V15n12 - Digging Up The Roots of the City's 'Numbing' Crime

vol. 15 no. 12

FREE

November 23 - 29, 2016 | daily news at jfp.ms

Neighborhood Gate Debate Summers, p 10

Tasting the Caribbean Corbello, p 22

Robert Johnson’s Legend Smith, p 26

On the Road with Mayor Yarber

Digging Up the Roots of the City’s

‘Numbing’

Crime Youth Media Project , pp 14 - 20

TWO CHANCES

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

TO SAVE!

2

555 Sunnybrook Road, Ridgeland, MS 39157

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JACKSONIAN Warren Coile Jennifer Calhoun

W

arren Coile was sitting in a pew during an evening service at Crawford Street Methodist Church in Vicksburg when he got the call. A lay member had just talked about the need for more people in the Methodist Church when a voice told him, “You can do that.”

To this day, Coile considers that moment his call to ministry. But at first, it wasn’t what he wanted to do. Coile, 54, long wanted to be a doctor.

Though he was born in Jackson, he grew up in Kentucky and Indiana. His parents divorced when he was 15, and the next summer, Coile moved with his mom, Gayle, to Vicksburg to be closer to family.

He studied at Northeastern Louisiana University (now the University of Louisiana at Monroe), where he graduated in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in zoology.

At age 20 while attending NLU, he says he finally surrendered to the call to ministry. After graduating from NLU, he attended Emory University School of Theology, where he graduated in 1988 with a Master’s of Divinity degree. He is currently the pastor at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Brandon.

“I met some of the best scholars (at Emory),” he says. He still remembers an important lesson he learned there. He says

contents

a pastor told him: “‘We are a pre-Christian people living in a post-Christendom world.

We have relied too much on the culture to do our spiritual work for us. The intangible spirit is a major force and can prompt us to do good things. We must not forget that.”

Coile says one of the most rewarding but difficult aspects to being a pastor is grappling with the complexity of people.

He says that the institution of church must not focus on pure maintenance (aspects such as worrying about how many people are in the church, and taking care of buildings and property), but instead, it should focus on society’s changing demographics.

“We must use God’s grace as an overarching healing force; it will work together for everyone’s benefit,” he says. “We must exercise the common good.”

Coile believes the common good is paramount to the preservation of society after a fractious election. The day after the winner was declared, Coile and other Methodist churches in the area held a prayer service on the grounds of the state capitol to pray for healing and reconciliation in the country.

Coile has a wife, Linus, and two children, Clifford and Nelson. He likes the diversity, arts culture and the convenience of the Jackson metro.

—Mike McDonald

cover photo of Stephen Butler (front) and Tony Yarber (back)

by Kelsee Ford

6 ............................ Talks 12 ................... editorial 13 ...................... opinion 14 ............ Cover Story 22 ........... food & Drink 24 ......................... 8 Days

6 Homeless and Parenting How homeless parents are able to provide for their kids with the help of local programs.

22 Caribbean Flair

You can find a little taste of Jamaican cuisine in Jackson at Taste of the Island.

25 ........................ Events 25 ....................... sports 26 .......................... music 27 ........ music listings 28 ...................... Puzzles 29 ......................... astro 29 ............... Classifieds

26 The Legend of Robert Johnson

“With a graphic novel, it’s like a movie, you know. You can tell a story. There’s a difference. When you do a biography, you take the facts, and you tell the facts; you maybe try to analyze them to say something. But when you do a biopic, a movie, you take someone who was a real person, and you take it as a character.” —Jean-Michel Dupont, “Blues in Black and White”

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

4 ............ Editor’s Note

Faber & Faber; Imani Khayyam.; Imani KHayyam

November 23 - 29, 2016 | Vol. 15 No. 12

3

editor’s note

by Amber Helsel, Assistant Editor

We Can Be Scared Together

F

or the last few years, I have attended the TEDxJackson conferences. It had been a dream of mine for years to see one in person, and I was incredibly excited the first time I got the opportunity.

This most recent event was different though, both in size and message. I was particularly excited because this year was TEDxJacksonWomen, and the title of it was “It’s About Time.” It focused on the time and attention demanded of women and was also kind of a call-to-action for us to get to work to change the way the world views women of all races.

The event featured local Jackson speakers such as Cherita Brent, former Mississippi Youth Media Project participant Maisie Brown (who helped write this issue’s cover story), and Julie Kuklinski, who is the program director of the Moore Community House Women in Construction program on the coast. It was also simulcasted with the TEDWomen conference in San Francisco. That means that along with the local speakers, we also heard from women around the world such as British comedian and activist Sandi Toksvig.

With the current political turmoil, I’m glad I got to attend TEDx JacksonWomen. It was a bright spot in the midst of a hairy election cycle, and now it can be a bright spot in what can sometimes feel like impending doom.

On election night, I attended a watch party, but then when I began to get irritated with the results, I decided to go to McDade’s 10 minutes before close so I could get some beef to make Japanese curry. It was, at the very least, something to keep my mind off the anxiety looming just beneath the surface.

Back home, I tried not to refresh the results. I tried not to think about it, to just finish prepping the ingredients.

I went to sleep and tried not to think about it, and I hoped beyond hope that what I feared wouldn’t come true.

But it did. The next day was a weird day that sort of felt like the early part of a nightmare. But the day after that, life

fell v. Hodges ruling that legalized samesex marriage—at least for now—so that’s one hopeful spot. Still, justices he promises to appoint to overturn Roe v. Wade just may turn back Obergefell, too.

I think two questions are on everyone’s minds: 1. What is actually going to happen when Trump becomes president? (It’s not looking good so far), and

We’re not alone in the fact that we’re afraid. started getting back to normal.

That doesn’t mean it is completely normal, though.

The fear in people’s hearts isn’t normal. The day after the election, I broke down after a LGBT friend told me that she is terrified. I didn’t know what else to say, so I said what I felt was true: “Me too. We can be scared together.”

It wasn’t the most helpful thing to say, but all I could think is that at least we’re not alone in the fact that we’re afraid. It’s not just one person who is scared. It is a whole bunch: women, some men, people of color, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, even children. They are all afraid of what could happen should Trump end up building walls, or deporting undocumented immigrants, or taking away women’s reproductive rights, or making life harder for the LGBT community.

Trump has said that he wouldn’t undo the U.S. Supreme Court’s Oberge-

2. Where do we go from here?

I don’t know the answer to either of those questions, and I wish I did. But I do know one thing: This isn’t the end of the line for women or people of color or the LGBT community or any other marginalized part of the nation.

In the turmoil of the election, some major bright spots came out: For the first time in the history of the U.S., an openly LGBT governor came to power when Oregon elected Kate Brown; Ilhan Omar became the first Somali-American legislator when she was elected to the House of Representatives; wounded and progressive veteran Tammy Duckworth is taking the Illinois Senate seat Barack Obama once held; Catherine Cortez Masto became the first Latina U.S. senator.

On the other hand, hate crimes have increased exponentially. Between Nov. 9 and Nov. 16, the Southern Poverty Law Center counted more than 700.

Bad people have taken Trump’s election to mean that they can scrawl hate speech on a bathroom wall, or pull up to people at a gas station and tell someone to go back to their country (even though the person has probably lived here for their entire lives), or threaten to set a Michigan student on fire if she didn’t remove her hijab. (She did.)

So in the words of The Strokes, we took “two steps forward and three steps back.” But it’s a starting place, at least.

We’re in a position now to open up the dialogue about freedom and what it means to be an American, what it means to treat all people with respect, no matter their gender or sexual orientation or where they come from.

While I would have loved to have a woman president (yes, a small part of the reason I voted for her is because we have the same sex chromosomes), and I hate to say this, but we might need a bad situation like this to figure out how to move forward, and how to do it together.

If this post-election environment has taught me anything, it is that we all need to hug each other a little more (but please ask before you hug me) and be there for each other.

If we’re going to be able to fight the good fight, to fight for justice and equality and an equitable world, we’re going to have to do it together.

And who knows? Maybe 2020 will finally be a woman’s time to shine.

Assistant Editor Amber Helsel’s alter ego is Umaru Doma. Some call her the Demon Lady of Food (not really, but she wouldn’t object to it). She likes to cook, eat, make art and pet cats. Email story ideas to amber@jacksonfreepress.com.

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

contributors

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Kelsee Ford

Aja Purvis

Amber Taylor

Asia Mangum

Maisie Brown

Sierra Mannie

Arielle Dreher

Micah Smith

Former Mississippi Youth Media Project student journalist Kelsee Ford is a junior at Murrah High School. She plans to continue her career in JROTC and move up to ROTC. She took the cover photo.

Former Mississippi Youth Media Project student journalist Aja Purvis is a sophomore at Murrah High School. She plans to be a nurse practitioner. She contributed to the cover package.

Amber Taylor is a freshman at Dillard University majoring in accounting. She contributed to the cover package when she was a Mississippi Youth Media Project student journalist in summer 2016.

Former Mississippi Youth Media Project student journalist Asia Mangum is a junior at Murrah High School and plans to attend UCLA. She is an aspiring author, poet and TV producer. She contributed to the cover package.

Maisie Brown is a freshman at Jim Hill High School who plans to become a politician and change the world with the help of her peers. The 2016 Mississippi Youth Media Project student journalist contributed to the cover package.

Education Reporting Fellow Sierra Mannie’s opinions of the Ancient Greeks can’t be trusted nearly as much as her opinions of Beyoncé. She wrote about how homelessness affects education.

News Reporter Arielle Dreher is working on finding some new hobbies and adopting an otter from the Jackson Zoo. Email her story ideas at arielle@jacksonfreepress.com.

She wrote about budget priorities for the next fiscal year.

Music Editor Micah Smith is married to a great lady, has two dog-children named Kirby and Zelda, and plays in the band Empty Atlas. Send gig info to music@jacksonfreepress.com.

He wrote about French graphic novel “Love in Vain.”

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“That kind of growth (in spending) over such a short period is simply unsustainable and must be addressed.”

The city council heard public comments on gating communities p 10

— Gov. Phil Bryant in his fiscal-year 2018 budget recommendation, saying that state government spending has gone up in recent years and must stop.

Thursday, November 17

Photographer Suzi Altman sues former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, saying he used her copyrighted work without permission in his 2015 book. … Members of several Mississippi Baptist conventions and the Legislative Black Caucus host a public hearing at the Capitol to discuss education, infrastructure and health care.

Friday, November 18

Donald Trump names Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general, Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo to head the CIA and former military intelligence chief Michael Flynn as his national security adviser.

Saturday, November 19

The Mississippi Sustainable Agricultural Network in conjunction with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers leads a protest against Wendy’s for its refusal to join the Fair Food Program

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

Sunday, November 20

Authorities douse protesters at the Dakota Access oil pipeline with water during a skirmish in subfreezing weather in addition to using tear gas and rubber bullets.

6

Monday, November 21

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann says that more than 1.2 million people voted Nov. 8 in Mississippi, and 560 of them did not have voter ID. Tuesday, November 22

Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway tells MSNBC that Trump “doesn’t wish to pursue” further investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email practices despite numerous campaign rallies where he roused supporters to “lock her up.”

Get more at jfpdaily.com.

Fighting Homelessness, Helping Parents

by Sierra Mannie

B

ilal Qizilbash bought his 2016 Mazda 6 last April. “It had 4 miles on it when I bought it,” he told the Jackson Free Press.

“Now, it has 43,000.”

Qizilbash, a scientist who discovered that curly kale kills cancerous cells but won’t damage healthy cells—his car tag says KALE YEA–spends most of his hours working for other people. Some of the miles on his car come from traveling across Mississippi lecturing on his cancer research.

Most of the miles result from his ripping up and down Jackson, collecting supplies and food for Jackson’s homeless population. Qizilbash and other members of R U Hungry, a local movement feed hot, fresh restaurant meals every Friday night at Smith Park. R U Hungry cobbles together a smorgasbord of food at no expense to, on average, homeless people a week there.

Carl Berryhill, who lost his home to a fire just last year, says he guesses 300 to 500 homeless people use Smith Park as a resting point; Galloway United Methodist Church and Grace Place offer food and supplies throughout the week. Homeless people from all over the metro area, some forcibly in Jackson due to anti-homeless police efforts in surrounding counties, find themselves tromping the streets of downtown Jackson, flitting from shelter to church for their basic necessities.

Imani Khayyam

Wednesday, November 16

Former Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps files a motion asking a U.S. district judge to release him until his May 24 sentencing. … Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez is charged with seconddegree manslaughter in the shooting of Philando Castile, a black man Yanez shot several times while Castile was reaching for his ID.

Quincy Carpenter, whose youngest children go to school in Jackson, says that programs to help the homeless give him needed consistency.

The gleaming, gilded state Capitol building flanks the park on the north and the white, walled fortress of the governor’s mansion sits directly to its south.

In one of the country’s most impoverished states, homelessness can have a far-reaching direct and indirect impact on the lives of citizens. But in the case of R U Hungry, it gives some homeless people enough hope and stability, not just to provide for themselves, but for others: their children.

Question of the Week: What about Jackson are you most thankful for?

Tim Summers Jr.: The people. The city itself could use some work.

school is B-rated this year in a failing district.

Kristin Brenemen: They paved Wesley street so I can visit Offbeat, my favorite comic shop, without destroying my car.

Amber Helsel: The fact that local bars have pub quiz during the week SO I CAN WIN. Just kidding.

I’m thankful for the creative community.

Mary Osborne: I’m thankful that my son’s old elementary

Tyler Edwards: It’s a diverse and accepting community.

Invisible Victims

A 2014 American Institutes for Research study said in 2013, Mississippi held 26,108 homeless children—more than the population of the entire city of Ridgeland that year.

Mississippi ranked 46th in states with a risk of child homelessness, with the state’s high rate of home foreclosures and children in poverty and without health insurance contributing to the number.

Forty-five-year old Quincy

Arielle Dreher: I am thankful that Jackson stands up for its people and defends itself despite the bad rap that it can get from outsiders.

Micah Smith: I’m thankful that we have a community that can pull together to reach a common goal (Looking at you, Offbeat fundraiser).

Myron Cathey: I’m thankful for good local restaurants and local entertainment, Jackson being my home-away-fromhome, great friends, awesome

co-workers at the JFP, and my alma mater, Jackson State University.

Inga Sjostrom I am thankful for my family, and that we are so close (within driving distance) to each other in Mississippi. We can reach each other pretty fast in Mississippi, where ever you live). That’s the beauty of the state! Far away but close. But an airplane would be good sometimes!

Donna Ladd Jackson is a progressive, caring oasis.

“I think it’s a critical piece for educational programming for that 0-5 age group because when people go into kindergarten now, it’s like first grade.”

— Meghan Gallagher, an Oxford mother, on why the Early Years Network is important to help youngsters get ready for kindergarten

“The Legislature shall be subject to the provisions of ... the Mississippi Accountability and Transparency Act.” — Attorney General Jim Hood, reminding legislative leaders that they must make the EdBuild contract public on the Transparency Mississippi portal

Jobs, Budgets and Preparing for 2017

by Arielle Dreher

Carpenter’s children aren’t homeless—but he is. He says he lost three houses since the death of his wife and the mother of his children four years ago. He walks almost daily from Smith Park to where his 4-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son live with their adult siblings, and to the four-bedroom home on Meadowridge Drive he lost and wants to regain so he can preside over his family again. He says the feeding program is helpful because it offers him consistency. Not having to plan for food means he has more time to be a dad.

“When you’re in transition, assistance with basic necessities helps so that you don’t burden yourself, and you’re free to have

Dr. William Truly told members of several state Baptist conventions and the Legislative Black Caucus that the state should expand Medicaid to bring more jobs to the state.

for the total value of those tax cuts is around $350 million, but is likely higher.

“There have been a number of cuts where we don’t know what the total financial impact is to the state budget, so this is based on the data we’ve been able to look at and get numbers for,” he told community stakeholders and members of the Legislative Black Caucus last week.

In the 2016 legislative session, lawmakers passed the

more time with your kids,” he said.

Before he was homeless, Carpenter said, he was an active parent. “I was in the PTA, Watch D.O.G.S. I went on field trips,” he said.

“It’s usually women, but I was there.”

A Family Problem

But where Carpenter might be lucky, other homeless parents, including single moms, experience unique challenges. The National Alliance to End Homelessness says families experiencing homelessness share many similar characteristics to housed families living in poverty; usually, they have high rates of domestic violence and men-

Taxpayer Pay Raise Act, a series of tax cuts set to begin in 2018 that will equal close to $415 million in less revenue in the state’s coffers at the end of a decade. Wiggins described the state’s budget crisis paired with its tax cuts as a family sitting down to budget out how to pay bills.

“The way I describe this (is) when you sit down, and you’re getting ready to write out your bills, and you’re looking at the amount of money that’s coming in from your paychecks. You see that you don’t quite have enough to pay your bills and at the same time you’re sitting down, you look at your family member or spouse and say, ‘You know something? I think I’m going to quit working,” Wiggins said at the Capitol last week.

Bryant’s budget recommendation notes that from 2012 through 2016, Mississippi increased government spending by $1.1 billion.

“That kind of growth in spending over such a short period is simply unsustainable and must be addressed,” Bryant’s budget recommendation says. “The Legislature took a first step to address this issue in the 2016 legislative session, when it appropriated less total money for FY2017 than it did in FY2016.”

In an effort to streamline and decrease government spending, House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, both Republicans, have hosted agency budget working groups throughout the summer and into the fall to find ways to save in government spending.

Health Care Jobs?

So far in 2016, the Mississippi Development Authority has announced projects, like the Continental Tire Plant

tal illness, and depending on the education of the head of household—usually a single mother—they struggle to break free of the cycle. And economic and housing insecurity creates barriers to how involved they can be in their children’s education.

Mostly men show up to R U Hungry on Friday nights, Qizilbash says. One female volunteer told the Jackson Free Press that if women with children show up, they usually appear without their children, but will take doggy bags back to their kids.

“Some women might hide their children because they’re afraid they’ll get taken away by social services,” Qizilbash explained.

more BUDGETS, see page 8

Berryhill says homeless women traveling with their children might hide them, and they avoid Smith Park to be out of harm’s way from the homeless men there.

“It hurts me to say this, but some of my homeless brothers and sisters don’t have the best intentions,” he said.

For Carpenter, it’s important that he have his coop all in one nest again.

“I know things are going right when I observe it myself,” he said.

Sierra Mannie is an education reporting fellow with the Jackson Free Press and The Hechinger Report. Email sierra@jackson freepress.com.

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

Problem of Tax Cuts

At a Nov. 17 public hearing, Corey Wiggins, the director of the Hope Policy Institute, called the state’s budget problems both a shortfall and a crisis. Wiggins said Mississippi is not alone in its slow growth.

“What we’re learning talking to other colleagues...is that Mississippi is not alone; we’re seeing this across other states in the U.S. as well,” Wiggins said.

His reasoning behind such slow growth is not the fed-

eral government like Bryant, however. Wiggins pointed to a series of tax cuts that the Mississippi Legislature implemented from 2012 to 2015. Wiggins said that a rough estimate Arielle Dreher

I

f the Mississippi state budget is a “moral document” or at least one that reveals priorities, the fiscal-year 2018 budget likely faces dramatic tampering in the upcoming legislative session.

Gov. Phil Bryant released his executive budget recommendation on Nov. 15 detailing where his office’s priorities lie: mainly with education and child-protection services. A deeper look into the governor’s priorities show that cuts at various levels could be necessary in the coming years, due to modest economic growth.

Bryant cut the current fiscal-year’s budget by $56.8 million back in September due to the Legislature’s “staff error.” This cut meant a 1.6-percent reduction across most state agencies, except the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which funds the state’s public schools.

In Bryant’s fiscal-year 2018 budget recommendation, he warns that “our path forward will not be easy,” blaming the federal administration in Washington, D.C., for stifling economic growth nationally. Mississippi has experienced slight economic growth in recent years, but at a slower pace than most states. The state’s general-fund collections “have slipped below estimates for most months in 2016,” Bryant’s budget recommendation says.

7

TALK | state

Early Years Network Set to Close by Year’s End

by Arielle Dreher

M

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

8

with training for certifications needed to be licensed as well as best practices. Gallagher, who used to be child caregiver at a local church, attended trainings in Tupelo through the Early Years Network.

“I think it’s a critical piece for educa-

Angela Bass, the deputy director of policy at Mississippi First, says her interactions with the Early Years Network were mainly with their data collection. One of the education policy nonprofit’s focus areas is early education. The group has advocated Courtesy Meghan Gallagher

eghan Gallagher, a mother of four who lives in Oxford, was disappointed to hear the news that a statewide network of early learning resource centers will close at the end of the year.

Gallagher has used her local resource center to check out games and books for her own family, especially the young ones before they go into kindergarten.

Her resource center is a part of the Early Years Network, which Mississippi State University administratively ran in a partnership with the Mississippi Department of Human Services.

Sixteen resource and referral sites statewide provide games, puzzles and books that daycares and parents could check out free of charge. Additionally, the resource centers offered course material in science, math or history that daycare centers could use in their curricula, as well as trainings for child care workers. Resource centers offered die-cut machines and laminating services, both expensive services that were free or discounted for anyone to use.

Gallagher said Oxford caregivers and families might have other places to access educational resources, but communities like the Delta might not have other options.

“Caregivers could come in and rotate in and out toys that were helping them teach children critical skills so that they could go into pre-K and kindergarten programs prepared,” she told the Jackson Free Press.

Gallagher said a typical check-out time for items was two weeks, with forgiveness and no late fees on the other end. With the state’s emphasis on increasing learning standards, including for youngsters in pre-kindergarten programs, the Early Years Network resource centers were often able to support local child-care providers

Meghan Gallagher (pictured with her kids) is a mother of four who lives in Oxford. She said she will miss the Early Years Network resource center, which is set to close Dec. 31 unless something changes.

tional programming for that 0-5 age group because when people go into kindergarten now, it’s like first grade,” Gallagher said. “So for a lot of people unless it’s their daycare programs and they’re not being spoken to directly by the daycare person, then they may not be learning enough vocabulary.”

The Early Ed Need

Early education throughout the state is in need of improvements that comprehensive learning standards and public pre-K collaboratives are beginning to change.

BUDGETS from page 6 and the Raytheon Air Training Systems, that should bring 5,500 new jobs to the state.

Advocates of expanding Medicaid continue to point out that it would bring the state an estimate of 9,000 new jobs, while making health care more accessible for those in rural parts of the state.

Dr. William Truly, a local doctor, told the Legislative Black Caucus last week that the state should expand Med-

strongly for the Mississippi Department of Education’s public pre-K collaboratives.

Bass said she used data from the Early Years Network to understand what childcare communities look like throughout the state. She said the Early Years Network would survey licensed child-care centers around the state on a monthly basis.

The network’s website has a list of child-care centers around the state ranked by a quality stars ranking.

Bass said Mississippi First advocates for pre-kindergarten programs as well as

icaid—if nothing else, for the potential capital involved.

Additionally, hospitals lose revenue to uncompensated care, when patients use the emergency room like a doctor’s office and don’t have to pay for the services due to Medicare or Medicaid. Truly argues that expanding Medicaid would help bring the high costs of uncompensated care down as well as cover the 20 percent of Mississippians under the age of 65 who don’t have health care.

“It creates more jobs than Nissan … more jobs than the Kemper plant, it creates 9,000 jobs,” Truly said at the Capitol last week.

Polls conducted in 2016 by Mason Dixon polling, paid for by the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program,

licensed child care programs that use comprehensive learning standards, like the state’s public pre-K collaboratives.

Good early education includes preliteracy and general cognition skills as well as physical development.

“A lot of times when we think about early education, we don’t think about the social (skills),” Bass said.

“How they interact with their peers and if they’re able to control their emotions and those types of skills.”

The best early education programs develop all of these skills in their children, Bass said. There are 15 public pre-K collaboratives in the state.

A Complicated Closure

The reason for shutting down the Early Years Network is complicated. In a joint statement from MDHS and Mississippi State, the groups said the contract between the two entities will end on Dec. 31.

Workers at resource centers in Oxford, Jackson and Canton either wished not to be interviewed or did not respond to messages asking for comment—beyond confirming that they were indeed shutting their doors at year’s end.

“On Jan. 1, 2017, MDHS will assume full leadership of these programs. MSU and MDHS will continue to work cooperatively and diligently to operate these sites through the end of the contract period to continue to serve the needs of Mississippi families impacted by this program and to seek solutions that keep the flow of services from being interrupted during this orderly transition,” the joint statement says.

Email state reporter Arielle Dreher at arielle@jacksonfreepress.com and follow her at @arielle_amara on Twitter for breaking news. Comment at jfp.ms/state.

show that the majority, 63 percent, of Mississippians favor expanding Medicaid, including 46 percent of those surveyed who identify as Republicans.

“So I say to the Mississippi Legislature, not to expand Medicaid is now going against the grain of the wishes of the people,” Truly said.

What happens with Medicaid distribution could change in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s policy proposals, but Congress would have to approve many of those changes before states could implement them.

Email state reporter Arielle Dreher at arielle@jacksonfreepress.com.

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9

TALK | city

Debate over Neighborhood Gates Continues

by Tim Summers Jr.

C

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

Jackson Police Department Precinct 4 Commander Keith Freeman said the gates pose a problem for safety officials in time of emergency.

“It may be good for those that live there, but it kind of makes it a longer delay for the police, fire and ambulance to get in,” Freeman said.

He said police receive some calls for service in that area, but that it is normally relatively quiet.

Perceptions of Safety

Dr. E. J. Blakely, a leading expert on neighborhood gating and urban planning studied the effects of intentional segregation on cities while at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley.

Blakeley wrote in 1998 that studies have found little evidence that the safety residents might feel from living behind gates is real.

“The ambiguous and spotty successes and failures of gates and barricades as measures to control crime indicate that although people may feel safer, they probably are not significantly safer,” Blakely wrote.

“Thus, fear and anxiety feed on themselves. Gates and walls reflect fear and serve as daily reminders of the perceived dangers on the other side at the same time they do little to improve the reality.”

Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote, the principal author of the ordinance, said public input would factor into the next iteration of the neighborhood gating ordinance, with no set date to appear in front of the council.

“Thanks for everybody’s efforts here,” Foote said, “and hopefully we will get this all ironed out soon.”

Email city reporter Tim Summers Jr. at tim@jacksonfreepress.com and follow him on Twitter at @tims_alive for breaking news.

See more local news at jfp.ms/localnews.

Tim Summers Jr.

arl Menist, a resident of the Wood- exclusion and segregation. “My family has that a lot of people particularly next to land Hills neighborhood in Jack- lived in that house since 1968,” resident high-traffic areas want that if it is feasible.” son, showed up to a Nov. 14 city- Amy Kraus said. “We were one of the first Lange, like others, leaned on the ancouncil public hearing to speak out homes in the area.” ticipated increase in property values that he against a plan to gate his community. Men- Kraus said her family helped develop said would happen as a result of the gates. ist says both the property value and tone of the area and now would be excluded from He said that if the council crafts the ordithe charming neighborhood would change the gating of the Woodland Hills area. “It’s nance correctly, then other neighborhoods with a gate installation. really hard to hear that you can put a gate across the city could benefit.

Woodland Hills, he said, already has up in the middle of the street that actually “There is no reason that Presidential low crime and attracts younger families, goes right up to our home,” she said.

Hills can’t be done,” Lange said of a majorwho gates might turn off. “It appeals to “We really want to stay in Jackson. I ity-black neighborhood in Jackson. them, and they like it the way it is,” Menist said, adding, “It’s a lot better than it was a few years ago.”

Mayor Tony Yarber asked the council in early November to repeal and send back to committee an ordinance allowing neighborhood associations to build gates, which had passed months before, back to committee for reconsideration. His office received public criticism about the process the ordinance required for gate approval, including unanimous consent among the residents. The council agreed, moving the ordinance back for reconsideration, prompting a Nov. 14 public hearing.

That hearing split between Residents filled the Jackson City Council chambers, some to speak their minds and people like Menist who do not want others to support their neighborhood efforts, during the Nov. 14 public hearing on gates imposed on his neighborhood the particulars of the ordinance that would permit neighborhood gates. and those who want them to keep possible criminals and high-speed traffic off their streets, which urban plan- am just asking that we keep everyone in our Some proponents of the gating ordiners call “intentional segregation.” thoughts,” Kraus told the council. nance also want to stymie dangerous driv If crime is the concern, Kraus said, ing in their neighborhood. Jacob Stutzman ‘Real Estate 101’? gating it out would only push the problem said that on his way back to his home in

Ted Duckworth, a developer and real- to the neighbors outside the gate, not ad- Fondren the other day, a speeding car estate agent, said that whether a communi- dress the crime itself. “It’s not slowing down passed close to his young son. ty has a gate can be a factor for some people crime for everyone else until we take some “I’m not sure that they even saw me considering buying a home in Jackson ver- other measures,” Kraus said. and my 4-year-old son in the street, (and) sus choosing to move out to Madison and For others, though, the gates symbol- it scared me,” Stutzman said. “Yes, it has Rankin counties. ize safety and security. property-value concerns, but it also has the

“We are competing against the rest of Alan Lange is a local businessman who safety-of-my-son concerns.” the market,” Duckworth said. started the conservative Mississippi website “People just drive way too fast in there,

“This is real estate 101. When people YallPolitics.com and used to host a blog and this is a way that we can go about solvare looking to improve their neighborhood called jacksoncrime.org, with a large picture ing this issue,” he added. or are out shopping their house, they look of a handgun, that complained about crime at the competition. We are competing in Jackson. When Lange lived on the side Most viral stories at jfp.ms: against the suburbs in Jackson, and we have of Woodland Hills near Old Canton Road, 1. “The Impolite Free Press in the Age of Trump” enough against us.” he had his front door kicked in, house ranby Donna Ladd

Menist, though, said his property has sacked and his car robbed three times.

2. “Queer-Punk Act Faces Protesters in increased in value even without the gates.

“The proximity to high-traffic areas Downtown Jackson” by Micah Smith 3. “The Poverty-Crime Connection” “I can tell you that where I lived, that my is a direct component and almost perfectly

by Lacey McLaughlin property value has increased four and a half correlates to criminal activity,” said Lange, 4. “On Way Out of Jackson, Siemens Addresses times over the last 29 years,” he said. who moved to another location in the ‘Stranded Bills’” by Tim Summers Jr. 5. “Buying Justice: ‘Dark Money’ in Judicial Elec Other gate opponents said is not a neighborhood in 2003. tions” by Arielle Dreher 10 matter of economics alone, but also about “So I think that it’s understandable

Most viral events at jfpevents.com:

1. 2016 Handworks Holiday Market, Nov. 18-19 2. MSO Pops I – Woodstock: Real & Imagined, Nov. 19 3. “The Mikado,” Nov. 20 4. The Craft Beer Industry in Mississippi, Nov. 28 5. Fondren Unwrapped, Nov. 17 Find more events at jfpevents.com.

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11

‘Surviving a Severe Political Butt Whooping’

M

iss Doodle Mae: “Seasons greetings, loyal customers of Jojo’s Discount Dollar Store.

“You already know Jojo does not participate in the ‘Black Friday Sales’ hoopla, hype and razzmatazz. At Jojo’s Discount Dollar Store, every day is ‘Black Friday’ because everything is a dollar. Nevertheless, Jojo loves to treat his customers to a very affordable and stress-free holiday season.

“Jojo’s Discount Dollar Store will host a series of weekly ‘New Era Transition Holiday Sales Events.’ Look out for weekly events in isle 7-and-2/5, starting with the ‘Post Election Meltdown Mental Health Therapy Summit,’ which psychologist Judy McBride is hosting. All President-elect Trump supporters are invited to attend.

“Chief Crazy Brother’s Ghetto Science Repertory Theater Troupe will present two special non-traditional, holiday-season theatrical events. The first event will feature a one-act play by the titled ‘Pipeline of Tears: Tribute to the Dakota Pipeline Protesters.’

“The second event will feature abbreviated scenes from the popular and controversial play ‘Hamilton.’ All President-elect Trump Supporters are invited to attend.

“Look out for Congressman Smokey ‘Robinson’ McBride’s anticipated roundtable discussion titled ‘Surviving a Severe Political Butt Whooping’ or ‘Cautiously Extend the Olive Branch.’

“Also, come and enjoy the Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa activities for children and adults.

“During the ‘New Era Transition Events,’ the staff of Jojo’s Discount Dollar Store wishes everyone a happy holiday season and speedy recovery from the Presidential election. Remember: All President-elect Trump Supporters are invited to attend.”

“BIG DEAL” November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

On Twitter, President-elect Donald Trump wrote: “Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!”

12

Why it stinks: Trump’s business interests around the globe are actually a big deal, for several reasons. First, he promised on the campaign trail to operate those businesses via a blind trust, but now that doesn’t seem to be his plan. Second, the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution signals why the media are exploring Trump’s business ventures. “No title of nobility shall be granted by the U.S., and no person holding any office of profit or trust under then, shall, without the consent of Congress, accept of any emolument, office, or title...,” the clause says. Trump’s international business ventures launch U.S. politics into uncharted ethical waters, whether he likes to admit it or not.

Keep Fighting for Transparency in Mississippi

W

hile the fight for the Legislature’s contract with nonprofit EdBuild dominated headlines this past week, it is important to not get lost in the weeds. By this, we mean that the public needsto recognize that the fight for a single contract illuminates larger problems with the state’s Public Records Act—mainly that the Legislature can refuse to release just about anything it deems privileged to privacy (besides contracts subject to the Mississippi Accountability and Transparency Act).

The state’s Public Records Act, passed in 1983, allows the Legislature to decide its own rules of sunshine regulation. “Nothing in this chapter shall be construed as denying the Legislature the right to determine the rules of its own proceedings and to regulate public access to its records,” it states.

So yes, while the contract with EdBuild and all contracts that taxpayer dollars pay for should go public on the Transparency Mississippi website, the details of negotiations, like emails between EdBuild workers and legislators discussing how education funding needs to change, will not necessarily be made public. Reporters will ask, but the legislators have the right to say no. And they have before.

In March during Sunshine Week, the Associated Press tested the state’s public-records waters.

It requested emails from Gov. Phil Bryant, House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves.

Bryant was the only top state leader who released emails to the AP. Gunn told the AP that the Public Records Act does not apply to members of the

Legislature. “Gunn also wrote that disclosing the requested records would endanger the privacy of other legislators and other constituents ‘who should be able to expect a private communication with his or her legislator about policy,’” AP reported.

Welcome to daily reporting on the #msleg.

Going forward, especially with the supermajority’s eye on privatization in state agencies and their own contracts apparently, the fight for transparency will only get muddier. In recent budget hearings, lawmakers from both parties expressed frustration with agencies offering a long list of contractors providing “consultant services” or “contractual purchases” made with procurement cards without further details, revealing one danger of privatization.

That’s not to say public-private partnerships can’t work—they can and do. How the public tracks them, however, depends on what state agencies are required to disclose, and so far, it’s not much.

If privatizing services, like the Mississippi Department of Human Services and other state agencies are doing en masse, is actually more costeffective and beneficial to the state, the public needs receipts. Journalists and members of the public alike should have access to all contracts in order to understand how services changed and how Mississippians are better served because of the switch. State agencies and lawmakers alike need to demand and require transparency of their private partners in order for the public to accurately understand what works and what doesn’t, with attached receipts.

Follow our transparency fight at jfp.ms/sunshine.

Email letters and opinion to letters@jacksonfreepress.com, fax to 601-510-9019 or mail to 125 South Congress St., Suite 1324, Jackson, Mississippi 39201. Include daytime phone number. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, as well as factchecked.

Shay Lawrence-Love

EDITORIAL Assistant Editor Amber Helsel Reporters Arielle Dreher,Tim Summers Jr. Education Reporting Fellow Sierra Mannie JFP Daily Editor Dustin Cardon Music Editor Micah Smith Events Listings Editor Tyler Edwards Writers Richard Coupe, Bryan Flynn, Shelby Scott Harris, Mike McDonald, Greg Pigott, Julie Skipper Consulting Editor JoAnne Prichard Morris ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY Art Director Kristin Brenemen Advertising Designer Zilpha Young Staff Photographer Imani Khayyam ADVERTISING SALES Advertising Director Kimberly Griffin Sales and Marketing Consultants Myron Cathey, Roberta Wilkerson Sales Assistant Mary Osborne BUSINESS AND OPERATIONS Distribution Manager Richard Laswell Distribution Raymond Carmeans, Clint Dear, Michael McDonald, Ruby Parks Assistant to the CEO Inga-Lill Sjostrom Operations Consultant David Joseph ONLINE Web Editor Dustin Cardon Web Designer Montroe Headd CONTACT US: Letters letters@jacksonfreepress.com Editorial editor@jacksonfreepress.com Queries submissions@jacksonfreepress.com Listings events@jacksonfreepress.com Advertising ads@jacksonfreepress.com Publisher todd@jacksonfreepress.com News tips news@jacksonfreepress.com Fashion style@jacksonfreepress.com Jackson Free Press 125 South Congress Street, Suite 1324 Jackson, Mississippi 39201 Editorial (601) 362-6121 Sales (601) 362-6121 Fax (601) 510-9019 Daily updates at jacksonfreepress.com

The Jackson Free Press is the city’s awardwinning, locally owned newsweekly, reaching over 35,000 readers per week via more than 600 distribution locations in the Jackson metro area—and an average of over 35,000 visitors per week at www.jacksonfreepress.com. The Jackson Free Press is free for pick-up by readers; one copy per person, please. First-class subscriptions are available for $100 per year for postage and handling.

The Jackson Free Press welcomes thoughtful opinions. The views expressed in this newspaper are not necessarily those of the publisher or management of Jackson Free Press Inc. © Copyright 2016 Jackson Free Press Inc. All Rights Reserved

T

here’s a rumbling in the auditorium. All eyes are focused on the stage, on the latest peddler of promise, the pied Piper of propaganda. Then a white guy sucker-punches a black guy, and a brawl ensues.

This isn’t Monday Night Raw. It’s a campaign rally for someone who aspires to be president of these United States. Really?

Well, the 2016 U.S. elections are finally over, but the fight continues.

I’ve never seen an election that brought out the worst in us, or played to our innermost fears and rawest emotions. Never in my time have I heard a constituent boldly state that it didn’t matter what a candidate said because he or she already had their vote. Regardless of your party affiliation, the reality is that there is work to do.

America is great because of her citizens and oftentimes in spite of her leaders. I have black friends crying because they have no hope, and white friends popping pills because they have no hope, either. Yet, we’re all still here, and therein lies the hope.

If you are a follower of Jesus, then activate your faith. Jesus was no pacifist. He didn’t idly stand by when he saw injustice. He didn’t just pray to Our Father; he got in front of the stones. So should you and I. Don’t hide behind a faith that secludes you or stand behind the anonymity of a blog. Get out there.

Approach a young black male and hear his story. Understand that before he took up arms, he had the same hopes and dreams as the rest of us. For my white friends and closet Trump supporters, honestly define what you mean by “make America great again.”

America is only as great as her poorest citizen—the least of us. Realize that the American dream has become an American nightmare for so many.

I just returned from Europe, where people begged me to stay. In Lisbon I was shocked to learn that once the country’s president is elected, he or

ALL STADIUM SEATING she is taken to Pena Palace, where they are required to sign a pledge promising to do what they said they would do during their campaign. I wondered if we in America could hold our president-elect to such a promise—or better yet, would we really want to?

As I was preparing for my return to the States, my newfound European friends were sincerely concerned for my safety in either a Trump or Clinton administration, but how could I stay in Europe? America is my home, and Americans are my dysfunctional family. The white racist who hung black mannequins from a tree for Halloween and the black man who shot white police officers are both my brothers, and I am my brothers’ keeper.

I still believe.

I believe in the Golden Rule that instructs us to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Malcolm X reminded us that: “You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”

That’s what I believe. I believe in the best of us, and I shall do my part to make America better, not just for my children but for all children.

That’s patriotism. America has seen dark days, but joy does come in the morning. If you’re afraid, I understand, but courage is not lack of fear but acting in spite of it.

So get out there. Cross party lines, for this is our cross to bear. Demand lasting change from your legislators; demand respect for America’s daughters, and love and compassion for her sons. Make the American dream everyone’s reality. Do your part.

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters, or perish together as fools.”

Shay Lawrence-Love works for a local nonprofit and is also an independent financial consultant. She’s an avid reader and world traveler. For speaking engagements, email her at shayLaw25@ gmail.com. Shay resides in the Jackson metro area.

Cross party lines, for this is our cross to bear.

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Election Over, But the Fight Continues

13

On the Road with Mayor Yarber

Digging Up the Roots of Jackson’s ‘Numbing’ Crime

by Amber Taylor, Aja Purvis, Asia Mangum and Maisie Brown Mississippi Youth Media Project, youthmediaproject.com, jxnpulse.com

November 23 - 29 , 2016 • jfp.ms

knew personally who had been murdered, although he would later see dead bodies as a teen growing up during the crack era of the 1980s and early 1990s in the Sub in west Jackson. “It did something to me. I still think about his quirky ways,” Yarber says now of his buddy. “He was the first person I knew … that had been killed that I loved and … I would miss.”

‘I’m gonna call the po-lice!’

Crack cocaine infected much of west Jackson, including near the Yarber family home on Dewey Street in Sub 2 on the west side of Wiggins. But Delores Yarber wasn’t having any of the nonsense.

Mrs. Yarber was 5 feet and 11 inches tall and weighed about 200 pounds. She would stand in the middle of the street with her clunky camcorder resting on her shoulder and yell at them to get off her block.

“I’m gonna call the po-lice!” she would yell, and sometimes she would.

Mrs. Yarber, now 69, still likes to sit on her porch at the house the mayor grew up in, keeping her eyes on the streets of the neighborhood that backs up into a wooded area against Interstate 20 that cut the Westside community in half back in the 1960s.

“I’m not trying to control things,” she said during a summer visit by her son and the Youth Media Project, “but it’s just the way we are in these houses.”

Members of her tightknit family live nearby, often popping in and out of her house and yard, where Yarber stopped on this visit to look under the hood of his 1992 Mitsubishi Mighty Max truck that the family still owns. His face lit up as he described how tricked out it was when he used to drive it, with 15-inch deep-dish rims, four 15-inch woofers, two subs and two tweeters on the inside, among other features.

His father, George, whose family helped settle this part of the Sub, grew up in the neighborhood that “the Crisler brothers” developed for black people starting in the 1930s. His dad died when he was 22, but the mayor’s family can easily visit his fa-

ther’s oldest sister, Gloria Brimage, who lives nearby and who, now and then, tells off her mayoral nephew over how he’s doing his job. Yarbrough Street is a few blocks away;

Yarber said. “Their parents are there a lot of the cases, but (in) a lot of cases, the parents just aren’t us. And they don’t have access to a lot of things we have.”

Eli Bettiga

T

ony Tarzel Yarber, 16, waved at his best friend, Lakenya Bolden, as he drove past him in Jackson’s Subdivision 2 on Aug. 4, 1994. Bolden was driving into the “Sub” on Wiggins Road, Yarber driving out.

They blew their horns at each other.

Friends since kindergarten, the two sophomores at Forest Hill High School were close, and Yarber could not know he would never see his friend alive again.

Bolden and his brother, Karis Jackson, ended up on Deckard Drive on the other side of Wiggins and stopped to talk to some girls. Another group of young men drove up and got out. One of them, Barron Sheriff, reached through the car window and grabbed Bolden’s cellular phone. Then, Yarber’s friend put the car in park and got out and started fighting with Sheriff.

Levonzel Anderson, a 19-year-old who had only observed until then, went into his nearby house and got a sawed-off shotgun and walked up to the crowd around the fight, loading it as he walked.

Anderson raised his shotgun and fired into the crowd, and then directly at Bolden at a close range of three to four feet. Yarber’s best friend died at the scene as Anderson fled. Police later found the sawed-off shotgun leaning against a tree close to the creek bed in the woods near Deckard Drive. He hid from cops for several weeks but was eventually apprehended. He was tried and convicted of murder in Hinds County Circuit Court and sentenced to life.

The death of Yarber’s friend made death a brutal reality for him. “Lakenya was a good kid, a funny kid. He was a teacher’s worst nightmare, but a best friend is a best friend,” Yarber said during a JFP One-onOne conversation at Millsaps College on June 20, 2016. “I still think about how Ms. Carney would give him a paddling to start off the day because she knew she would have to give him a paddling anyway.”

14 Bolden was the first person Yarber

Mayor Tony Yarber peeks under the hood of his 1992 Mitsubishi Mighty Max truck that his family still owns in Subdivision 2 in west Jackson.

that’s the more European way a different family member chose to spell their name, the mayor said, because somebody got in trouble, and ended up changing the spelling. “Then another one left … well, that’s a family secret,” the mayor said, laughing, during the YMP visit.

Mayor Yarber, now 38, is quick to say his strong two-parent family helped keep him out of trouble during a time when it surrounded him.

But Yarber doesn’t judge those who don’t have that stable family. “That’s not necessarily everyone’s testimony,” he said at the Millsaps conversation.

“It is easy for us to say, ‘Well, the parents,’” Yarber continued. “That’s a great way for us to pass it off, and then it isn’t an issue of the village. Then it is an issue of who lives in the hut.”

The mayor emphasized that many parents want to do better, but don’t have the resources. “We can’t just get into this mode or idea of, ‘Where are the parents?’”

‘Cocaine Being Rocked Up’

Yarber may have had a strong family, but he still could have turned the wrong direction. He and Bolden spent their adolescence surrounded by crack and guns, as a white tax base was fleeing a newly integrated city. That flight and crime wave left a deepening poverty, worsened by the loss of potential breadwinners to drugs and prison.

Yarber’s uncle was even addicted to crack.

“I remember everything about it,” Yarber said of the crack era during the June 15, tour with YMP student journalists. “I remember, alright. I remember an uncle who would steal everything that wasn’t tied down. I remember beautiful women who we all adored and idolized within the neighborhood who, within a year, you wouldn’t even know who they were because of what they had done to their bodies.”

America’s crack era—when many poor African Americans were swept into an more ROOTS OF CRIME, see page 16

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15

ROOTS OF CRIME from page 14

Courtesy Tony yarber

epidemic fueled by the cheaper form of co- United States, and those who carry them to stress syndrome, which leads to depression, mentor, and a philanthropist, who helped caine from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s— defend themselves often end up dead or in substance abuse, behavioral disorders, inat- her get on a better track. “Always have was a time when Jackson murders averaged prison for using them. tention (often misdiagnosed as ADD) and somebody you can talk to about anything,” from 80 to 90 a year, Yarber more violence, Dr. Denise Sher- she said. “It doesn’t have to be a parent, but said; now, the city sees about rington, a New Orleans-based just someone you can trust. Also surround a third of that number a trauma expert, reports. Adults yourself with people who motivate you and year. Crack also brought must not “normalize” children’s bring positive energy into your life.” economic devastation and trauma, she warns. Instead of Briggs said it’s tough to break the cydecay to communities like leading with “What’s wrong cle, though. “What’s going on in Jackson the Sub, the Washington with our youth?,” Sherrington is similar to what was going on in Chicago Addition and others. suggests, “ask “What happened when I was younger,” she said. “I believe

“People that, you know, to our youth?” She also added Mayor Yarber has a lot on his hands.” we looked up to and considduring a presentation in New Yarber told a story of a young man ered to be some of our idols, Orleans that praying for kids who tried to break into his house as his men, they went from that to with PTSD isn’t enough; they friend was breaking into his car. “You know, begging us for money. We’re need treatment and policies to me being foolish and young at the time, I kids. ‘Gimme five dollars, prevent “re-traumatization.” started chasing them, and one of the guys little brother,’” Yarber said.

Many public-health experts and myself, we fight,” Yarber said.

Although friends who believe at-risk youth are best But the real story was the young man’s were involved in drug gangs helped by “credible messengers” past. “His caseworker said that something tried to draw Yarber into who have seen what they’ve seen, very similar had happened to this kid A Yarber family portrait from left: father George, mother selling crack—he even held and maybe have served time in maybe two months ago. … The fact that Delores, sister Trena and future mayor, Tony. crack on the corner—he the system and still managed to he would continue to try to stay in the said he was never tempted rebuild productive lives. That same life and do the same things means to actually sell it, partly because he didn’t Yarber is not unlike many young peo- messenger isn’t likely to look down at the that he was desensitized. … What do we share the same literal hunger and struggle ple growing up now in neighborhoods like kid, or even the family, knowing how the do to make people less callous about these of some of other kids. the Washington Addition, the Brown Bot- cycle actually ensnares kids. things?” Yarber said.

“My parents provided extremely well,” tom, the Virden Addition or parts of Sub 2; Kai Smith, a Harlem, N.Y., gang It is about figuring out the problem, he said. “Both of them were there.” his police chief, Lee Vance, grew up in the and violence expert who had six felonies and then monitoring the intervention, the

Still, Yarber’s friends would create Wood Street area, long notorious for drug and now has six degrees, feels strongly that pastor and former principal said. “The apcrack and sell it right in front of him. “Even and gang activity. Yarber said he remembers young people suffering from the trauma of proach to crime is no different than the apnow I can still walk into places and smell seeing seven or eight dead bodies within 15 community violence and low expectations, proach to a kid that’s having learning disscents that remind me of cocaine being to 20 feet of him before he turned 13. “By mixed with absence parenting, first need to abilities in school,” he said. First, comes a rocked up,” he said at Millsaps College. junior high, it was almost numbing that be “habilitated” before they can be rehabili- conversation to assess the child’s strengths

Yarber knows he was lucky he wasn’t people you knew could get and weaknesses. Then, he said, swept up anyway. “[I]f the police had come, killed, and you not see them “I identify which of those weakall of us would’ve gone to jail,” he said. the next day,” he said. nesses deserve priority.”

That is a reality of young people from

“How do we scope drug-infested Jackson neighborhoods: If Traumatized and sequence those? Do some of someone messes with them, the police will Children the interventions need to be pararrest everyone involved. And during the In 2000, one of Tony allel, or do I scalpel those? And crack apex, black users and sellers got much Yarber’s first cousins was shot in doing that, you prescribe the harsher sentences than users of higher-grade 17 times. He was a father intervention, and you monitor cocaine, who were often white. The federal and a good provider who progress overtime to make sure Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 required that was suddenly missing from that you got exactly what you distributing just 5 grams, or a thimbleful of his children’s lives. need.” crack, bring a five-year mandatory sentence, “I did his eulogy. He

The weakness, the Many young people of color grow up around abandoned houses like this one in Washington Addition. while it took 500 grams of regular cocaine was a year older than me,” mayor added, is in sustaining to trigger the same sentence.

Yarber said at Millsaps. efforts to help young people

Although the crack epidemic is not “What I noticed specifically is that he had tated. He has done that in public schools survive the trauma and change their life what it was then—usage and sales fell dra- six children. All six of those children were and New York City’s jail, Riker’s Island, by course. “We’ve gotten pretty good at prematically in the late 1990s—crack is still left without a father to provide. Those chil- mixing straight talk with high expectations, scribing. We have not been so good at progone of the drugs that devastates parts of dren were traumatized.” he said on a trip to Jackson. ress monitoring, because we’ve been more Jackson, along with sales and use of meth, The trauma of losing parents to vio- Regina Briggs, 52, is also a credible excited about saying that we’re doing the pot and, increasingly, heroin, police say. lence and prison, as well as being close to messenger. She was in the audience at Yar- good work than measuring the work we’re

Firearms are still prevalent, if not more as much bloodshed as the mayor and prob- ber’s talk at Millsaps and revealed afterward doing,” he added. That is, the solutions so; with the state’s liberal gun laws, it’s hard ably the majority of black men and women that she got involved with the Black Gang- tend to be patchwork at best. to take firearms off the streets, Police Chief in Jackson have been, can contribute direct- ster Disciples when she was a teenager in Still, dealing with trauma, which ofLee Vance says, and many young people ly to the ongoing cycles of violence, experts Chicago. It took mentors to help her get ten leads to more violence, should be noncarry them for self-defense. say. Young people who witness repeated through it, she told the YMP. negotiable, if for no other reason than the

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17

ROOTS OF CRIME from page 16 threat it poses to others, Yarber said, referring to the children of his cousin he eulogized. “Six lives with the potential of that trauma, being exponentialized over whatever community they’re living in; the effects could be felt there,” Yarber said.

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and Steffon Butler—former star basketball players at Jim Hill High School who got in trouble and, thus, didn’t finish—came out of a corner store and walked over to greet the mayor. The two young men, former Vice Lords, are part of a group called Undivided that former drug dealer and felon John Knight—a credible messenger— started in the Addition to get young people to not follow in his path and to put them to work cutting grass and doing other neighborhood jobs so they don’t resort to drug Kelsee Ford

‘What Are Their Risks?’

“This used to be one of the two barbershops out here,” the mayor said, pointing as the Jackson Fire Department bus turned back north onto Wiggins Road after leaving his parents’ house. “Of course, everything out here was black-owned.” Except, he added, that one store by a white man, Mr. Garrett. And then there was a store that was Indian-owned at one point that he sheepishly admitted folks in the neighborhood called the “Jew-man store.”

“Nobody knew any better,” he said.

But by now, few local businesses remain in Sub 2, nor in many majority-black neighborhoods in the city. The Metrocenter Mall was a victim of white and economic flight, and crime fears—even though it is still there, with far fewer businesses. But all the city’s movie theaters closed or followed flight to the suburbs. That leaves teens little to do, and few jobs they can easily get to.

“Well, it definitely hurts job potential. … We’re going to pass a brand-new store that they just built here and, typically and I guess you can’t blame them, but they’re primarily owned by East Indians, and their family members work there,” the mayor said. That means they don’t hire many young people from the neighborhood, a problem majority-black communities face around the nation. “And typically if they do, it’s probably somebody who kind of cleans up or something; you know, they give them a few dollars to clean up.”

“The opportunities aren’t there.”

That means that it is hard for families to keep their kids off the streets and learning job skills, much less to build wealth and credit, and it is more likely that their children turn to crime, either stealing to get what they don’t have—like shoes or cell phones—or to get money to buy food, as many children in poor parts of Jackson do. Or they might get pulled into the drug trade, where violence often follows. It can be hard to say no when you’re young, hungry, and have few opportunities and nowhere safe to spend your time.

Compounding the jobs problem, Yarber said, is transportation problems, from a continually under-funded bus system to people who can’t afford cars and gas.

“Our Achilles heel in terms of service delivery is transportation,” Yarber said on 18

the bus in June. “It is the most embarrassing conversation that I have with staff on a weekly basis. The most embarrassing.”

That means young people can’t get to jobs, and older people can’t get to their doctors’ appointments, Yarber said. He admitted that he had come into the job with “this huge vision of creating a more modern transportation system,” but realizes now they had “grossly under-estimated the state of dilapidation of the fleet.”

What lack of funding and organiza-

Regina Briggs used to clean weapons for gang members in Chicago. It took good mentors to help her overcome childhood trauma. She lives in Jackson.

tion ultimately means for young people at the highest risk of committing crime in Jackson is that they don’t get the “wraparound services” they need to steer them a different direction and interrupt the cycle of violence. “You’ve got to drill down and ask questions. What are their risks? And then you determine what the interventions are to those risks,” the former principal said.

“And that hasn’t been done.”

‘Put Them on Some Jobs’

As the bus crept slowly through the streets of the Washington Addition on that hot day in June, Yarber suddenly had the bus stop in the middle of a street. The mayor got out and started interviewing people who stopped by about what needed to happen to reduce crime in the Addition.

“We need to find more for them to do and everything,” said one middle-aged man. “(Help them) go back to school, get your education, work programs, try to help them get jobs so they can have money in they pockets.”

Suddenly, 21-year-old twins Stephen

dealing or stealing if they don’t have jobs.

As the twins left, Yarber continued interviewing people about what was needed to stop crime there. “Get them interactive with the law enforcement, getting them to meet them, and hey, this can be a career that you can go in, and you know, let ’em know that,” another resident suggested.

“That’s a good idea!” Yarber said.

“Yeah, cuz you know we been having a lot of negativity about our police department and everything, so hey, all of them ain’t perfect, but hey, if (cops) know the people in the neighborhood and the young folks in the neighborhood, that builds a stronger relationship,” the resident continued.

Another one offered, “Like a lot of these yards that need to be cut and everything, we just, we do that there and help build them some career-development skills to help them get …”

“… skills, trades?” Yarber interjected.

“Yeah, some skills, some trades, and after that there, see if we can get them and put them on some jobs.”

“OK, alright,” the mayor responded,

adding that the City had started a program called Jackson 500 Workforce Development Program, working with Hinds Community College and Working Together Jackson, to teach Jacksonians “trades” like plumbing and welding. Applicants don’t need a GED or diploma to be accepted.

“Two guys actually were homeless, and they’re actually staying on campus at Hinds now,” Yarber said. “But we’ve got to figure out a way to get more people involved in it and to pay for the folks. Right now I think it’s about 70 people we got engaged.”

Contrary to myths, people in areas like the Addition do want to work, Yarber adds, and they want to learn skills.

“If we talk to 25 people, you may have two who have turned down an opportunity to go to school for free. You may. And I don’t mean math, reading and English. I’m talking about an opportunity to go to take some kind of trade,” he said.

The Vital ‘Wraparound’ Net

“Opportunities, education” are answers for neighborhoods like the Washington Addition, Yarber said, as the bus again eased forward. The mayor then connected the dots on what is needed to get there: First, pre-K kids need a quality early-childhood program that increases their ability to read when they enter kindergarten.

Then, “if they have that ability to read by third grade, of course, and they’re at or above grade-level, the sky’s the limit. We get them in a high school that offers them both college and career-readiness opportunities because everybody’s not interested in going to college.” They get job training, and then put into a job. Through the process, the young people may need mental-health or substance-abuse services right in the community, he said.

That “wraparound” approach may sound simple, but it is tough with underfunded schools in areas where the majority of children live in poverty—a key crime precursor—such as at nearby Jim Hill High School, and a state Legislature that defends less funding for schools with the biggest academic challenges by pointing to more affluent schools as a reason that money is not needed to improve schools.

“So education is going to open the door to opportunities. … We’ve got to create a stronger feeder system over here,” said Yarber, who has degrees from University of Southern Mississippi and JSU. “The system for this area has to be functional. We can’t just have a great elementary program but not have a great middle program. We must have a great middle program, a great

High School in south Jackson is leading the other city’s other high schools in percentage of students who have been charged with a serious offense (6.9 percent), a very serious offense (1.4 percent) or served time in the adult criminal-justice system (12 percent).

One problem is poor re-entry after prison. “Statistically, a vast majority of those folks who are returning to the city from having done crime, having done time—over 50 percent of them—are in south Jackson.

That’s real-life re-entry data,” Yarber said.

“So if we’ve got 600 folks that are returning to the city (from prison) every year, over half of them are in south Jackson.”

Dealing with re-entry—helping former criminals get jobs and start over—is a challenge tat Jackson doesn’t meet very well, Yarber said. It a coordination problem—“in silos, they’re doing good work”— but without an overall map of who is doing what for which person leaving the system.

That means many ex-cons slip through the cracks without proper help to avoid resorting back to crime. Many of them end up re-offending, often with worse crimes, especially if they cannot get a job and support themselves or their families, thus extending the crime cycle.

BOTEC reported on the re-entry

The 225 Most At-risk Teens

By the time the bus carrying Yarber and the Youth Media Project arrived at Lee Elementary in south Jackson, Yarber was talking about the worsening problem of crime in that part of town—a “microcosm” of demographics, with black, white, Asian and Latino citizens.

“Lee Elementary for years was one of the lowest-performing schools in the city,” Yarber said, standing in the heat outside the bus as a YMP video and photography team surrounded him like paparazzi. “They got some different leadership here now, and I think that they’re doing a lot more community engagement kinds of things, and so they’re actually turning that around.”

It’s also a more dangerous community now than it used to be. “Precinct 1 has really started leading the way in crime reduction,” he said, “but the crime was so high that—I don’t want to say this the wrong way because I don’t want to make my chief mad—but how relevant is that data to the people who live in these houses, right?”

A January 2016 report about the precursors of Jackson crime by BOTEC Analysis Corp., commissioned by Attorney General Jim Hood and paid for by the state Legislature, showed that Wingfield

“The only reason I am the mayor is because I didn’t get caught. And that’s just me being real. It’s not that I was just so good; it’s just that I didn’t get caught doing stuff.”

— Mayor Tony Yarber problem. “Educational programs appear to be limited,” it warned. “Programs are available to provide school for juvenile inmates and there are programs to get a GED …

However, not all inmates can get into the program, and equipment is lacking.”

Yarber points to the City’s Fresh Start program to put some previous offenders back to work, but it’s not enough, he said.

That is a primary reason that he convened the City of Jackson Criminal Justice Report Taskforce this summer to take a systemic look at the holes in the net and come up with recommendations to plug them.

“This re-entry task force, it features folks

from the federal system, the state system, local agencies.” They had regular meetings in police headquarters downtown and have issued preliminary recommendations.

“But we just haven’t figured out, yet, how to just create this seamless re-entry program that gets folks back to work, gets folks training, but folks are doing good stuff,” Yarber said.

The BOTEC report found that such coordination is sorely lacking in Jackson, meaning that too many young people who could be saved end up committing crime.

The strongest predictors, it found, are in children who have failed a grade, dropped out, or been chronically absent from school, or who have been involved in the criminal-justice system. Using those risk factors, researchers drilled down into the 30,000 students enrolled in Jackson Public Schools, and predicted that 5 percent, or 1,500, would be arrested at some point; 2.2 percent, or 660, for a serious crime like drug dealing or robbery; and .44 percent, or 132, for a very serious crime such as murder, manslaughter or rape.

Researchers advised, however, that an organized effort to focus “wraparound services” on “a target efficiency group” could use the top two indicators—drop-outs and school absence, and juvenile and criminal arrests—to narrow the list of young people in the needed “treatment population” down to 225 JPS students. Many of those are in the four high schools with the highest percentage of those who commit crimes— Wingfield, Lanier, Provine and Jim Hill.

Those schools also have high rates of poverty among the children who attend them, which is a key crime indicator.

The mayor said Jackson must get organized enough to target kids at the highest risk, who don’t always get the services they need. “One of the things I think the (BOTEC) report didn’t do is it didn’t drill down beyond saying they were at risk,” Yarber said. “So then you’ve got to drill down and ask questions about what are their risks.

Then you determine what those interventions are. And that hasn’t been done.”

Yarber hopes his task force’s findings will help lead to specific ways to reach and redirect those 225 young people. “So those 225 that we’re talking about. Not only must they be identified here, but … then there must be a specific strategic intervention put in place,” Yarber said at Millsaps College.

In a systemic way that has probably never been done in Jackson, Yarber’s task more ROOTS OF CRIME, see page 20

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high school program, and then most importantly, there’s got to be some kind of cohesive systemic pre-K program that’s able to feed into these elementary schools so they have a chance of making it.”

Once those doors are open and the necessary educational pieces are in place, it will unlock opportunities for children of color who now just don’t have access to them. “See right now, if you quit school in 10th grade, and you quit because you never been successful anyway, then you don’t have a whole lot of opportunities,” Yarber said.

“There ain’t a whole lot for you to do other than sell dope or sell other things that aren’t legal, so we’ve got to make sure that we create a successful feeder program for Washington Addition.”

“Of course,” Yarber added, “everything is about money, but there are enough people in the city, in the communities, who do this stuff professionally anyway, somewhere. They can actually create cooperations that offer those opportunities, too, whether it’s a couple of nights a week through volunteerism, through philanthropy. I think it’s there, but how we put all of it together, how we pull all this pie-in-the-sky that I’m talking about down to the ground, you know, it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight.”

19

ROOTS OF CRIME from page 18 force has identified problems from lack of mental-health services, to overcoming media perception about crime, to lack of reentry services, to economic causes of family breakdown, to lack of parental guidance and accountability for juvenile offenders.

The BOTEC report agreed that “deficiencies in family structure,” “weak bonds,” lack of social capital” and “low supervision” are important, but strongly recommended getting past blaming parents or anyone else.

“This study tracks the ‘life course’ followed by individuals from childhood into and out of the public schools, veering into early

she’ll get tired of it and whatever and send me off to my auntie, then I’ll go stay with my mama when she get halfway straight.

Then she don’t be all the way straight so I’ll have to go back and live with my grandmamma. Something like that.”

The cycle usually repeats itself, and then often spreads to offspring, if not interrupted. “[M]any participants in this study were repeating the same cycles of loss that they had experienced as children; having lost their own parents to incarceration, they were now separated from spouses and their children,” BOTEC reported.

Eli Bettiga

Mayor Tony Yarber says organized wraparound services are necessary to help young people of color overcome generational poverty and trauma.

encounters with law enforcement and then the juvenile justice system, and finally into incarceration as a result of serious, often violent crimes,” BOTEC stated.

The answer is getting organized and taking actions to fill the gaps, it warned.

“Rather than dwelling on the incendiary issue of who is to blame, the (attorney general) has asked us for solutions that could interrupt the status quo, which currently generates an intolerably high crime rate.”

November 23 - 29 , 2016 • jfp.ms

‘The Same Cycles of Loss’

Young people in Jackson’s most challenged neighborhoods often don’t “live” in one place for very long; instead they bounce around from place to place, often staying with only one or no parent due to the long cycle of poverty, drug abuse and selling, violence and incarceration that destroys families. (Many with federal charges are sent out of state, too far for families to visit.) Many young Jacksonians tell similar stories.

“My mama was smoking (crack) so she wasn’t stable at all,” one parolee told BO20 TEC researchers. “… [M]y grandmamma,

It’s a cycle that can seem hopeless, especially in a city with as few resources to stop it as Jackson. The mayor can seem frustrated at the enormity of the task, even as he tries to get the agencies organized to deal with it. “After you do a $500,000 study to say what the issue is,” he said during the bus ride with YMP, “there also needs to be some money (to deal with it).”

Yarber wants all the programs in the mix evaluated well. “I don’t really think that we’ve been able to capture best practices, because we haven’t been able to look at the best data because we haven’t had programs that are structured well enough to do that,” he said. When he arrived in City Hall, Yarber added, “there were a lot of studies done and on those shelves.”

Ignoring the best research also means that the default answer to crime in Jackson, is increased police presence and incarceration. That’s a mistake, BOTEC warns, especially for juveniles: “Corrections do not provide correction.” In fact, incarceration is a key indicator for recidivism—re-offending, and often for worse crimes.

Since the 1970s, BOTEC reports, the United States has preferred punishment over rehabilitation, which in turn means that prisoners and thus ex-offenders typically show “low educational attainment, unemployment, substance abuse, mental-health problems and relationship instability.”

Contact with the criminal-justice system is especially bad for kids, and ultimately the community at large.

“Juveniles who spent time in correctional facilities are more likely to drop out of high school and be on public assistance later in life,” BOTEC warned. “Boys who were locked up are less likely to desist from criminal activities in adulthood and have significantly more problems associated with alcohol abuse. Girls who are incarcerated are more likely to become single parents, drop out of high school, and suffer from the effects of poverty and mental distress.”

Not to mention, criminal activity is common within Mississippi’s jail and prison walls. “Illegal stuff going on here affects me,” one female inmate told BOTEC.

“I don’t want to be punished for something I haven’t done.”

Corrections Don’t Correct

The negative effects of the criminaljustice system don’t happen just inside detention-center walls; they occur right on the streets in Jackson’s neighborhoods, the city’s young people say.

Marzavier “Zeakyy” Harrington, a Youth Media Project student, writes about a cop punching him in the stomach while he was in handcuffs last year when he was 16, after his friend flipped off the police.

Young Jacksonians often see police arrest everyone involved in a fight rather than investigating to find the ones who attacked other young people. These kinds of blanket police responses and assumptions that certain kinds of young people are guilty and hopeless, a policing attitude not unique to Jackson, prolong historic distrust between officers of all races and people of color.

Instead, Yarber said, Police Chief Lee Vance wants to help lead his officers into a real “community policing” approach to get to know the young people of the neighborhoods—and to help them.

That is, instead of arresting them from flipping off the police, try to get to know them and steer them a different direction.

Chief Vance said at his own JFP Oneon-One Conversation at Millsaps College on May 10 that even as a child, he knew police often overreacted and used intimidation tactics. “My philosophy is the community-oriented perspective,” Vance said.

Traditionally, community policing means that officers get out of their cars, walk the beat and get to know citizens, including troubled young people, building trust.

“We talk about this stuff weekly, daily, in roll calls,” Vance said at Millsaps. “Don’t get the wrong impression: We’re going to enforce the law, (but) a violent episode doesn’t have to occur every time you arrest somebody. As police administrators, it’s up to us to say, ‘This is how we’re going to operate. If you don’t want to operate like this, you should probably go somewhere else.’”

Better trust, and the belief that law enforcement officers are treating them fairly, can lower crime in an at-risk population, BOTEC reported.

“Police officers and folks who are in that position of trust need to really work to have those kind of opportunities,” Yarber said at Millsaps College.

Yarber emphasized that adults helped him get second chances when he messed up as a kid. Once after he was involved in a gang fight, cops came to his school to get him. But the principal stood up for him, and they let him go.” Still, the mayor came dangerously close to entering the system, which BOTEC reports would make it more likely that he kept re-offending.

That’s why the 225 kids and others need caring adults to stand up for them, Yarber said. “It is not necessarily the issue of the village, but it is definitely an issue of people who are in contact with you,” Yarber said. “We just have to get to a place where we get out of our bubble.”

Yarber used himself to make the point that young people in neighborhoods like Sub 2 can easily go “good” or “bad,” and sometimes it comes down to whether they were swept up into the criminal-justice system at an early age or managed to avoid it.

“The only reason I am the mayor is because I didn’t get caught. And that’s just me being real. It’s not that I was just so good; it’s just that I didn’t get caught doing stuff,” he said. “It’s just that when I was standing on Turner and Dewey (streets) holding crack in a Tylenol bottle, they didn’t stop me.

That’s how come I am the mayor.”

Additional reporting and interviewing

by Ryan Perry and Donna Ladd. Members of the 2016 Mississippi Youth Media Project (youthmediaproject.com) produced this story.

Read a longer version on their journalism site, jxnpulse.com. Email info@youthmediaproject for information on how to publish the students’ work, as well as how to help and mentor YMP students and help sponsor the Youth Media Project. Read the JFP’s “Preventing Violence” series at jfp.ms/preventingviolence.

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Family style barbecue restaurant and catering service in the heart of downtown Jackson.

21

LIFE&STYLE | food&drink

Jamaica By Way of Jackson

by Brynn Corbello

Imani Khayyam

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Richard Higgins (right) opened Taste of the Island in June 2009. He is pictured with the restaurant manager, Clayton Brown (left).

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vibrant palm tree stands on an East Capitol Street business’ sign, sticking out among the gray office buildings and collection of mile-high windows. As soon as people see the tree, they know they have arrived somewhere a little different: Taste of the Island.

The restaurant is the creation of Kingston, Jamaica, native Richard Higgins, and serves the Caribbean food that he enjoyed while growing up in Jamaica.

“When you’re growing up in Jamaica, everybody cooks,” he says, “you watch your parents and … especially if you grew up in a poor part, country part, that’s where you learn how to cook.

“[B]ack home, we have something we call ‘boat.’ Everybody (would) put money together, and we just cook … outside—wood fires, stuff like that.”

Higgins was passing through Jackson in 2006 to visit a friend, and it was at his friend’s house that he met his now-wife, Chandra. The couple married in 2007. He and Chandra opened the Caribbean restaurant in the Jackson area in June 2009.

In the early phases of the business plan, Higgins knew his central Jackson location downtown could be a major factor for the restaurant’s success because it’s a neutral location, he says.

He says that though all of the food is popular at Taste of the Island, some of the most popular are jerk chicken, oxtail, goat and ribs.

The establishment has not only

been a staple of the downtown Jackson culinary scene, but has helped weave together the community through lessons Higgins learned in Jamaica. That includes highlighting the importance of seeing the community as a large family, cooking to please customers and never wasting food while someone else is going hungry.

If the restaurant has any leftovers, it gives them to homeless, Higgins says, and if they can’t find homeless people, they give food away to family members.

He also donates food to Stewpot Community Services and the Mississippi Food Network.

Higgins says it is important for the restaurant to give back to the community. Besides, in the restaurant industry, a lot of food goes to waste, which he believes is wrong.

“(There are) people who don’t even know where their next meal is coming from,” Higgins says. “It’s not the right thing to do.”

Higgins likes being able to add to the Jackson metro area’s melting pot of cuisines, as well as the city, and he says it is customers who are building a place for him. “We’ve got to give thanks to God that everything is working the way it’s supposed to work. … We just keep on going,” Higgins says. “Our goal is to make sure our customers (are) happy when they leave out of Taste of the Island.”

Taste of the Island (436 E. Capitol St.) is open Monday-Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, call 601-360-5900.

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23

THURSDAY 11/24

FRIDAY 11/25

WEDNESDAY 11/30

Thanksgiving Day at the Zoo is at the Jackson Zoo.

Marshall Ramsey signs copies of “Drawing the Line” at Lemuria Books.

1 Million Cups is at Coalesce.

BEST BETS Nov. 23 - 30, 2016

Cardinal Sons and Rooster Blues perform at 8 p.m. at Hal & Mal’s (200 Commerce St.) in the Red Room. Cardinal Sons is a three-piece rock group out of New Orleans, and Rooster Blues is a Tupelo-based blues-rock act. Doors open at 7 p.m. $7; call 601-948-0888; halandmals.com.

Artist Adrienne Domnick’s “Hip-Hop Show Vol. 2” reception takes place Friday, Nov. 25, at AND Gallery and includes pieces such as her tribute to late rapper Phife Dawg (pictured).

THURSDAY 11/24

The Turkey Day 8K is at 7 a.m. at Fleet Feet Sports (500 Highway 51 N., Ridgeland). Overall male and female winners will receive awards. Race day packet pick-up available beginning at 6 a.m. $30, $80 VIP; call 601-899-9696; email chris@fleetfeetjackson.com; raceroster.com.

FRIDAY 11/25

Final Friday is at 5 p.m. in midtown. The monthly event is designed to showcase local businesses and artists based in midtown. Includes studio tours, live entertain-

lighting icons of hip-hop culture. Includes music from DJ Young Venom. Exhibit hangs through Jan. 25. Free admission; find the event on Facebook.

Imani Khayyam,

SATURDAY 11/26

Rock the Block is from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. at One Block East (642 Tombigbee St.). The live deejay concert event features performances from local entertainers such as DJ Kontrol, DJ RPM, Rob Roy and DJ Tidalwave.

Includes a laser show and free glow sticks. $10 admission; call 601-944-0203; oneblockeast.com.

SUNDAY 11/27

The Merchant’s Holiday Open House is from 1 to 5 p.m.

by TYLER EDWARDS at Historic Canton Square (West Peace Street, Canton). In conjunction with the Canton Victojacksonfreepress.com rian Christmas Festival, shoppers Fax: 601-510-9019 enjoy special holiday sales, and complimentary beverages and Daily updates at treats while visiting local businessjfpevents.com es. Additional dates: Nov. 25-26, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Prices vary; call 601-859-5816; canton-mississippi.com. … The “Respect Our Black Dollars” Community Involvement Meeting is at 2 p.m. at Afrikan Art Gallery (800 N. Farish St.).

The event includes a discussion of upcoming Respect Our Black Dollars events and projects. Includes food. Free; find the event on Facebook.

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

events@

Lucky Town Brewing Company brewmaster Lucas Simmons is a speaker for Millsaps Arts & Lecture Series’ “The Craft Beer Industry in Mississippi” on Monday, Nov. 28.

ment, extended store hours, food and drink vendors, and more. Free admission; madeinmidtownjxn.com. …

Hip-Hop Show Vol. 2 is from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at AND Gallery (133 Millsaps Ave.). Jackson-based pop artist 24 Adrienne Domnick presents a new series of artwork high-

Adrienne Domnick

WEDNESDAY 11/23

MONDAY 11/28

Millsaps Arts & Lecture Series’ “The Craft Beer Industry in Mississippi” is at 7 p.m. at Millsaps College (1701 N. State St.). Raise Your Pints President Craig Hendry, co-founder and brewmaster of Lucky Town Brewing Company Lucas Simmons, and Mississippi Brewers’ Guild general counsel Matthew McLaughlin discuss the current status of the craft-brew industry in the state. $10; call 601974-1130; millsaps.edu.

TUESDAY 11/29

The “Paint the Town” TeamJXN Luncheon is at 11:30 a.m. at The South Warehouse (627 E. Silas Brown St.). Speakers Gregory Walker and Benjamin Niemeyer of WOW Atelier in Salt Lake City discuss their 150-foot murals. $30 admission, $20 for members; call 601-336-2028; teamjxn.com.

WEDNESDAY 11/30

David Crews signs copies of “The Mississippi Book of Quotations” at 5 p.m. at the Eudora Welty House (1119 Pinehurst St.). Reading at 5:30 p.m. $24.95 book; call 601366-7619; lemuriabooks.com. … The MPB Dropout Prevention Forum is at 5:30 p.m. at the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Auditorium (3825 Ridgewood Road). The panel addresses the current high-school dropout rate and creates evidence-based strategies to increase the overall graduation rate throughout the state. Free; call 601-432-6267; email shantay.griffith@mpbonline.org; mpbonline.org.

“Paint the Town”—TeamJXN Luncheon Nov. 29, 11:30 a.m., at The South Warehouse (627 E. Silas Brown St.). Gregory Walker and Benjamin Niemeyer of WOW Atelier in Salt Lake City discuss their 150-foot murals. $30, $20 for members; call 601-336-2028; teamjxn.com.

HOLIDAY Turkey Day 8K Nov. 24, 7 a.m., at Fleet Feet Sports (500 Highway 51 N., Ridgeland). Awards given for overall male and female winners. Race day packet pick-up available beginning at 6 a.m. $30, $80 VIP; call 601-899-9696; email chris@ fleetfeetjackson.com; raceroster.com.

Thanksgiving Day at the Zoo Nov. 24, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., at Jackson Zoo (2918 W. Capitol St.).

The Jackson Zoo offers free admission all day in celebration of Thanksgiving. Free; call 601-3522580; jacksonzoo.org.

Merchant’s Holiday Open House Nov. 25-26, 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Nov. 27, 1-5 p.m., at Historic Canton Square (West Peace Street, Canton). In conjunction with the Canton Victorian Christmas Festival, shoppers enjoy special holiday sales, and complimentary beverages and treats while visiting local businesses. Prices vary; call 601-8595816; canton-mississippi.com.

This Hope Christmas Concert Nov. 27, 6-8 p.m., at McLaurin Heights Baptist Church (404 Pemberton Drive, Pearl). The Woodstock, Ga.native contemporary worship band performs a special selection of music in celebration of Christmas. Free admission; call 601-939-3379; mhbcpearl.org.

Madison’s Night Out: Festival of Trees Nov. 29, 6:30-9 p.m., at Madison Square Center for the Arts (2103 Main St., Madison). Includes a silent auction, food, Christmas lights and more. $50; call 601-856-7060; madisonthecitychamber.com.

COMMUNITY 1 Million Cups Nov. 23, Nov. 30, 9 a.m., at Coalesce (109 N. State St.). Entrepreneurs meet to network, pitch ideas and get information on scaling and improving their businesses. Presenters must register. Free coffee provided by Cups. Free; call 601-985-7979; 1millioncups.com.

Black Friday Nov. 25, 11 a.m., at Offbeat (151 Wesley Ave.). Includes discounts on records and exclusive vinyl for sale as part of the official Record Store Day event. Free entry; call 601376-9404; offbeatjxn.com.

Final Friday Nov. 25, 5 p.m., at Midtown Arts District. Includes studio tours, live entertainment, extended store hours, food and drink vendors, and more. Free admission; madeinmidtownjxn.com.

“Respect Our Black Dollars” Community Involvement Meeting Nov. 27, 2 p.m. at Afrikan Art Gallery (800 N. Farish St.). The event includes a discussion of upcoming Respect Our Black Dollars events and projects. Includes food.

Free; find the event on Facebook.

MPB Dropout Prevention Forum Nov. 30, 5:30 p.m., at Mississippi Public Broadcasting Auditorium (3825 Ridgewood Road). The panel addresses Mississippi’s current high-school dropout rate and creates evidence-based strategies to

increase the overall graduation rate throughout the state. Free; call 601-432-6267; email shantay. griffith@mpbonline.org; mpbonline.org.

KIDS “Alycat and the Thursday Dessert Day” Nov. 26, 10 a.m., at Lemuria Books (Banner Hall, 4465 Interstate 55 N., Suite 202). Author Alysson Foti Bourque signs copies and presents a special story-time book reading. $14.95 book; call 601-366-7619; lemuriabooks.com.

SLATE

FOOD & DRINK Millsaps Arts & Lecture Series—The Craft Beer Industry in Mississippi Nov. 28, 7 p.m., at Millsaps College (1701 N. State St.). In the Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex. Raise Your Pints President Craig Hendry, owner and brewer of Lucky Town Brewing Lucas Simmons, and Mississippi Brewers’ Guild General Counsel Matthew McLaughlin discuss the current status of the craft brew industry in the state. $10 admission; call 601-974-1130; millsaps.edu.

the best in sports over the next seven days

by Bryan Flynn

The USM Golden Eagles and the UM Rebels can get bowl-eligible if both can win this weekend. But the way this football season has gone, it seems more likely both will lose and stay home.

Thursday, Nov. 24

NFL (3:30-7 p.m., FOX): Dak Prescott joins a Thanksgiving Day tradition, leading the Dallas Cowboys against their rival, the Washington Redskins.

Friday, Nov. 25

NHL (noon-2:30 p.m., NBC): The top team in the Metropolitan Division, the New York Rangers, take on the No. 2 Pittsburgh Flyers. ... College football (3-6:30 p.m., ESPNews): If the Golden Eagles can win against Louisiana Tech, USM will be bowl eligible for a second straight year.

Saturday, Nov. 26

College football (2:30-6 p.m., SECN): The Egg Bowl features the UM Rebels playing for bowl eligibility and the MSU Bulldogs looking to play spoiler.

Sunday, Nov. 27

NFL (12-3:30 p.m., FOX): The New Orleans Saints get their shot at the top pick from the 2016 NFL Draft, Jared Goff, and the Los Angeles Rams.

“Moana and the Ocean” Storytime Nov. 26, 11 a.m., at Barnes & Noble Booksellers (1000 Highland Colony Pkwy., Suite 3009). The storytime features a picture book based on the upcoming Disney animated film. Free; call 601605-4028; barnesandnoble.com.

“Saving Our Girls” Young Women Empowerment Panel Discussion Nov. 28, 6-8 p.m., at Fannie Lou Hamer Institute (1017 John R. Lynch St.). Miss Black Mississippi USA is the host. The event for young women features a panel discussion with notable women from the Jackson metro area who are active in areas such as politics, media, health and social justice. Free; find the event on Facebook.

Wizard of Oz Auditions Nov. 28-29, 6:30 p.m., at Black Rose Theatre (103 Black St., Brandon).

Children in grades K-12 audition for the upcoming youth production. Free; blackrosetheatre.org.

Monday, Nov. 28

NFL (7:30-11 p.m., ESPN): Green Bay travels to face former MSU star Fletcher Cox and the Philadelphia.

Tuesday, Nov. 29

College football (6:30-7 p.m., ESPN): Tune in for the penultimate “College Football Playoff: Top 25” before the final week of the season featuring conference title games.

Wednesday, Nov. 30

College basketball (7-9 p.m., ESPN3): The UM men’s team hosts Middle Tennessee. … College basketball (8-10 p.m., ESPN3): The JSU men’s team travels north to face Memphis in some midweek hoops action.

Some teams might make a bowl game this year with a 5-7 record thanks to the Academic Progress Rate, but none of those teams will be from the state of Mississippi.

Follow Bryan Flynn at jfpsports.com, @jfpsports and at facebook.com/jfpsports.

SPORTS & WELLNESS Team 650 #OptOutside Nov. 25, 7 a.m., at North Jackson Elementary School (650 James M. Davis Drive). The non-timed 5K encourages investing in family health. Strollers and wheelchairs welcome. Free; call 601-987-3528; email njepta650@gmail.com; eventbrite.com.

STAGE & SCREEN Poet Loyalty: Giving Thanks Nov. 25, 9 p.m., at Soul Wired Cafe (111 Millsaps Ave.).

Includes a wine tasting, vendors, a poetry open mic and a performance from Mississippi-native poet Loyalty, who is now based in Dallas, Texas.

Admission $5 before 10 p.m.; call 601-7900864; email soulwiredcafe@gmail.com; find the event on Facebook.

The Nutcracker in the NeighborHOOD Nov. 29-30, 7 p.m., at Hinds Community College (501 E. Main St., Raymond). The cast performs Christmas interpretations of hip-hop, modern, jazz, tap, African and acrobatic dance. $5 students, $10 general admission; call 601-857-3266; hindscc.edu.

CONCERTS & FESTIVALS Cardinal Sons and Rooster Blues Nov. 23, 8 p.m., at Hal and Mal’s (200 Commerce St.).

In the Red Room. The New Orleans-based Cardinal Sons and Tupelo-based Rooster Blues perform. Doors open at 7 p.m. $7; call 601-9480888; halandmals.com.

The Molly Ringwalds Nov. 23, 9 p.m., at Duling Hall (622 Duling Ave.). The 1980s-themed band is known for its costumes and energetic live shows. Doors open at 7 p.m. $25 in advance, $30 at the door, $3 surcharge for patrons under 21; call 877-987-6487; ardenland.net.

Rock the Block Nov. 26, 8 p.m.-2 a.m., at One Block East (642 Tombigbee St.). The live deejay event features performances from DJ Kontrol, DJ RPM, Rob Roy and DJ Tidalwave. Includes a laser show and free glow sticks. $10 admission; call 601-944-0203; oneblockeast.com.

African Drum and Dance Ensemble Nov. 30, 7 p.m., at Jackson State University (1400 John R. Lynch St.). In F.D. Hall Music Center. The ensemble presents music and dance from Guinea, Ghana, Gambia and Senegal. Free; email lisa.m.beckley-roberts@jsums.edu; jsums.edu.

Muuy Biien Nov. 30, 9 p.m., at Martin’s Restaurant & Bar (214 S. State St.). The rock-’n’-roll band hails from Georgia. Spacewolf also performs. Doors open at 8 p.m. Admission TBA; call 601-354-9712; email ryboltproductions@ comcast.net; martinslounge.net.

LITERATURE & SIGNINGS Events at Lemuria Books (Banner Hall, 4465 Interstate 55 N., Suite 202) • “Drawing the Line” Nov. 25, 11 a.m., Marshall Ramsey signs copies. $39.95 book; call 601-366-7619; lemuriabooks.com.

• “Never Give a Cat a Poodle Cut (And Other Stories About Growing up in Yazoo City)” Nov. 26, noon. Belinda Stevens signs copies. $15 book; call 366-7619; lemuriabooks.com.

“The Mississippi Book of Quotations” Nov. 30, 5 p.m., at Eudora Welty House (1119 Pinehurst St.). David Crews signs copies. Reading at 5:30 p.m. $24.95 book; lemuriabooks.com.

EXHIBIT OPENINGS Hip-Hop Show Vol. 2 Nov. 25, 7-10 p.m., at AND Gallery (133 Millsaps Ave.). Jacksonbased pop artist Adrienne Domnick presents a new series of artwork highlighting icons of hip-hop culture. Includes music from DJ Young Venom. Exhibit hangs through Jan. 25. Free admission; find the event on Facebook.

Check jfpevents.com for updates and more listings, or to add your own events online. You can also email event details to events@jacksonfreepress.com to be added to the calendar. The deadline is noon the Wednesday prior to the week of publication.

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

JFP-SPONSORED

25

DIVERSIONS | music

Blues in Black and White

by Micah Smith 11/23

MARTIN’S ANNUAL

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M

ississippi bluesman Robert Johnson may have only lived to be 27 years old, but his legacy has grown exponentially since his death in 1938, inspiring many generations of artists. Of course, not all those he inspired are musicians, and certainly not all of them hail from the American South.

“Love in Vain: Robert Johnson— 1911-1938” (Faber & Faber, 2016, $29.95), a graphic novel from writer JeanMichel Dupont and artist Mezzo, has al-

big success in France—a lot of press, radio and TV, and we’ve sold 40,000 copies in France,” Dupont says.

“For that kind of book, it’s a big surprise because I think that we wanted to do it for music lovers—blues and rock lovers— but the audience was quite beyond this.

People who didn’t know anything about blues and Robert Johnson discovered it.”

He says an important goal for “Love in Vain” was to help readers understand that most popular music is rooted in the works of Robert Johnson and other blues originators.

It was one of the things that Dupont says fascinated him about the subject: Despite being a product of one area, the Deep South, blues changed all music.

Dupont says his experience as a journalist helped him to delve into the context in which the blues was (Left to right) French author J.M. Dupont and illustrator Mezzo teamed up for a best-selling born, as segregation, graphic novel about blues legend Robert Johnson. racism and the classicism of Mississippi ready seen widespread success in France all influenced Johnson heavily. However, and makes its way to America on Nov. 29. Dupont also learned quickly that there are

Although “Love in Vain” is the first three parts to any documentation on the published pairing of Dupont and Mezzo, late blues icon: facts, legends and things it isn’t their first time collaborating. The that may fall somewhere in between. duo first met about 30 years ago while Du- He and Mezzo decided to use those pont was a music journalist and Mezzo was divisions in “Love in Vain,” visually difa rock bassist and burgeoning illustrator. ferentiating fact from fiction. This allowed Some of Mezzo’s first published artwork them to use famous folklore about Johnwas for a magazine that Dupont wrote for. son, from his deal with the Devil to his

“He started to do comics and things supposed death from poisoned whiskey. like that more, and we started to work Dupont compares their treatment to the on a story,” Dupont says. “But we were magical realism in William Faulkner or young, and we didn’t finish it. Then, he Harper Lee books, or in films like 1955’s did his thing, and I did mine, and we “The Night of the Hunter.” got older and decided to finish what we “With a graphic novel, it’s like a wanted to do, which was work together movie, you know,” he says. “You can tell a and do a good story.” story. There’s a difference. When you do a

While Dupont left journalism and biography, you take the facts, and you tell currently works as an advertising copywrit- the facts; you maybe try to analyze them to er in Paris, Mezzo continued in illustration, say something. But when you do a biopic, becoming fairly well known in the French a movie, you take someone who was a real comic and graphic-novel world for his and person, and you take it as a character. … author Michael Pirus’ “King of the Flies” “That’s the way Mezzo and I are tryseries. When Glénat, the publisher that ing to work. You take this guy, all the things released “Love in Vain” in France in 2014, you know about him, and you try to take approached Mezzo about creating a blues- this and tell the story as if he would be a centered book, he called Dupont and said fictional character, to have something very it was time to work together again. expressive and more artistic.”

“It was a great surprise because it was a For more information, visit faber.co.uk.

Courtesy Faber & Faber

WEDNESDAY

Music listings are due noon Monday to be included in print and online listings: music@jacksonfreepress.com.

Char - Tommie Vaughn 6 p.m.

Duling Hall - The Molly Ringwalds 9 p.m. $25 advance $30 door ardenland.net Fitzgerald’s - Hunter Gibson 7:30 p.m.

Hal & Mal’s - Cardinal Sons & Rooster Blues 8 p.m. $7 Kathryn’s - Larry Brewer & Doug Hurd 6:30 p.m. free Kemistry - Open Mic Night 9 p.m.

601-665-2073 McB’s - Travelin’ Jane 8 p.m.

Pelican Cove - Stevie Cain 6-8 p.m.

Shucker’s - Acoustic Crossroads 7:30 p.m. free

NOV. 24 - THURSDAY Center Stage - Thanksgiving Bash feat. Karen Brown & Jonte Mayon 7-11 p.m. $15 Georgia Blue, Flowood - Kevin Ace Robinson Georgia Blue, Madison - Aaron Coker Hal & Mal’s - Family Jam McB’s - Thanksgiving Party feat.

Don Grant & Andrew Pates 4 p.m.-midnight

NOV. 25 - FRIDAY Ameristar, Vicksburg - Trademark 8 p.m. free Burgers & Blues - Larry Brewer & Doug Hurd 6 p.m.

Char - Ronnie Brown 6 p.m.

F. Jones Corner - The Blues Man 10 p.m. $1; jj Thames midnight $10 Fitzgerald’s - Andrew Pates & Jay Wadsworth 7:30 p.m.

Georgia Blue, Flowood - Shaun Patterson Georgia Blue, Madison - Brian Jones The Hideaway - Splendid Chaos & Dynamite Krank 9 p.m. $10 Iron Horse Grill - YZ Ealey 9 p.m.

Kathryn’s - Acoustic Crossroads 7 p.m. free M Bar - Flirt Fridays feat. DJ T. Lewis free Martin’s - Mike Dillon Band 10 p.m.

McB’s - Phil & Trace 8 p.m.

Pelican Cove - Hunter Gibson & Chris Link 5 p.m.

Pop’s Saloon - Voodoo Gumbo Shucker’s - Crocker & Reynolds 5:30 p.m. free; Faze 4 8 p.m. $5; Josh Journeay 10 p.m. free Soulshine, Flowood - Andy Tanas 7 p.m. free

Soulshine, Ridgeland - Jonathan Alexander 8 p.m. free WonderLust - DJ Taboo 8 p.m.2 a.m.

NOV. 26 - SATURDAY Ameristar, Vicksburg - Cody Cooke & the Bayou Outlaws 8 p.m. free Big Sleepy’s - BARK., Cynical Twins & Alex Pieschel 8-11 p.m. $7 all ages Burgers & Blues - The Derrick Crew 6 p.m.

F. Jones Corner - Big Money Mel & Small Change Wayne 10 p.m. $1; jj Thames midnight $10 Georgia Blue, Flowood - Larry Brewer 6:30-10 p.m. free Georgia Blue, Madison - Jason Turner The Hideaway - Glowdance Party 9 p.m.

Iron Horse Grill - Johnnie B. & Iretta Sanders 9 p.m.

Kathryn’s - Lucky Hand Blues Band 7 p.m. free

Kathryn’s - Amanda Jones & the Pieces 6 p.m. free McLaurin Heights Baptist, Pearl This Hope Christmas Concert 6-8 p.m.

Pelican Cove - Andy Henderson 10 a.m.

Shucker’s - Acoustic Crossroads 3:30 p.m. free Sombra Mexican Kitchen - John Mora 11 a.m.

Wellington’s - Andy Hardwick 11 a.m.; Rocking the Keys 3 p.m.

NOV. 28 - MONDAY Char - Tommie Vaughn 6 p.m.

Hal & Mal’s - Central MS Blues Society (rest) 7 p.m.

Kathryn’s - Joseph LaSalla 7 p.m. free

NOV. 29 - TUESDAY Char - Tommie Vaughn 6 p.m.

Fenian’s - Open Mic Fitzgerald’s - Larry Brewer 7:30 p.m.

Kathryn’s - Brotherz w/ Guitar Daddy & the Hurricanes 6:30 p.m. free Last Call Sports Grill - Top-Shelf Tuesdays feat. DJ Spoon 9 p.m.

Margarita’s - John Mora 6 p.m.

NOV. 30 - WEDNESDAY Cynical Twins

M Bar - Saturday Night Live feat.

DJ Shanomak free Martin’s - Southern Komfort Brass Band 10 p.m.

Ole Tavern - Todd Smith 10 p.m.

One Block East - Rock the Block feat. DJ Kontrol, DJ RPM, Rob Roy, DJ Tidalwave 8 p.m.2 a.m. $10 Pelican Cove - Road Hogs 5 p.m.

Pop’s Saloon - Trademark 8 p.m.

Shucker’s - Greenfish 3:30 p.m. free; Faze 4 8 p.m. $5; Brian Jones 10 p.m. free Soulshine, Flowood - Shaun Patterson 7 p.m. free WonderLust - Drag Performance & Dance Party feat. DJ Taboo 8 p.m.-3 a.m. free before 10 p.m.

NOV. 27 - SUNDAY Belhaven Park - Holiday Peace Community Sing 4 p.m. free Char - Big Easy Three 11 a.m.; Tommie Vaughn 6 p.m.

The Hideaway - Mike & Marty’s Jam Session

Char - Tommie Vaughn 6 p.m.

Fitzgerald’s - Sonny Brooks & Don Grant 7:30 p.m.

Jackson State University - African Drum & Dance Ensemble 7 p.m.

Kathryn’s - Jeff Maddox 6:30 p.m. free Kemistry - Open Mic Night 9 p.m.

601-665-2073 Martin’s - Muuy Biien w/ Spacewolf 9 p.m.

Pelican Cove - Stevie Cain 5 p.m.

Shucker’s - Lovin Ledbetter 7:30 p.m. free

COMING UP

_________________________

WEDNESDAY 11/23

CARDINAL SONS AND

ROOSTER BLUES Red Room

_________________________

THURSDAY 11/24 CLOSED FOR THANKSGIVING _________________________

FRIDAY 11/25

Submit music listings and story ideas to music@ jacksonfreepress.com.

The Mississippi Jazz Foundation Presents

“Night of Musical Artistry” ft.

CORY HENRY & THE FUNK APOSTLES mike burton & the good times brass band and palmer williams, jr.

SATURDAY 11/26

Thursday, December 15

CLOSED FOR THANKSGIVING _________________________

WHISKEY MYERS

MONDAY 11/28

“some call it rebel music, but it’s more like everyday soul”

CENTRAL MS BLUES SOCIETY PRESENTS:

Saturday, December 17 BRICKS IN THE WALL The Sight & Sound of Pink Floyd

BLUE MONDAY Restaurant - 7 - 10pm $3 Members $5 Non-Members

TUESDAY 11/29

PUB QUIZ

w/ Jimmy Quinn Restaurant - 7:30pm - $2 to Play

_________________________

WEDNESDAY 11/30 Restaurant Open as Usual _________________________ OFFICIAL

11/23 - The 1975 - Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex 11/25 - Brian McKnight - IP Casino, Resort & Spa, Biloxi 11/25 - Greater Pyrenees - Proud Larry’s, Oxford 11/26 - Taylor Hicks - Island View Casino Resort, Gulfport 11/26 - Lil Boosie - Republic NOLA 11/28 - blessthefall - Vinyl Music Hall, Pensacola 11/30 - Dolly Parton - Smoothie King Center, New Orleans 11/30 - Jeezy - The Lyric, Oxford

Friday, December 2

CLOSED FOR THANKSGIVING _________________________

_________________________ Get regional picks and other music news every week at The Music Blog at jfp.ms/musicblog.

Wednesday, November 23

HOUSE VODKA

Visit HalandMals.com for a full menu and concert schedule

601.948.0888 200 S. Commerce St. Downtown Jackson, MS

scooter brown band

9-piece pink floyd tribute band

Thursday, December 22

THE VAMPS

jackson’s own premier soul-jazz group

Give the gift of music this holiday season with concert tickets, gift cards & season passes! for more info call: 601-292-7121

JX//RX COMPLETE SHOW LISTINGS & TICKETS

dulinghall.com

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

NOV. 23 - WEDNESDAY

COURTESY CYNICAL TWINS

MUSIC | live

27

BY MATT JONES

45 Fixate (on) 47 “Instead of alien spacecraft, we got fishing line and dangled ___” 51 “Shepherd Moons” Grammy winner 52 Hornswoggled 53 Samoa’s capital 55 “Fake blood was too expensive, so we just used ___” 62 Inside info 63 List-ending abbr.

64 “Everything will be all right” 65 Bird associated with the Egyptian god Thoth 66 Shoe accessory 67 Like meshed fabric 68 Religious offshoot 69 They’re hot in Hanoi 70 Needing a pat on the back?

33 La ___ (Milan opera house) 35 Kind of issues aggravated by gluten 40 Be in a fix 41 It’s way easier to fold than a GPS 46 Unsatisfactorily watered-down argument, in slang 48 Hot tub maintenance task, often 49 Home city of pizza 50 Mineral spring site 54 Cupcake topper 55 Two-decade Laker Bryant 56 Insanely great

“Movies on the Cheap” —working with a low, low budget.

Across

1 Flower’s friend 6 Beaver-made barriers 10 ___ Punk 14 With “The,” groundbreaking Showtime series 15 Jacob’s biblical twin 16 Singer Lorde’s real first name 17 Charity beneficiary 18 “Like” or “leave”, e.g.

19 Chick chirp 20 “We couldn’t get alien blood, so we just sprayed plants with ___” 23 2016 U.S. Open winner Wawrinka

24 Abbr. at the bottom of an application 25 “Ring around the collar” detergent 28 “Of course we can’t have a monster destroy buildings, so we built entire ___” 34 Bit of slapstick 36 Jabba the ___ 37 Anti-___ hand soap 38 Grosse ___, Michigan 39 How hordes advance 42 Mrs., in Mallorca 43 Quentin preceder 44 Ground beef packaging word

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

What do you like about St. Alexis?

28

Troy & Ann Louise Woodson & Cash Eubanks say

“It’s a place where all are welcomed and all are loved.”

650 E.South Street • Jackson • 601.944.0415 Sunday Services: 10:00am & 6:00pm

St. Alexis

Episcopal Church

Last Week’s Answers

For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800 655-6548. Reference puzzle #7989

BY MATT JONES

Down

1 Apt. complex unit 2 Mil. infraction 3 Hi-fi setting 4 It’s passed when someone requests “beer me” 5 “That is,” in Latin 6 “Workaholics” costar Adam 7 “Hey, wait ___!”

8 Put an X on 9 School curriculum categories 10 Portray 11 “Match Game” host Baldwin 12 Run like hell 13 Savion Glover’s specialty 21 Jazz guitarist ___ Farlow 22 Delta competitor 25 Belt place 26 Relative by marriage 27 Dictation taker, once 29 Kofi Annan’s home country 30 Ending for danger or thunder 31 “A Doll’s House” playwright Henrik 32 In advance

57 State with six sides 58 Rabanne of perfume and fashion 59 Approx. costs 60 Little ‘uns 61 Blue-bottled vodka brand 62 Insult ©2016 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@ jonesincrosswords.com)

Last Week’s Answers

“Kaidoku”

Each of the 26 letters of the alphabet is represented in this grid by a number between 1 and 26. Using letter frequency, word-pattern recognition, and the numbers as your guides, fill in the grid with well-known English words (HINT: since a Q is always followed by a U, try hunting down the Q first). Only lowercase, unhyphenated words are allowed in kaidoku, so you won’t see anything like STOCKHOLM or LONG-LOST in here (but you might see AFGHAN, since it has an uncapitalized meaning, too). Now stop wasting my precious time and SOLVE! psychosudoku@gmail.com

Despite your sign’s reputation, you Sagittarians don’t always require vast expanses to roam in. You aren’t ceaselessly restless, on an inexhaustible quest for unexpected experiences and fresh teachings. And no, you are not forever consumed with the primal roar of raw life, obsessed with the naked truth and fiercely devoted to exploration for its own sake. But having said that, I suspect that you may at least be flirting with these extreme states in the coming weeks. Your keynote, lifted from Virginia Woolf’s diary: “I need space. I need air. I need the empty fields round me; and my legs pounding along roads; and sleep; and animal existence.”

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):

“If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet,” said George Bernard Shaw, “you had best teach it to dance.”

This advice is worthy of your consideration, Capricorn. You may still be unable to expunge a certain karmic debt, and it may be harder than ever to hide, so I suggest you dream up a way to play with it—maybe even have some dark fun with it. And who knows? Your willingness to loosen up might at least alleviate the angst your skeleton causes you—and may ultimately transform it in some unpredictably helpful way.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):

“No pain, no gain” is a modern expression of an old idea. In a second-century Jewish book of ethics, Rabbi Ben Hei Hei wrote, “According to the pain is the gain.” Eighteenth-century English poet Robert Herrick said, “If little labor, little are our gains: Man’s fate is according to his pains.” But I’m here to tell you, Aquarius, that I don’t think this prescription will apply to you in the coming weeks. From what I can surmise, your greatest gains will emerge from the absence of pain. You will learn and improve through release, relaxation, generosity, expansiveness and pleasure.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):

The less egotistical you are, the more likely it is that you will attract what you really need. If you do nice things for people without expecting favors in return, your mental and physical health will improve. As you increase your mastery of the art of empathy, your creativity will also thrive.

Everything I just said is always true, of course, but it will be intensely, emphatically true for you during the next four weeks. So I suggest you make it a top priority to explore the following cosmic riddle: Practicing unselfishness will serve your selfish goals.

ARIES (March 21-April 19):

“Creative people are at greater risk,” said psychiatrist R. D. Laing, “just as one who climbs a mountain is more at risk than one who walks along a village lane.” I bring this to your attention, Aries, because in the coming weeks you will have the potential to be abundantly creative, as well as extra imaginative, ingenious and innovative. But I should also let you know that if you want to fulfill this potential, you must be willing to work with the extra tests and challenges that life throws your way. For example, you could be asked to drop a pose, renounce lame excuses or reclaim powers that you gave away once upon a time.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):

Taurus musician Brian Eno has been successful as a composer, producer, singer and visual artist. Among his many collaborators have been David Byrne, David Bowie, U2, Coldplay, Laurie Anderson, Grace Jones and James Blake.

Eno’s biographer, David Sheppard, testified that capturing his essence in a book was “like packing a skyscraper into a suitcase.” I suspect that description may fit you during the next four weeks, Taurus. You’re gearing up for some high-intensity living. But please don’t be nervous about it. Although you may be led into intimate contact with unfamiliar themes and mysterious passions, the story you actualize should feel quite natural.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):

You are free! Or almost free! Or let me put it this way: You could become significantly freer if you choose to be—if you exert your willpower to snatch the liberating experiences that are available. For example, you could be free from a slippery obligation that has driven you to say things you don’t mean. You could be free from the temptation to distort your soul in service to your ego. You might even be

free to go after what you really want rather than indulging in lazy lust for a gaggle of mediocre thrills. Be brave, Gemini. Define your top three emancipating possibilities, and pursue them with vigor and rigor.

CANCER (June 21-July 22):

Have you been feeling twinges of perplexity? Do you find yourself immersed in meandering meditations that make you doubt your commitments? Are you entertaining weird fantasies that give you odd little shivers and quivers? I hope so! As an analyzer of cycles, I suspect that now is an excellent time to question everything. You could have a lot of fun playing with riddles and wrestling with enigmas.

Please note, however, that I’m not advising you to abandon what you’ve been working on and run away. Now is a time for fertile inquiry, not for rash actions. It’s healthy to contemplate adjustments, but not to initiate massive overhauls.

Services

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Tree Service Real Estate Sales Agent Tri-County Tree Service. Tree Removal, Tree Local builder is looking for a Private/Exclusive real Trimming, Stump Grinding. 20 Plus Years of Experience, Licensed and Insured. estate sales agent. Please submit resume with Call 601-940-5499 contact information to career@shoemakerhomes.

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DIRECTV. NFL Sunday Ticket (FREE!) w/Choice All-Included Package. $60/mo for 24 months. No Drivers Needed upfront costs or equipment to buy. Ask about next J&D Transit is hiring drivers for non-emergency day installation! 1- 800-374-1943 transport in the Jackson area. Must be 25 y-o, pass Meet Singles!

Meet singles right now! No paid operators, just a drug screen, and have a clean MVR & background. real people like you. Browse greetings, exchange Shifts require early morning start-up and flexible messages and connect live. Try it free. Call now: schedules. Please come by 120 Southpointe Dr, Ste 800-513-9842

REAL ESTATE

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Real Estate Wanted I want to buy a cash flowing rental property

Local company is looking for drivers to transport

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Hunting Property

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700 acres of prime hunting land. Wilkinson

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):

“Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves,” writes psychoanalytic writer Adam Phillips.

Where do you fit on this scale, Leo? Whatever your usual place might be, I’m guessing that in the coming weeks you will approach record-breaking levels in your ability to handle your own aliveness. You may even summon and celebrate massive amounts of aliveness that you had previously suppressed. In fact, I’ll recklessly speculate that your need to numb yourself will be closer to zero than it has been since you were 5 years old. (I could be exaggerating a bit, but maybe not!)

County. $3,250,000. Call 985-384-8200.

Land for Sale Nice land for sale in Edwards, Miss. 20 acres for development, good location. 217-898-5212

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):

One of your vices could at least temporarily act as a virtue.

In an odd twist, one of your virtues may also briefly function like a vice. And there’s more to this mysterious turn of events. A so-called liability could be useful in your efforts to solve a dilemma, while a reliable asset might cloud your discernment or cause a miscalculation. I’m riffing here, Libra, in the hopes of stimulating your imagination as you work your way through the paradoxical days ahead.

Consider this intriguing possibility: An influence that you like and value may hold you back, even as something or someone you’ve previously been almost allergic to could be quite helpful.

vehicle is provided, paid training, and benefits.

Compensation is $8.50 per hour. Apply online at www.renzenberger.com.

TO PLACE A CLASSIFIED AD:

Post an ad, call 601-362-6121, ext. 11 or fax to 601-510-9019.

Deadline: Mondays at Noon.

CITY OF MOSS POINT CHIEF OF POLICE VACANCY

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):

Do you periodically turn the volume down on your mind’s endless chatter and tune into the still, small voice within you? Have you developed reliable techniques for escaping the daily frenzy so as to make yourself available for the Wild Silence that restores and revitalizes? If so, now would be a good time to make aggressive use of those capacities. And if you haven’t attended well to these rituals of self-care, please remedy the situation. Claim more power to commune with your depths. In the coming weeks, most of your best information will flow from the sweet darkness.

employment drug screen is required. A company

The City of Moss Point is accepting applications and resumes for Chief of Police.

For more information or to download an application please visit

cityofmosspoint.org/departments/human-resources/current-job-openings

Applications, resumes with a cover letter, and salary requirements should be turned in to Human Resources by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, December 2, 2016.

The City of Moss Point is an Equal Opportunity Employer

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):

Between now and the solstice on Dec. 21, you will have extraordinary power to transform into a more practical, wellgrounded version of yourself. You may surprise yourself with how naturally you can shed beliefs and habits that no longer serve you. Now try saying the following affirmations and see how they feel coming out of your mouth: “I am an earthy realist. I am a fact-lover and an illusion-buster. I love actions that actually work more than I like theories that I wish would work. I’d rather create constructive change than be renowned for my clever dreams.”

Homework: What famous historical personage were you in your past life? If you don’t know or weren’t really, make something up. Testify at Freewillastrology.com.

* / 5 & 3 / Terra Renewal - FT CDL A Tanker Driver Needed

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E-mail interns@jacksonfreepress.com, telling us why you want to intern with us and what makes you the ideal candidate.

If you are qualified and interested, please contact us.

We want to hear from you!

Call Jeremy @ 479.462.2756 or Email bthomas@darlingii.com or fax resume to 479.229.3734 EOE/M/F/Vet/Disabled

November 23 - 29 , 2016 • jfp.ms

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

BULLE TIN BOARD: Classifieds As low as $25!

29

PAID ADVERTISING SECTION. CALL 601-362-6121 X11 TO LIST YOUR BUSINESS

This Thanksgiving, Burn the Turkey Join In November And Pay

No Membership Dues Until 2017 And Receive

A Free Fitness Session Check out our Facebook page! www.facebook.com/anytimefitnessjacksonms 901 Lakeland Place, Suite #10, Flowood, MS flowood@anytimefitness.com • 601.992.3488 2155 Highway 18, Suite E, Brandon, MS brandonms@anytimefitness.com • 601-706-4605 4924 I-55 North, Suite #107, Jackson, MS jacksonms@anytimefitness.com • 601-321-9465 2799 Hwy 49 S, Suite E, Florence, MS 39073 florencems@anytimefitness.com • 601-398-4036

www.anytimefitness.com Voted One of the Best Places to Work Out Best of Jackson 2010-2012

------------- H E A LT H C A R E / W E L L N E S S ---------------The Headache Center

Renaissance at Colony Park, Suite #7205, Ridgeland, (601)366-0855 Accurately diagnoses headache syndromes and tailors an individualized treatment plan for you that includes lifestyle modification and FDA-approved medical treatments.

-------------------- HOME SERVICES -------------------Buford Plumbing

5625 Hwy 18 W. Jackson, (601)372-7676 Over 50+ years of experience, specializing in plumbing, air conditioning & heating installation and repair. Area-wide service!

Solar Control

291 US-51 E4, Ridgeland, MS 39157 (601)707-5596 Mississippi’s only full-service 3M Authorized window film dealer.

Services include, residential, graffiti shield and automotive tinting.

Tri-county Tree Service

Jackson, (601)940-5499 Personalized and courteous services to valued customers in Madison, Hinds, Rankin or Jackson County. Contact us today for a FREE NO HASSLE ESTIMATE.

---------------------- AUTOMOTIVE ----------------------J & J Wholesale Service & Repair

3246 Hwy 80 W., Jackson, (601) 360-2444 Certified Technician, David Rucker, has 40+ years of experience.

Mr. Rucker specializes in a/c, front end, part replacement, brakes, select services and repairs. Appointments only.

-------------------- BANKS/FINANCIAL ------------------Members Exchange

107 Marketridge Dr. Ridgeland, 5640 I-55 South Frontage Rd. Byram 101 MetroPlex Blvd. Pearl, (601)922-3250 Members Exchange takes the bank out of banking. You will know right away that you are not just a customer, you are a member.

Guaranty Trust

2 Professional Parkway, Ste A Ridgeland, (601)307-5008 Your friendly source for mortgage advice and service in FHA, USDA, VA, Jumbo and conventional mortgages.

------------------- FOOD/DRINK/GIFTS ------------------Beckham Jewelry

4800 N Hwy 55 #35, Jackson, (601)665-4642 With over 20 years experience Beckham Jewelry, manufactures, repairs and services all types of jewelry. Many repairs can be done the same day! They also offer full-service watch and clock repair.

Fondren Cellars

633 Duling Ave, Jackson, (769)216-2323 Quality wines and spirits in a relaxed environment. Voted Best Wine and Liquor store by Jackson Free Press readers.

Nandy’s Candy

Maywood Mart, 1220 E Northside Dr #380, Jackson, (601)362-9553 Small batch confections do more than satisfy a sweet tooth, they foster fond traditions and strong relationships. Plus, enjoy sno-balls, gifts for any occasion and more!

The Mississippi Youth Media Project is looking for collaborators, donations and volunteers to teach us.

November 23 - 29, 2016 • jfp.ms

Visit youthmediaproject.com to learn how you can help train young people to do great media and learn job skills.

Read student work from summer 2016 at jxnpulse.com.

30

Media: Run YMP stories!

Write: info@youthmediaproject.com The Kellogg Fellowship Leaders Alliance (KFLA) is the fiscal agent of MYMP. Visit kfla.org/MYMP for info.

Thank You to our Sponsors:

McDade’s Wine

Maywood Mart, 1220 E Northside Dr #320, Jackson, (601)366-5676 McDade’s Wine and Spirits offers Northeast Jackson’s largest showroom of fine wine and spirits. Visit to learn about the latest offerings and get professional tips from the friendly staff!

Playtime Entertainment

1009 Hampstead Blvd, Clinton, (601)926-1511 Clinton’s newest high energy video gaming and sports grille destination.

-------------------- TOURISM/ARTS ----------------------Mississippi Museum of Art

380 South Lamar St. Jackson, (601) 960-1515 MMA strives to be a fountainhead attracting people from all walks to discuss the issues and glories of the past and present, while continuing to inspire progress in the future.

Ardenland

2906 North State St. Suite 207, Jackson, (601) 292-7121 Jackson’s premiere music promoter with concerts around the Metro including at Duling Hall in Fondren. www.ardenland.net

Natural Science Museum

2148 Riverside Dr, Jackson, (601) 576-6000 Stop by the museum and enjoy their 300-acre natural landscape, an open-air amphitheater, along with 2.5 miles of nature trails. Inside, meet over 200 living species in the 100,000 gallon aquarium network.

Mississippi Children's Museum

2145 Museum Boulevard, Jackson, (601) 981-5469 The Mississippi Children’s Museum provides unparalleled experiences that ignite a thirst for discovery, knowledge and learning in all children through hands-on and engaging exhibits and programs focusing on literacy, the arts, science, health and nutrition.

---------------- BEAUTY SHOP/SALON ------------------Barnette’s Highland Bluff

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