Wendi Thomas whined on Sunday that the newest made-in-Memphis film, Hustle and Flow, doesn't represent the Memphis she knows or grew up in. I haven't seen the film yet (I absolutely will) , but just from living here since 1972, all I can say is that sista girl don't get out much, then.
EJ over at Cherry Blossom Special writes about the film and responds to Wendi's column by calling BULLSHIT on her middle-class butt. My favorite line of his :
"There are about 12 people who control everything that goes on in our city, and they like it that way. They don't want it to change, and nobody is stepping up quickly enough or with enough money in their pockets to make that change happen any faster."
Hell, what are you waiting for? Don't take my word for it, go read it!
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"There are about 12 people who control everything that goes on in our city, and they like it that way. They don't want it to change, and nobody is stepping up quickly enough or with enough money in their pockets to make that change happen any faster."
Truer words were never spoken.There are economic elites in this city who benefit from the general chaos and poor school system. If these elites were not interested in having a population with educations greater than what is necessary for warehouse and logistics jobs, they would scream bloody murder for change. But they don't. Now we have an economic policy for the city which pours all resources into downtown in order to recruit highly educated, single people from out of town. This policy greatly benefits both large developers and the corporations. They get to keep control of the city, solve their personnel problem, and keep their cost down by still having the education system producing a vast amount of low wage workers. In the realm of public policy, things like this don't just happen. Policy choices are made by people with influence in the system. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but interests can coalesce around policies. This is why I have real problems with downtown development. Vast sections of this city have been ignored and the decline of these areas have been pronounced. When I say the city is overall in worse shape today than 5 years ago, I'll catch a lot of flack, especially from 20 and 30 something whites. They generally say how much nicer downtown is, especially the arts area on south main. All I can say is that an investment of $3.8 billion between 1995 and 2009 should give us a nice downtown, but what about the rest of city? When I talk to blacks about the city, they understand everything goes to downtown while the rest of city has gotten shafted. The most shocking thing I heard was when a friend of mine asked a democratic, female, party operative about what happened to all the people that used to live in uptown and were displaced for redevelopment. She didn't really know. When my friend asked why the city doesn't invest in others areas of the city like Frayser, she said that would raise costs in these places and where would poor people live? WTF, is this what our democratic party has become. You don't want to invest in poor neighborhoods because it may raise their cost of living. How about raising these people's standards of living and helping them create their own wealth. The Democratic Party is about helping people reach their potential. This is why the DLC must be stopped. They have been inflected republican social darwinistic thinking. FDR would role in his grave.
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