I just spent a very nice weekend in Charleston, South Carolina.
The town was alive with activity, people shopping and eating and truly enjoying themselves. On this short respite, I had the pleasure of driving the -country trip with two friends that have lived in Memphis their entire lives – one an African American who by any account has given his heart and soul back to this community. He built a nonprofit in south Memphis second to none. A true humanitarian who believes “service first” is the best policy to live by.
The other person was a Caucasian who spent more than 35 years working for government and has spent his retirement years figting urban sprawl and trying to protect the community in which he lives.
Over the course of the 24-hour round trip drive, our conversation often turned to Memphis and Shelby County: the fact that most people do not want to live in this community and even if their neighborhood is nice, they still want their children to seek their fortunes elsewhere. People are scared of crime, despite that fact that many have never actually encountered it. They are concerned that their taxes are too high, yet they do nothing to fix government, and when presented with opportunities to consider doing things differently, many people just assert that it doesn’t matter and that if things don’t improve, they will just move.
The most startling observation of the trip was that both my friends, people that have been fighting the good fight for longer than I have been alive, said they were actually planning on moving themselves.
And this was not just some veiled threat. One had been looking at houses out West and the other was considering moving to Nashville or another city with lower taxes and more community engagement. It seemed to me that they had finally reached their breaking point. I was sad, angry and frustrated.
Had the naysayers finally won? Were all the people that said there is no hope in this community that we shouldn’t even try to build a better community right? Should we all just quit and accept the fact that cities like Nashville, Louisville, Denver and Atlanta, all cities that use to pale in comparison, are simply better than us?
I normally like long drives. They give me a chance to decompress and get caught up with the lives of my traveling partners, be it family or friends.
But this trip was different. It began to dawn on me that my wife and I really have no ties to Memphis. No family within an 8-hour drive and our jobs are easily transferable to another community – everyone needs those awful attorneys! We weren’t born here and we have only lived here about 10 years. We truly could pick up and move. Move to a community with less crime, better schools and a community where the infighting does not stifle progress.
So why don’t we? This question plagued me until I asked my wife what we are doing here. She simply said…we love the people and the city. And it’s true. We have met some of the greatest people we have ever known right here in Shelby County. And this is coming from two people that have lived all over the world.
My wife was an Oxford Scholar and White House Intern. I was an officer in the military and studied and lived in Spain. Between us, we have lived in 10 different states and 3, and we can say that the people that live here are second to none. We love our friends and the life we have.
Yes, there are issues, and yes, they are big ones. But we are not going to simply move way. Instead, we are going to do whatever it takes to build bridges in this community and stop the infighting and political posturing that hold us back as a community.
Before my friends decide that there is no hope, that together we cannot possibly build a better community than what we have, we need to remind ourselves that the human spirit can do anything it sets it collective mind to accomplish. We have been to the moon and we have transformed our world with new technology.
Surely, we can correct the course of this community. I ask each you to join us in building a better community and no longer accept that people have to leave Memphis and Shelby County to find happiness.
We can find it here. Together.
Thank Brian! As a native Memphian who loves the City but gets exasperated sometimes, it’s good to hear from folks like you.
Great post. Those are my thoughts too.
“Memphis and Shelby County: the fact that most people do not want to live in this community and even if their neighborhood is nice, they still want their children to seek their fortunes elsewhere. People are scared of crime, despite that fact that many have never actually encountered it. ”
I spoke with another engineer from another town who said he was just here last week. He said he could spot the blight from the airplane, after being here for only a few days he thought Memphis was too weird and crime ridden to even consider living here.
Wow!! I can’t find one single person in my new nicer neighborhood that hasn’t encountered crime, and mostly violent crime. I constantly conduct an unofficial impromptu survey about that, careful not to lead people to conclusions, god knows I don’t want to “be right” about this issue, and I haven’t met anyone who hasn’t experienced crime first person. Even my accountant has three bullets in his neck from an attack.
My business was literally driven out by crime. It wasn’t some half ass business, we were picking up great clients and business was picking up and it was a 100% bootstrapped operation based on talent. Our competitors were trying to poach our clients aggressively. The culture of crime, two stalkers, gangs, and mostly corruption and a lack of prosecution and sentencing took its toll on us. We shut our doors because we couldn’t think due to the harassment by criminals and attempts to murder us, literally, kill.
This is a great post, I wish it had come out last year.
I wish people like AC had been elected years ago, but, as it stands, I have a time limit on progress and Memphis has exceeded it by three years. What you state about the people is why I stayed. SOME of the people here are great, second to NONE.
I can’t stay and watch what’s still happening here. Overtaxation, poor public education with a bloated budget, it’s not stifling, it’s poisoning and a lethal dose already. You can see it from the airplane. No amount of progress will equal equity for keeping any of those facts in place NONE. Other cities near and far have half our tax rate and twice our performance with half as many city employees.
Unfortunately none of those people are in the industry I work in, and the people in the industry I work in that are here don’t recognize experience over tuition payments and their numbers exceed their market so there is a bit of scrimmage with the winners decided over something other than ability, protectionism, addiction to government grants, not results, not to the point of evil, but, just enough to make Memphis nonviable for living.
But lately there has been a great deal of very visible change via crime reduction, some progress on sentencing.
Unfortunately, the taxes are too high, the neighborhoods too bad, and the school system is too lousy and it doesn’t look like consolidation and any reform that will be required to happen will happen before I have to leave.
I have kids. How do you think they felt when someone I’ve never even met tried to kill me? What is that going to do to them psychologically? What about the death threats they had to witness by racist neighbors in our own front yard? What will that do to them? What will watching their dad be driven out of business do to them? WHAT about other people’s kids who’ve been through similar things and there are a lot of them here?
When I have issues with MCS regarding school violence or lack of communication, or moving a child to a safer school for documented medical reasons, I get racism in my face instead, from people who are charged to help, who don’t know me, never heard of me, and they find it easy to be bigots because no one will stop them.
After I was driven out of business I went to work for a local company and I was fired, because the boss and the employees were all on drugs andI wasn’t. Bizarrely, they tried to hire me back. I’m sorry, but, that’s not business, but, its common here.
I have to retire one day and hopefully not under a bridge, but, if I stay here, that’s where I’m going to end up, or, I’ll have to really be satisfied becoming a charity case, which oh hell no I won’t.
I wanted my Memphis story to have a different ending, one with success somewhere in it. I guess if you look at the corruption that got removed due to a vigilant effort after thugs pissed me off trying to kill me, the police dept. corruption pissed me off ruining my neighborhood on purpose, after Willy et. al. pissed me off with his lack of any sincere effort to run this city for legal business, and MLGW pissed me off targeting neighborhoods and not keeping accurate records and threatening anyone who questioned them for massively gross overcharges, and the section 8 program ruining the whole city, the lack of effective rehabilitation ruining any chance of a legal atmosphere to do business in pissed me off, MCS’s administrative malfeasance and bigotry by employees and corruption by administration and substandard educational resources though the price is Ivy league pissed me off, well, that’s a lot of fights to HAVE TO WAGE just to get a fair shake. That’s one most people don’t pick up and they shouldn’t have to and don’t in any other city. Here, people work around it, or, suffer it and lose future prospects for their kids and that’s why it’s all still here. That’s why people move.
The city itself has been set up to rob the regular citizens of their chances for prosperity for so long it doesn’t think it’s the case. It doesn’t see it. It thinks it’s a normal place, and worse, it puts fort the argument via media that it’s this bad everywhere. It’s not. That’s evil.
Expecting people to stay here, even with the immense progress that has been made so far, under the conditions that still exist here is a preposterous proposition at best. Get the rest of the work done post haste.
You couldn’t pay me enough to stay now, you don’t have the funds and it’s no wonder why. I wish I could stay for the great memphians I’ve met, but, this city has sucked out my last dime and is sucking on my will to live. I ain’t havin that.
I’ve said all this before and I’m still here. Suck on that!
Ya know, after reading what I just posted, I realize that there has been a lot of success in my story, but, none of it translates into one more sandwich for my kids.
I also would say to anyone even thinking of moving here that step one should be : DECLARE WAR ON MEMPHIS before you do move here. The proceed accordingly till these last few bits are finally dead and buried as problems.
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