA would not be holding these meetings were it not for the pressure coming from the FTA's investigation of Power to the People's Title VI complaints.

At this point, it's not possible to tell what the outcome of the meeting in Atlanta will be. Nevertheless, the fact that the FTA is calling for the meeting is a victory for bus riders in Nashville.

Sept. 6 Protest Against Murder of Female Inmate at CCA Jail

MARCH AND RALLY TO PROTEST THE

MURDER OF ESTELLE RICHARDSON!

WHAT: A march and rally to protest the cover-up of the 2004 murder of Estelle Richardson at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility.

WHEN: Noon to 2 p.m., Saturday, September 6, 2008.

WHERE: March at noon from Legislative Plaza, 6^th Avenue North and Deaderick Street in downtown Nashville, to the Metro Courthouse, 3^rd Avenue North and Union Street, for a rally.

Stop the Cover-up of the Murder of Estelle Richardson!

On July 5, 2004, Estelle Richardson a 34-year-old mother, died at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility, where she was an inmate. Her death was ruled a homicide.

Four officers of the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the Metro jail, were indicted for Estelle's murder. However, pressure from the CCA, a multi-million international company, led state and federal authorities to cave in and drop the charges, claiming the time that Estelle received her injuries could not be substantiated.

Since the charges were dropped, there has been an official cover-up. Estelle's killers have been allowed to get away with murder for four years. We must unite to stop the cover-up and raise our voices to demand justice for Estelle Richardson!

For more information, contact the Estelle Richardson Justice Coalition:

Call (615)573-6408 or (615)720-5468

e-mail dkschimming@comcast.net or powertonashvillepeople@gmail.com

For more information on the Estelle Richardson case, visit www.whokilledestelle.org.

Should we accept murder? (A critique of the Nashville NAACP).

Should we accept murder? One of the things that really bothers me about the black community in Nashville, is that they meekly accept the murder of persons in custody so easily. Not only has Estelle Richardson been murdered by jailers in 2004, and none of the civil rights groups said virtually a peep , but two children have been killed during their "restraint" at the Chad Youth Enhancement Center in 2005 and 2007, and again nothing said from the so-called civil rights groups. We should be concerned about mistreatment of children, even those in the custody of juvenile authorities, not just whether they can go to school with whites.

It seems that the only thing the local NAACP (the largest of the local groups) gets "worked up" about is the management of the school system, that is whether they are "re-segregating", and while this is no doubt a serious issue, and it definitely seems that the Nashville NAACP is way too one-dimensional. They give the local law enforcement establishment a free pass when they clearly should be confronting them. Some of this may just be class snobbery (victims not "prominent" enough, and they have a conservative political agenda locally), whatever the reason for this inaction, it must be questioned. Issues about the school board to the exclusion of virtually everything else is a conservative, middle-class approach. The prison system, especially the mass imprisonment of Black people, [children and adults], whether in facilities run by the state or a private company like CCA, has to be one of the mass issues that all real leadership would involve itself in.

We believe that murder by agents of the state (via a private prison company) trumps any other social issue. If our so-called leaders will allow the police or jail guards to murder Black people with impunity, then that leadership has to be called to account. In our estimation, these are just new cases of lynching, where poor and working class Black people can be murdered, and no one speaks up for them in their own community. It's a disgrace, and must be corrected.

You can look at this situation, and easily understand why there were thousands of lynchings in this country, and yet there was no sustained Black-led mass movement against it during the 1900's, which forced the hand of the government until the civil rights movement of the 1960's. Of course, the NAACP came into existence in 1911 as a movement opposed to lynchings, (which are not just hangings alone, but the denial of human rights and collusion by authorities), but it appears that the group (locally at least) no longer sees this as a serious issue, or the lives of these people worthy of any protest. No question that they led many protests and filed lawsuits over lynching in the early days, but something has happened to stifle these protests. Maybe they have changed their agenda entirely to that of education issues. It happens that groups become more conservative over time. We do not know, we just know they are not helping organize something now.

That is why it is so important for some of the rest of us who do care to come to the Estelle Richardson demonstration of September 6th at the Metro Courthouse, to speak out against the murder and cover-up of mother of two, and demand that justice be done in this case: prosecute the jail guards, and those who helped cover this case up.

Justice for Estelle Richardson!

Mistake in Estell Richardson url

Ooops...

The URL address for the Estelle Richardson Justice Campaign is at: whokilledestelle.org (not.com, as previously posted). Look for other information about the September 6th demonstration soon, leading up to the event.

Estelle Richardson campaign

Power To The People is now working with Nashville prison organizer Denver Schimming and others in the newly formed Estelle Richardson Justice Coalition to expose her racist murder and demand that the jailers, employed by private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America, be prosecuted and jailed themselves. Richardson was beaten to death by four jailers in the Metro Nashville Detention Facility back in 2004, after she continually complained about jail conditions and her lack of proper medical treatment in the solitary confinement unit. She literally had her skull and chest crushed from a brutal beating.

Yet, because of economic and political pressure by CCA, local prosecutors and cops caved in, and continuing with this miscarriage of justice, the judge colluded with the corporation to dismiss the case "with prejudice", which means that the case can not be raised again, unless there is "clear and convincing newly discovered evidence." This is highly unusual, and is a travesty of the worst sort, a total cover-up which has lasted the last four years. The cops and prosecutors all claim that they could not hold a trial because they could not establish the time of death, nor determine which of the guards struck the fatal blow. This is nonsense, they know all that, and they have gone to trial with a hell of a lot less evidence. The prisons in Tennessee are full of Black and poor people sitting in prison on the slimmest of evidence.

Contrast the inaction in the case of Estelle Richardson with that of a white prisoner killed in the Wilson County jail in 2006. In that case, eight guards were prosecuted and convicted, being given sentences of six years and upwards to life in prison (the latter for the shift supervisor, who oversaw the beatings). We do not begrudge the prosecution of these brutal jailers in Wilson County, but we demand even handed criminal prosecution for the murders of Black prisoners in Nashville.

So we will now lead a direct action protest campaign against this inaction and the coverup of this murder by CCA and the local law enforcement establishment. If you would like more information about the death of Estelle Richardson, please go to the website: http://www.whokilledestelle.org

Look for other comments concerning the fight for justice in this case.

Media White-Out in Nashville, Tennessee

Since January, 2008, Power To The People has conducted a vigorous campaign to get state and federal officials to investigate the Chad Youth Enhancement Center, a private juvenile detention facility in Ashland City, Tenn., where two black teens have died--Linda Harris, 14, in 2005 and Omega Leach III, 17, in 2007. We filed a complaint to the U.S. Dept. of Justice asking for a federal investigation into the deaths of Linda and Omega, whom several observers said were choked to death by some of Chad's staff members.

Neither of the two daily newspapers and only one of the five TV stations, Channel 4 (NBC), attended the press conference we held to announce our complaint to the DOJ. To the best of our knowledge Channel 4 did not report on the air about the press conference.

The state medical examiner, Dr. Bruce Levy, ruled that Omega Leach's death was a homicide. Power To The People sent a written request to Levy asking that he conduct inquests into the deaths of Omega and Linda. None of the corporate news media contacted us about the press release we sent out concerning our request to Levy.

On March 1, 2008, the Associated Press reported that between 2004 and 2007, over 500 youth were abused in state-run juvenile detention centers in Tennessee. To protest this horrendous abuse and the deaths of Linda Harris and Omega Leach, Power To The People held a march and rally on April 26. None of the corporate news media came to the march.

In May, 2008, Power To The People created the Nashville Bus Riders Union (NBRU) to organize the predominantly low income people of color who ride the local buses to protest upcoming fare hikes and service route cuts made by the local bus company, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). Prior to June 1, when the fare hikes and route cuts became effective, PTTP's vice president agreed to a request from The Tennessean (the larger of the two local daily newspapers) to write an op-ed piece about MTA and related local transit issues. However, when an editor at the newspaper tried to tell our vice president what he should write, he refused to submit an article. PTTP would not allow our views to be dictated and censored by The Tennessean.

PTTP filed civil rights complaints to the Federal Transit Administration and the Federal Highway Administration against MTA and other Tennessee transit agencies, charging them with discriminating against low income people and people of color. The corporate news media igored us.

Nashville ranks No. 6 in the nation for pollution, primarily caused by the large number of cars on the road due to the poor local mass transit system. PTTP filed a complaint to the Environmental Protection Agency against MTA and other transit agencies in the state, in which we charged the agencies with environmental racism because of the pollution. Once again, none of the corporate media reported about our complaint.

In short, the white corporate news media in Nashville has imposed a media white-out on Power To The People. They have decided to ignore us because we are a black radical voice--the city's only black radical voice. Through this blog, Power To The People will fight the media white-out of our work and the issues that we raise.

Welcome to Power To The People's Blog!

Welcome to the blog of Power To The People, an African-American social justice organization in Nashville, Tennessee. We've started this blog because of the media's "white-out" of our organization and our work.

For example, since December 2007, we've been conducting a campaign demanding that state and federal officials conduct full investigations into the deaths of two black teens, Linda Harris and Omega Leach III, at the Chad Youth Enhancement Center in nearby Ashland City. Omega's death was ruled a homicide. We held a march and rally on this issue. We also started the Nashville Bus Riders Union. We routinely keep the corporate media informed about our work, but they either ignore us or give short shrift to the issues we raise.

In fact, the corporate media in Nashville does little or no in-depth reporting and analysis of issues that impact black and poor people in this city. To help fill this void and get the word out about Power To The People's work, we have created this blog. In addition, we will periodically comment on relevant state, national or international news...from a Black and radical perspective.