50th Observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Community Oversight Board — April 4, 2018
We stand at a critical moment in Nashville’s history. We celebrate the tradition of nonviolent resistance and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a radical freedom fighter who was assassinated 50 years ago. We are the children and grandchildren and the political kinfolk of Dr. King, and belong to the tradition of freedom fighters and liberation activists such as Diane Nash, James Lawson, Myles Horton, Ella Baker, Kwame Leo Lillard, Rip Patton, and the countless number of unrecognized voices that struggled with Dr. King in 1968, and in the 50 years since his death.
Tonight, we are launching a referendum campaign to amend the charter to establish the Community Oversight Board (COB). The COB charter referendum demonstrates that Dr. King’s pursuit of nonviolence, liberation and justice is not just a dream or propaganda rolled out for anniversaries and commemoration ceremonies or a name to put on a street or a bridge. It represents the best of Dr. King and the most significant step Nashville has taken to address police accountability.
Nashville: you would be proud of this group right here [referencing the Community Oversight Now coalition and its supporters at the press Conference]. Through trials and tribulations, this great group of freedom fighters has brought us this far along the way. I want to make special mention of the women — and black women and women of color especially — in this coalition who have anchored this movement. In the words of Shirley Chisholm, they are unbought and unbossed, and their leadership is as important to Nashville today as was Diane Nash’s leadership 50 years ago. A special thanks goes to Black Lives Matter, who more than three years ago, laid down in the streets — and risked everything — to get us this far. In fact, BLM faced tremendous ostracism from black leadership — even black ministers — who aligned themselves with Mayor Karl Dean and Chief Steve Anderson during the protests of 2014 and 2015. And a special thanks to Councilman Scott Davis and Council Lady Sharon Hurt, who understood the risks of navigating Metro Council, but still took the very important step of sponsoring the COB legislation. And we must never forget the Jocques Clemmons’ family. Few people outside of our coalition know that Mr. Mark Lee and Mrs. Sheila Lee, the stepfather and mother of Jocques Clemmons, have been actively involved in the campaign, attending meetings late in the night, and serving as the SOUL FORCE of this movement.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an avid supporter of civilian review or oversight boards to address police accountability and to create a society free of violence. Between 1964 and 1966, he endorsed an oversight board no less than three times — in Harlem, Los Angeles, and Chicago. For those in Nashville who celebrate Dr. King, don’t cherry pick his legacy. Embrace all of it. Our struggle, make no mistake about it, is in the legacy of Dr. King.
In the last years of his life, Dr. King challenged the “triple evils” that were destroying the Soul of America: racism, poverty and economic injustice, and militarism. In Nashville, there is no better way to address these triple evils than an independent Community Oversight Board. It has been proven that institutional racism and racial bias are embedded in Nashville’s police department. The “Driving While Black” report assessing 2 million Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) stops, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service, and Nashville’s District Attorney all found racial and institutional bias in MNPD practices. How much more proof does Nashville need that there is a problem — more dead bodies in the street?
The COB provides an important vehicle for addressing racism. Yet, it can also address other forms of institutional bias. Homeless or houseless residents who are profiled by MNPD; LGBTQ youth, who because of ostracism are forced out of their homes and may face police harassment on the streets of the city; and women who rely upon ethical governance and good policing to investigate domestic disputes. The COB is an intersectional policy that addresses institutional racism as well as other inequities.
Undoubtedly, bias policing impacts the poorest residents, which is why this COB can address the second evil of poverty. Many residents who fall victims to police misconduct have no money for attorneys, no bail money, and no political networks. They are Nashville’s disposable communities, often out of sight and out of mind, who because of poverty and economic marginalization, are afraid to come forward and report police misconduct.
Then there is militarism. Make no mistake about it. Local law enforcement, including MNPD, is heavily militarized. Last year, MNPD received $220 million in funding, which amounts to 10% of Nashville’s general operating budget. It received an additional spending measure to pay for body armor. In the last year, several of the activists at this press conference had their social media sites under surveillance by MNPD personnel. Between 2014 and 2015, MNPD’s Operation Safer Streets program made 16,000 vehicle stops from 2014–2015, much of which occurred in working-class black and immigrant communities. When a society defines public safety by the money it spends on authoritative policing instead of defining public safety by its investments in the human dignity of its people, then we get a society that breeds corruption, hopelessness, and alienation.
Tonight, we stand to offer a new vision for Nashville. A vision that redefines public safety, a vision that promotes ethical governance and accountability, and a vision that celebrates human dignity while challenge the triple evils of racism, economic injustice, local militarization.
And we are not afraid. To the mayoral candidates and those running for governor and senator — and others who believe that the black vote, the young people’s vote, and poor people’s votes — are passive or can be bought off or easily manipulated, we have a message for you: you can’t be neutral on a moving train. And in this case, the train is freedom, justice and nonviolence, and the conductor of this train is the charter referendum. To Nashville: hop on this training. It will be traveling for the next six months (the November election).
