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At the southwest entrance to the Metrocenter Mall on Saturday, Sept. 3 –  the sixth day of Jackson’s current water crisis – shards of glass cluttered the sidewalk where doors used to be. Inside, a city worker drove a green forklift which left tracks on the marble floor and beige carpet as he reorganized hundreds of pallets of donated water one by one. 

This abandoned mall, where the primary tenants are police and water department, has in recent weeks become the nexus of a city-wide water distribution effort called the Rapid Response Coalition, a partnership between the City of Jackson and volunteers with 30-plus advocacy organizations.

Water donated from across the country is brought here in 18-wheelers and then distributed early each morning to six coalition-run sites in neighborhoods in south and west Jackson, predominantly Black and poorer parts of the city more affected by the water crisis. 

Danyelle Holmes, a member of the Poor People’s Campaign, has spent nearly every day outside at the mall, helping to manage the massive distribution effort that the coalition estimates has put more than an 1.2 million bottles of water into the hands of Jacksonians for free. 

She said the goal is to help the city with its distribution effort and to fill gaps in the state’s response. 

“We’ve seen a lack of response from our government – our state government leadership, and so we decided two years ago when the pandemic hit that we weren’t going to wait on anyone to come and save us,” Holmes said. “So it’s our goal and it’s our mission to save ourselves.” 

READ MORE: Mississippi Today’s complete coverage of the Jackson water crisis

Two and a half weeks into the current water crisis, the coalition has scaled back operations as the city and state have restored the water pressure at the O.B. Curtis Water Plant and turned attention to addressing the boil water notice. This week, only two coalition sites – Westland Plaza and Oak Forest Community Center – are still open daily, with the rest operating just two days a week. Volunteers are prioritizing home delivery, Holmes said. 

Now, the coalition is shifting focus to drawing up demands – tentatively scheduled to be released this week – for a long-term solution to the water crisis. They hope to pressure state leaders to enact solutions they view as more equitable.

There are currently a handful of proposals on the table to fix Jackson’s water system, but every option reportedly entails Jackson ceding some control of its water system to an outside party, be it a state entity or commission, a regional authority, or a private company. 

To many activists, the state and to some extent the federal government bear responsibility for the water crisis, not the city. Any move that infringes on Jackson’s control of its water system seems to suggest the city is responsible for the crisis – a notion they attribute to racism. They emphasize that the water crisis would not have happened without white lawmakers withholding state funding. 

“We’ve only had Black leaders for the last two or three terms, so how can you blame this divestment on the fact that we have Black leadership?” asked Lorena Quiroz, the executive director of the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity.

One proposal in particular – privatization – has been widely condemned by activists. State leaders have suggested that the city could lease its water system to a private company that would manage operations. The second week of the crisis, Lumumba said the city had been in talks to contract out operations and management.

When some Jacksonians hear the word “privatization,” though, they picture a for-profit company outright purchasing the water system.

Private water systems come at an increased cost to customers, though research has shown they are less likely to violate federal clean drinking-water laws than public utilities. 

Private water systems can also be less accountable to the public, which some activists said could be problematic at a time when trust needs to be restored in the system. 

“The thing with privatization is they control what they think is best for us,” said Imani Olugbala, a member of Cooperation Jackson. “If it’s government-led, we have some oversight. If it’s exclusively for profit, we have to pay the price for water, and it’s going to be whatever they say, because that’s the capitalist construction. What’s next, the air?”

Many also noted it’s ironic that state leaders who ignored Jackson’s water crisis get to decide the response. 

“I would’ve liked to see swifter movement on the state-level because it seemed like it was weeks before we heard anything from Gov. Reeves,” said Blaise Adams, a pre-law student at Tougaloo College who was passing out water at IAJE’s pick-up site. “Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been proactively worked on.” 

Quiroz questioned if Jackson’s water system can ever be truly fixed in a stratified, capitalist economy. 

“Water should be free. We shouldn’t have to pay for water,” she said. “That should be something that’s provided by the fucking state.” 

The work of distributing free water might not sound radical during a crisis, but to Holmes and other members of the Rapid Response Coalition, it is a model for how another, better society could function. 

Since the water emergency started, members of the coalition have held an 8 a.m. Zoom call to discuss plans for the day. They decide collectively how to spread out their resources – how much water should be allocated to each of the six pick-up sites based on the amount distributed the day before and who should respond to emergency calls the city’s 311 line receives from Jacksonians who need water.

The approach to activism is known as “mutual aid,” in which people in a community provide resources that the government failed to in a way that aims to not recreate systematic disparities. A term coined by a famous anarchist, mutual aid also aims to create social change by harnessing the collective work to achieve a political end. 

“We create our own system while at the same time pushing to change the current systems that fail people,” said Lea Campbell, the founding president of the climate-justice organization Mississippi Rising Coalition at IAJE’s site on the corner of Fortification and N West Street.

That Saturday morning – the same day Holmes was at the Metrocenter Mall – about 17 volunteers stood between cases of bottled water on the sidewalk. An occasional hitch like the backdoor of a Honda minivan closing slowly held up the line.

Some members donned red to show they were members of the local Democratic Socialist of America chapter; others, college students from Tougaloo and Oxford, wore shirts that said “DO GOOD” and “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.” 

“We got everybody in the house,” Quiroz said. She supervised the line with the attitude of a school teacher (she used to be one) overseeing car pick-up, inviting passersby who stopped to get some water to park their cars and volunteer. 

It’s important for organizations like IAJE to step up during disasters, Quiroz said, because many people can’t afford pricey and personal solutions like buying their own water or installing filtration systems. 

“It’s like the Roe v. Wade decision,” she said. “Folks that have the money can have access to abortion as health care, they just have to get in their car and drive.” 

It can be scrappy work. At the Metrocenter Mall, the coalition’s base of operations was right next to a distribution site run by the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. Stocked with non-potable water, porta-potties, military-style forklifts and dozens of uniformed National Guardsmen, MEMA’s site looked very different from the coalition’s. 

“The National Guard has far more money than we do, the state has far more resources, so we can’t begin to compete,” Holmes said. “That’s comparing apples to oranges.” 

As Holmes talked with Mississippi Today, about a dozen volunteers sat on empty wooden pallets, waiting for the workers inside the mall to finish unloading an 18-wheeler of water. At one point, a city water department employee tried to drive a forklift even though she had no experience. 

Kadin Love, an organizer with Black Youth Project 100, said he thinks the solution to the crisis is better state and local representation for Black Mississippians that will only be achieved if activists from across the country invest time and money in the state at a level that hasn’t been seen since Freedom Summer. 

“Money isn’t poured down here, folks don’t come down here to help us organize,” he said. “We’ve had to address our own issues systematically since basically 1964.” 

His experience this past year watching national news go ignored as it unfolded in Jackson has not exactly left him feeling optimistic. 

“Mississippi was the epicenter of the fight for abortion, but we didn’t see millions of people down here organizing,” he said. “In Jackson, at some of our largest protests we max out at maybe 200, 300 people.” 

“Why didn’t we have any support beforehand?” he continued. “Why are we the last line of defense?” 

The post ‘What’s next, the air?’ Local activists push back on proposed plans to privatize city water system appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Law enforcement officers with several associations have raised money and provided bottled water to fellow officers serving in the Jackson area during the city’s water crisis.

The Mississippi State Troopers Association, Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police, Troopers Coalition and Mississippi Wildlife Fisheries and Parks Foundation have provided about $2,500 worth of bottled water to officers with the Jackson Police Department, troopers serving in Jackson, the Capitol Police and MDWFP game and fish officers in Jackson.

Master Sgt. Scott Henley, vice president of the Troopers Association, said: “I thought about how hard it would be for law enforcement officers trying to work and take care of their families during the water crisis, so we wanted to show our support for them and their families.”

Besides state and federal government emergency crews supplying Jacksonians with drinking and non-potable water, many local and nationwide organizations have supplied and distributed water. While most of Jackson now has flowing water again, a boil-water warning continues into its second month for the city system.

READ MORE: Mississippi Today’s complete coverage of the Jackson water crisis

The post Law enforcement groups provide water for Jackson area officers amid crisis appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Editor’s note: This story contains graphic language. Also, you can read Judge James Graves’ complete dissent at the bottom of this story.

A dissent written by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge James Graves Jr. could play a key role in determining whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal of a case that has, so far, upheld Mississippi’s Jim Crow-era constitutional provision written to keep Black people from voting.

Last month, the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a Mississippi constitutional provision that bans people convicted of certain felonies from voting. White leaders in Mississippi included most of those specific felonies in the state’s 1890 Constitution because they thought those crimes were more likely to be committed by African Americans.

Though attorneys challenging the provision in court say it has continued to disenfranchise Black Mississippians, a majority of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals did not agree. Following the appeals court’s ruling, plaintiff attorneys said they plan to appeal the lower court’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. They have 90 days from the final verdict that was issued on Aug. 24 the file the appeal.

Graves, a Black man from Mississippi who was appointed to the federal appeals court in 2010, wrote a 47-page dissent that outlines the state’s long and disturbing history of racism and its impact on America.

Rob McDuff, an attorney with the Mississippi Center for Justice who is working on the case, said Graves’ dissent could increase the odds the Supreme Court will take up the case.

“A strong dissent like that of Justice Graves’ can highlight for the Supreme Court that this is an important case where the Court of Appeals is sharply divided,” said McDuff, who has argued four cases before the nation’s highest court. “This increases the chances the Supreme Court will take the case although it’s no guarantee.”

READ MORE: 5th Circuit upholds Jim Crow-era law written to keep Black Mississippians from voting

A majority of the 17 members of the Court of Appeals that heard the case acknowledged that the felony suffrage provision, like many in the 1890 Constitution, was intended to prevent African Americans, then a majority in the state, from voting. That reality would be difficult to deny.

“The plan is to invest permanently the powers of government in the hands of the people who ought to have them: the white people,” James Zachariah George, a U.S. senator who was one of the architects of the 1890 Constitution and to this day has a statue in the U.S. Capitol representing Mississippi, said at the time.

But the nine members of the court who made up the majority in the recent ruling said that when state lawmakers added murder and rape as disenfranchising crimes in 1968, “the racial taint” was removed because the original 1890 language crafted by George and others had been amended.

“The critical issue here is not the intent behind Mississippi’s 1890 Constitution, but whether the reenactment of Section 241 (the felony disenfranchisement language) in 1968 was free of intentional racial discrimination,” the nine-member majority wrote.

The majority concluded it was.

“Mississippi (represented by the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch) has conclusively shown that any taint associated with Section 241 has been cured,” the majority wrote last month in an unsigned opinion.

But in his blistering dissent, Graves methodically wrote that the racial taint had not at all been removed by state lawmakers in the 1960s.

He pointed out that the Legislature did not reenact Section 241 in 1968; it simply passed a provision to include murder and rape as disenfranchising crimes. Section 241 would have remained in effect regardless of whether the amendment adding murder and rape was approved by voters.

And perhaps more importantly, Graves pointed out many of the people in the Legislature and indeed the electorate as a whole at that time had been engaged in preventing Black Mississippians from voting and from integrating schools and society. Many of those same people had been engaged in violence against African Americans.

Graves cited Tom Brady, a member of the Mississippi Supreme Court in 1968. Graves pointed out Brady wrote in a book that was available in many Mississippi schools: “You can dress a chimpanzee, housebreak him, and teach him to use a knife and fork, but it will take countless generations of evolutionary development, if ever, before you can convince him that a caterpillar or cockroach is not a delicacy. Likewise the social, economic and religious preferences of the Negro remain close to the caterpillar and the cockroach.”

Graves, in his dissent, also pointed out that in the mid 20the Century while Mississippi lawmakers were removing a racial taint from its state Constitution, according to the majority ruling, white South African leaders were traveling to Mississippi “to learn how best to keep their own Black population disempowered and impoverished in perpetuity,” and earlier Nazi leader Adolph Hitler proclaimed the goal of making a conquered region “our Mississippi.”

Graves cited a passage from a 1960s newspaper article detailing efforts during school desegregation when Mississippians were, according to the Court’s majority opinion, removing the racial taint from the felony suffrage provision of the 1890 Constitution.

“Some husky young men were whipping a little Negro girl with pigtails,” the reporter wrote. “She was running. The men chased after her, whooping and leaping up and down like animals.”

The dissent was filled with such reports of violence and of loss of life for African Americans.

Graves, a Clinton native, was one of the first African American circuit judges in the state – appointed to the post in 1991 by then-Gov. Ray Mabus. In 2001, he was appointed to the state Supreme Court by then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove. President Barack Obama appointed him to a slot on the federal Court of Appeals in 2010.

Graves, in his dissent, recalled his own upbringing and life in Mississippi.

“Recounting Mississippi’s history forces me to relive my experiences growing up in the Jim Crow era,” he wrote. “While I do not rely on those experiences in deciding this case, I would be less than candid if I did not admit that I recall them. Vividly.

“So I confess that I remember in 1963 a cross that was burned on my grandmother’s lawn two doors down from where I grew up,” he wrote.

Graves goes on to recount his experiences with school desegregation, and his disdain after being appointed to the judiciary of having to serve under the state flag that contained the Confederate battle emblem as part of its design.

Graves also highlights actions in 2020 by the Legislature to replace the flag. But after that historic achievement, he pointed out Mississippi to this day is the only state to recognize a Confederate Heritage Month, and while other states recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Mississippi honors Confederate General Robert E. Lee on the same day.

“I recount these events, as a native Mississippian, only to highlight the importance of making the right decision in this case,” Graves wrote.

Read Judge Graves’ complete dissent below. His dissent begins on page 36.

The post This judge’s powerful writing on racism could inspire U.S. Supreme Court to hear Mississippi case appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi law theoretically allows rape victims access to abortion, an exemption state leaders tout. But the doctors and advocates who work with victims say in reality, that access is almost nonexistent.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, allowing Mississippi’s 2007 trigger ban to take effect in July, abortion has been legal in the state in only two cases: when necessary to save the life of the mother and when a pregnancy resulted from a rape that has been reported to law enforcement. 

“It does in fact have an exception for rape and it has an exception for life of the mother,” Gov. Tate Reeves said in a television appearance earlier this year. “I think that there’s no doubt that there are instances, there are individuals that certainly push for exceptions, and that’s okay.”

But doctors told Mississippi Today that they’re not aware of anyone in the state who will provide the procedure for rape victims because of concerns about potential legal consequences and logistical hurdles. 

Mississippi Today surveyed more than 20 hospitals and hospital chains in the state about whether they would provide legal abortions to people who have reported a rape to law enforcement. Some of the state’s biggest hospitals – including the University of Mississippi Medical Center and North Mississippi Health Services – refused to comment at all. 

Of those that responded, none said that its doctors would provide abortions for people who had reported a rape to law enforcement.

“I don’t think people in Mississippi can have comfort around, ‘Oh, if I’m raped, I will have access,’” one Jackson-area OB/GYN told Mississippi Today, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the physician did not have permission from their employer to talk to the media. “You probably won’t. You’ll have to find someone to do it that includes a hospital with the whole team there supporting that, and that’s much more difficult.”

A medical professional could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of providing an illegal abortion. Because for years all of the state’s elective abortions – which includes all procedures that are not medically necessary – took place at Mississippi’s sole abortion clinic, many OB/GYNs around the state lack the training to perform the procedure. 

That means victims of sexual violence will likely be forced to travel hours away from home to end a pregnancy that resulted from rape. 

Reeves’ office did not respond to a request for comment for the story. 

Before Mississippi’s trigger ban took effect, the state’s sole abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, provided abortions for rape victims. The clinic is now closed.

Diane Derzis, the clinic’s owner, said most of the time clinic staff did not know when they were serving a patient who had been raped. But a few times a year, law enforcement came to the clinic to pick up fetal remains, which could be used to gather DNA evidence to identify an assailant.

Derzis said she doesn’t believe anyone in Mississippi will provide abortions for people who have reported a rape.

“They’re screwed,” she said of rape victims. “Plain and simple. No one is going to take the responsibility or the liability … People are scared to death, not just there but all over the country about what they can and can’t do. And they’re just not going to be willing to put themselves or their licenses on the line.”

Even before Dobbs, Mississippi doctors were wary of providing abortions. The Pink House exclusively employed out-of-state OB/GYNs who flew in monthly for a few days at a time. 

Anti-abortion activists protested at the homes of Mississippi-based abortion providers. 

“We go to the neighborhoods and tell everybody in the neighborhood what they do,” long-time anti-abortion activist David Lane told Mississippi Today in June. “They don’t like that. But if it’ll get rid of them, and it’s legal, we’ll do it.”

It’s unlikely that any Mississippi doctors who do provide legal abortions will talk publicly about it – both for fear of legal action and to avoid attracting anti-abortion activists. 

Rob McDuff, an attorney at the Mississippi Center for Justice, which represented the clinic before it closed this summer, said he does not expect to see prosecutions of medical providers for performing abortions under the law’s exceptions. 

“I fully expect that state officials will allow health care professionals to use their best judgment in the difficult situations they will encounter, and I don’t think those doctors and nurses will be prosecuted,” he said. “If any are, we stand ready to defend them without charge, just as we will defend any others who are arrested for abortion-related crimes.”

Mississippi is one of a handful of states that bans abortion but has an exception for rape. There is no exception for incest. 

Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine and an expert in reproductive rights, said that exceptions for rape and incest can serve a political purpose without actually ensuring victims have access to abortion.

“Lawmakers get to satisfy part of their base that is skeptical about their anti-abortion lawmaking, or they get to say, ‘We put into the law these exceptions,’ hoping that people won’t pay close attention,” Goodwin said. “But if you unpack what that looks like, those burdens are inordinate.”

Now that the Pink House is closed, Mississippians’ nearest options for a legal abortion are in Florida, where it is permitted up to 15 weeks of pregnancy, or southern Illinois, where the town of Carbondale has become an access point for people living in ban states across the South and Midwest. 

When lawmakers added an exception for rape to Mississippi’s pre-Roe abortion ban in 1966, they considered requiring a local judge to first certify that a rape had taken place. But they rejected that idea on the grounds that it embarrasses victims.

The exception now requires victims to file “a formal charge of rape … with an appropriate law enforcement official.”

Forensic nurses told Mississippi Today that they’re also concerned about leaving their patients’ ability to access a medical procedure in the hands of law enforcement.

Nationally, only about a third of sexual assaults are reported to police. And only about a sixth of those reports result in arrests. 

In the vast majority of rape cases, the victim knew the assailant, so filing a police report could have life-altering consequences. 

Fear of retaliation, the belief that police won’t help them, and considering the assault a personal matter are among the reasons people choose not to report, according to Department of Justice statistics.

Chance Lovern, a nurse at the Ochsner Rush emergency room in Meridian, said his experience aligns with the national data: Most of the patients he has worked with knew their attacker. 

The sexual assault exams he performs are careful and detail oriented. Patients stand on a sheet to change so any physical evidence can be collected. Nurses document physical injuries like bruises and fractures, and perform vaginal and anal swabs for DNA. At every stage, a patient can ask to stop or skip part of the exam. 

He asks victims if they have contacted the police, but he never urges them to do so.  

“It’s a traumatizing event already,” he said. “It’s going to be their decision in the long run if they want to.”

Alizbeth Eaves, one of the state’s few certified sexual assault nurse examiners (SANE) and the trauma and SANE program manager at Ochsner Rush in Meridian, said the language of the rape exception is also unclear. What constitutes “a formal charge?” Is it simply filing a police report, or does someone have to be charged with the crime?

She recently saw a 16-year-old who had been raped by her uncle starting when she was 14 years old. The teenager’s father caught his brother in the act and called the police. But when they arrived, they initially refused to arrest the uncle.

“The investigator says, ‘She’s 16, it’s consensual, there’s nothing we can do,’” Eaves said. 

Eventually, the uncle was arrested on two counts of statutory rape, stemming from previous incidents. But it was easy to imagine the case taking a different turn.

“If she had gotten pregnant from that sexual assault that day, and law enforcement refused to press charges because, quote, ‘She was 16 and [it was] consensual,’ she would have been forced to carry that pregnancy, because a formal rape charge would not have been filed because law enforcement wasn’t going to do that,” Eaves said. 

A Mississippi forensic nurse who spoke on the condition of anonymity also said she routinely sees police demonstrate skepticism and even hostility toward victims. She has heard officers ask victims whether they actually wanted to have sex with their assailants and suggest that they should not have been alone with them. 

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Mississippi’s trigger ban took effect, Stephanie Piper, sexual assault program manager at the nonprofit Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence, helped a woman who had become pregnant after unwanted sex get an appointment for an abortion in Florida. Instead of a six-hour round trip drive to Jackson, she had a 10-hour round trip to Tallahassee. 

In that case, the woman knew the man who impregnated her and had previously had consensual sex with him. She had no interest in filing a police report. 

“She was scared if she didn’t have sex with him something worse was going to happen,” Piper said. “In my eyes that’s a sexual assault. If she came forward to law enforcement and said everything I just said, they’re probably not going to go forward with the case.”

Lovern, a native of Philadelphia, Miss., grew up in the Pentecostal church, surrounded by opposition to abortion. His work as a nurse has changed his perspective, introducing him to situations where abortion was medically necessary. And he can see how carrying a pregnancy to term could change a sexual assault victim’s life forever. 

“I’m not saying that they wouldn’t love their child any differently, but it’s always going to bring back a physical presence of that assault,” he said. 

The post Can rape victims access abortion in Mississippi? Doctors, advocates say no. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians has received a $5.8 million federal grant to build a new workforce training center to help the tribe up-skill members and combat labor shortages for jobs ranging from IT to health care. 

The U.S. Economic Development Administration funded the grant through the American Rescue Plan Act’s Indigenous Communities program. Choctaw economic development director John Hendrix said the new 50,000-square-foot Advanced Workforce Training Center will open in the Pearl River community in about a year, complete with hands-on equipment and computer labs covering skills from electrical work to phlebotomy. 

“It’s a game changer for the next generation,” Hendrix said. 

The tribe currently has a small center with a few classrooms, but Hendrix said the space doesn’t meet the growing demand for new trade skills. The reservation alone supports about 5,000 workers.

“We’ve got several vacancies,” Hendrix said. “We need health care workers and IT professionals. We have 3-million-square-feet of buildings and need vocational technicians.” 

The facility will offer new skill training and partner with a nearby community college for required certifications. It will also help current reservation employees learn new skills, like management. 

The center will also have a makerspace for advanced manufacturing skills and access to technology such as 3D printers. It will also support entrepreneurs and small businesses as an incubator for start-ups. 

“We have undertaken many projects to help our community members prepare to face a challenging and ever-evolving job market,” Chief Cyrus Ben said in a statement. “This Workforce Training Center is a key component of our strategy to increase the skills of our Tribal members, whether they choose a career on or outside of our Tribal lands.”

The Choctaw are the only federally recognized tribe in Mississippi with more than 11,000 members across 34,000 acres in 10 counties. 

Hendrix said more on-site training for in-demand jobs will give tribal members who aren’t interested in four-year colleges other options. The center will keep tabs on skills needed for jobs on the reservation as well as what is in-demand at nearby private companies. 

“This brings it closer to home,” he said, “and then after a 12-to-16-month program, they can have immediate employment opportunities.”

The post Choctaw tribe receives $5.8 million grant to fund new job training center appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A federal judge has denied a temporary restraining order aimed to prevent a Mississippi police department from violating Black residents’ constitutional rights and acting violently towards them. 

U.S. District Court Judge Tom Lee rejected a restraining order and injunctive relief against the Lexington Police Department, which has been the subject of a lawsuit filed last month by civil rights organization JULIAN and the National Police Accountability Project. 

Lee wrote the depiction of Lexington police’s tactics and harm against Black citizens are disturbing, but the plaintiff’s memorandum is made primarily of claims and assertions not backed by evidence. 

“The list of their unsupported allegations is unfortunately long but nevertheless worth detailing, because by separating out and discarding them from consideration, the picture becomes somewhat clearer, and it is more easily seen that injunctive relief is unwarranted,” he wrote.

The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of Mississippi by five Black Lexington residents against Sam Dobbins, the former police chief; Charles Henderson, the interim police chief; the Lexington Police Department and the City of Lexington. 

Plaintiffs allege the Lexington police engaged in racial and retaliatory abuse and harassment against them and Black residents, including unlawful searches and seizures, false arrests, and excessive force, which violate the First, Fourth and Fourteenth amendments. The plaintiffs said Henderson has maintained the custom of how Lexington police treats Black residents started by Dobbins, and that is the reason why injunctive relief was needed, according to court records. 

Lexington has a population of about 1,800 and is 86% Black.

In his order, Lee lists and breaks down 23 claims he said lack evidence, including that Dobbins continues to patrol in Lexington after his firing, multiple incidents of excessive force during arrests or interactions with residents and that Black residents have been afraid to speak with attorneys or activists due to fear of retaliation.

Dobbins, who is white, was appointed police chief in July 2021. Plaintiffs alleged he led a department practice of violating the constitutional rights of Black citizens. 

In July of this year, an audio recording surfaced of Dobbins using a racial slur and homophobic remarks. He also talked about killing people while a member of law enforcement and shooting one person multiple times. 

As a result, the Board of Aldermen fired Dobbins by a 3-2 vote. Henderson was appointed interim chief. 

The judge wrote there are also unsupported claims made about Lexington’s municipal government: how the city has endorsed the police’s ongoing misconduct and how Board of Aldermen members harassed and retaliated against Black residents. 

Lee also dismissed the temporary restraining order because the plaintiffs failed to show a likelihood that they could prove there were civil rights violations. 

In the case of unlawful arrests, he reviewed several of the arrests the plaintiffs experienced and found that Lexington police had probable cause to make them. 

“Even if the court assumes for present purposes that there was no probable cause for the arrests, and also assumes that the arrests were attended by an unreasonable use of force, the court still finds that plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of proving an official policy of either arresting people without probable cause or of excessive force,” Lee wrote. 

Toward the end of the ruling, Lee notes that most of the plaintiffs’ complaints happened under Dobbins’ leadership. In court testimony, Holmes County Sheriff Willie March said Lexington’s policing has improved and calls he has received from residents about the police have decreased since Dobbins’ firing. 

Before the judge’s ruling, defendants responded to the complaint and denied most of the allegations. Dobbins invoked qualified immunity several times in relation to actions he took while serving on the police force. 

Dobbins also asked that the court dismiss the complaint, deny plaintiffs relief and award him attorney fees, costs and expenses “associated with the defense of the frivolous” action, according to court records. 

The post Federal judge denies restraining order filed against Lexington police appeared first on Mississippi Today.

PHILADELPHIA – Tanya Cook climbs into the gray van and starts her day as she always does: picking up the elderly to bring them to daycare. 

Cook, the transportation manager at New Beginnings Adult Day Care in Philadelphia, has a list that’s shorter today than she planned. Two participants canceled at the last minute, but they’ll have over 50 seniors at the center that day. 

Many adult daycare service providers in Mississippi are struggling or have closed in recent years due to low reimbursement rates from Medicaid and years of legislative gridlock. The centers provide crucial services to elderly and disabled people and allow their caregivers to work and have lives outside of caretaking.

Before COVID-19, New Beginnings averaged around 70 participants per day but now only sees 45 to 60 – still a marked improvement from the 30 or so they saw each day after a multi-month shutdown in 2020.

“They keep saying they’re going to wait until this is over,” Cook said. “I don’t know if this will ever be over. But some of them are slowly coming back.”

Adult daycare is a nearly invisible facet of the care system for elderly and disabled people. The centers provide transportation and meals, in addition to administering medication. Attendees participate in exercise and socialization activities. Often, they serve as participants’ only opportunity for social interaction outside of the home. 

Cook had never heard of adult daycare until she started working in one in Oct. 2017. In that time, she’s driven every route in the center’s service area. It covers eight counties total, stretching as far as Morton, more than an hour’s drive away. 

Cook remembers getting calls from participants one month into the COVID-19 shutdown where they asked: ‘Are you going to come get us?’

 “They’re stuck at home all day, so this is their way out of the house,” Cook said. 

That was the case for Jean Anderson, an 85-year-old Philadelphia native who has been coming to New Beginnings for over four years. After her husband passed away, her case worker asked if she’d like to start attending an adult daycare, and she agreed to try it out. 

“I was getting lonely at the house by myself,” Anderson said. “This keeps you from sitting there and doing nothing all day.” 

There were at least 126 adult daycare service providers across Mississippi pre-pandemic, but around 30% of them have closed permanently over the last few years, according to Benton Thompson, president of the Mississippi Association of Adult Day Services.

 “Their volume dropped due to COVID, and they couldn’t continue operations with the same overhead costs and limited revenue,” Thompson said. 

The bulk of those overhead costs come from staffing, which includes a family nurse practitioner and social worker, along with seven other required positions. Under quality assurance standards set by the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, each facility must maintain a minimum staff-to-participant ratio of one to six, or one to four in a facility that serves a high percentage of people who are severely impaired. 

The vast majority of those who use adult daycare services are enrolled in Medicaid’s Elderly & Disabled Waiver program. The waiver provides home and community-based services for Mississippians who would require nursing home level care if not for the alternative forms of care the waiver provides, like adult day care. At New Beginnings, 98% of its clients are on the waiver. As of June 2022, there were 17,022 waiver recipients across the state, according to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid.

The problem with this system, workers and advocates say, is that reimbursement rates have stagnated while costs have continued to rise, meaning only those who bring in a high number of participants can break even.

Currently, adult daycares receive a maximum reimbursement of $60 per person each day from Medicaid. They can only bill for up to four hours of care, though they’re required to be open for eight.

“We’re at the mercy of (Medicaid) case workers,” said Michelle McCool, administrator at New Beginnings. “It’s all based on numbers, and if they don’t refer clients to us, or if there’s a backlog of people waiting to get into the waiver program, we can’t survive.”

Some legislators have attempted to increase the reimbursement rate for adult daycare services every year since 2015. Each time, it has either died in committee or passed in both chambers, with each side unable to agree on a final version. 

If passed, the bills would have more than doubled the level of reimbursement that adult daycares like New Beginnings currently receive. Their per-person reimbursement would increase to $125 and the centers could also be reimbursed for transportation costs separately. Thompson believes the lack of awareness about adult day services is what has caused this repeated failure to act from lawmakers.

“I think it’s due to a lack of knowledge,” Thompson said. “I think most of them sitting up there in Jackson voting on these bills have never been to an adult day service and don’t understand the benefits.”

Thompson believes that expanded utilization of adult daycares would save the government money in the long run by preventing costly hospital stays and delaying costlier institutionalized care in a nursing home setting. He also pointed to the benefits for the primary caregivers of participants who have them, which sometimes provide the only way for them to run errands, work or just simply have a break.

“If you don’t give that caregiver a break, then they’re going to become a participant (person who needs adult daycare),” Thompson said. 

On Friday, Jeanette Carter is one of the few participants at New Beginnings dressed up for that day’s theme: Remembering 9/11. The 68-year-old is wearing a red, starry tank top and American flag baseball cap. She walks around the room, talking to her friends and looking for places to help out before the scavenger hunt.

Carter has been coming to New Beginnings nearly five days a week for over a year and a half. The only days she’s missed were due to catching COVID-19 in Oct. of last year. 

“If this place was open seven days a week, believe me, Jeanette would be here,” Carter said.

She only started coming to New Beginnings after the previous center she went to closed during the pandemic. In that brief period, she was scared of being stuck at home. 

“I get out of hand at times,” Carter said. “I can’t be nobody else but me and they understand me. I don’t know what I’d do without this place.”

The post Hit hard by pandemic, providers of care for the elderly struggle to stay afloat appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Cassandra Welchlin, executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, and Mississippi Today health reporter Will Stribling discuss the roundtable’s Mississippi Voices project. The project is seeking to elevate the experiences of Black women and girls who face barriers to accessing health care by collecting and sharing their stories.

READ MORE: Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable launches project to highlight barriers to health care

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The post The Pulse: Cassandra Welchlin appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Inside the College Hill Baptist Church in West Jackson, in front of a tall, blue backlit cross, the city’s town hall to discuss its unceasing water woes Tuesday night began with a prayer.

“We thank you now Lord that we have assembled in this place, to discuss issues within this city, particularly our water,” said Louis Wright, the city’s chief administrative officer. “Continue to uplift the mayor as he looks out for the citizens of this community. We pray that Lord you will give us the blessings and the wherewithal that we need in order to overcome the issues that we’re going through.” 

On the 47th consecutive day of a state-imposed citywide boil water notice, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba went into great detail Tuesday night to discuss the logistics of Jackson’s road ahead. During the three-hour meeting, Lumumba talked through bullet points listed on a placard in front of the altar. 

Starting on a more personal note than usual for his recent public appearances, the mayor talked about moving to Jackson with his family at the age of five in 1988. The next year, Lumumba saw the fragility of the city’s infrastructure, he recalled, after some of the coldest temperatures ever recorded in Jackson shut down the water system.

“This is something that has unfortunately become a way of life in Jackson,” he said. Later, he asked the tired faces scattered in the pews in front of him, “How beautiful would it be, for us to say, regardless of party, that we were able to solve this problem in our lifetime?”

Lumumba, along with his chief financial officer, Fidelis Malembeka, pushed back against recent news stories questioning how prepared the city leadership is to tackle the current crisis. Specifically, they defended against the idea that the city lacks a plan, or that it doesn’t truly know how much it would cost to fix the water system. 

The mayor said he feels it’s unfair for state and federal officials to criticize Jackson for not having a full plan when, after he’s shared what planning the city does have, those same officials offer no feedback. 

“There is little to no communication around, ‘Well your plan is lacking this,’” Lumumba said. “When it comes down to it and there’s no funding, it’s later said, ‘You have no plan.’ The reality is that not only this administration, but every administration in the recent history of the city of Jackson has had some type of plan. 

“There’s a difference between not having a plan and not having mutual priority over its funding.”

Pointing to the existence of a “very detailed plan” the city has shared with the Environmental Protection Agency, Malembeka echoed a clarification Lumumba made just earlier this week, which is that the plan is hidden behind a court-ordered confidentiality agreement.

“I want everyone to understand that the city does have a plan,” he said. “Right now we have restrictions because of the confidentiality agreement that’s in place. That’s a very detailed plan, and once we’re able to share it you will see.” 

Mississippi Today could not confirm with the EPA the existence of the non-disclosure agreement by the publish date of this story.  Earlier this year, WLBT reported that neither the city nor the EPA could disclose a report that informed increases in Jackson’s sewer and water bill rates, although it’s unclear if that is due to the same confidentiality agreement.  

Lumumba, on multiple occasions, estimated that fully repairing the drinking water system would cost a billion dollars, although none of the spending proposals the city has released total more than $80 million.

“Someone will say, you have a billion dollar need, but you’re only showing us $80 million,” Malembeka. “Let’s get to the $80 million first. You can’t get to the billion dollars without getting through $80 million.”

As for reaching that goal, he added that earlier on Tuesday the Jackson City Council approved the next year’s budget that includes $30.8 million for sewer repairs and $30 million for water infrastructure. The council also adopted a plan to spend $34 million of Jackson’s $42 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds on water and sewer, which the state will match on a dollar for dollar basis, Malembeka said. 

Lumumba then addressed reports that state lawmakers are discussing a number of pathways that could take Jackson’s water system out of the city’s hands, such as privatization and regionalization. 

“The problem with privatization is that companies aren’t taking over your system in order to be benevolent, they’re not taking over your system just because they want to come help,” the mayor said. “They want to extract a profit from you.”

Policy experts who spoke to Mississippi Today confirmed Lumumba’s concern that private water systems often raise water bill rates, but added that those systems also have less violations of safe drinking laws. Moreover, any rate increases would have to be approved by the state Public Service Commission. 

Regionalization, or combining nearby cities’ water systems, can create “economies of scale,” lowering costs for a financially struggling city like Jackson, those experts said. But the mayor called it a “problematic solution,” questioning whether it would really lower costs for Jackson and how the needs among the different cities would be prioritized. 

After an hour-long, extensive presentation from the two city bureaucrats on Jackson’s financial outlook, officials opened the floor to questions and comments from residents. 

Ronald Gilbert talked about his time working as an operations supervisor at the O.B. Curtis treatment plant for five years. Gilbert was critical of the city’s hiring and recruiting process for plant workers.

“We weren’t hiring the right people in (1995), we weren’t hiring the right people in 2005, and now you’re going to farm it out to other states,” he said, referencing recent support from other states to bring O.B. Curtis back online as part of a mutual aid agreement.

Gilbert added that when he left his job in 2005 to work in Georgia, he doubled his salary “as a grunt.” 

One woman, Evelyn Ford, talked about her challenges picking up water at one of the distribution sites. Ford had gone to get water for other homes, and said that after being told there was a limit on how much water she could get, a state trooper stopped her and asked for her license. The trooper called her “disrespectful,” she said, and later asked her to leave.

“I might be able to get the water, but I felt humiliated,” Ford said. “We’re already having a hard enough time as it is asking for water from someone else, now you’re telling me you’re going to restrict me.” 

Residents vented on issues outside of just water, discussing crime, economic development, roads, and creeks overflowing with sewage. 

Lumumba, summarizing the sentiment he’s shared at press conferences for the last two years asking for outside help with the city’s water system, responded to the speakers bluntly: “You have a city where our needs exceed our ability to pay for them.”

The post In town hall, Mayor Lumumba tackles criticism and deplores plans to take water control away from Jackson appeared first on Mississippi Today.