Working on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic was a challenge for staff at the Singing River Health Care system — a challenge only made harder by staffing issues.
Singing River is hoping to tackle the statewide health care worker shortage directly through its new apprenticeship programs.
The Singing River Health Care Workforce Academy is a community-centered program on the Gulf Coast that aims to create more opportunities for people to become qualified health care professionals.
The academy offers apprenticeships, such as a surgical tech internship and a certified nurse assistant internship, to create opportunities for people to continue working while they learn and accelerate their careers.
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College is working with Singing River on the licensed practical nurse (LPN) apprenticeship program, which hospital officials say is the first of its kind in the state. Jessica Lewis, director of human resources at the hospital, hopes that other hospitals will soon adopt the apprenticeship model to generate more career opportunities for Mississippians interested in working in the medical field.
“We’re putting a huge investment into really training (people) and filling those gaps. The critical piece is making sure that we develop and build pipelines, because we’re going to continue to have staffing crises,” she said. “We have to go out there teaching and training our own.”
The Singing River Health Care system will create more than 220 jobs while educating more than 1,000 students as a result of the program, according to the hospital.
Katherine Klonoski, left, Sonja Jackson and Kellie Powell practice measuring blood pressure and phlebotomy during the Health Care Academy Workforce Development Programs at Singing River Health System in Pascagoula, Miss., Friday, June 24, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Students use practice care techniques during the Health Care Academy Workforce Development Programs at Singing River Health System in Pascagoula, Miss., Friday, June 24, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Allison Gordon, left, and Kellie Powell practice CPR during the Health Care Academy Workforce Development Programs at Singing River Health System in Pascagoula, Miss., Friday, June 24, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Kim Hunt, professional development nurse educator, teaches students about the different chambers of the heart during the Health Care Academy Workforce Development Programs at Singing River Health System in Pascagoula, Miss., Friday, June 24, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Students listen as their instructor teaches about the different chambers of the heart during the Health Care Academy Workforce Development Programs at Singing River Health System in Pascagoula, Miss., Friday, June 24, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Sandra Fitch, from left, Sonja Jackson and Katherine Klonoski practice phlebotomy during the Health Care Academy Workforce Development Programs at Singing River Health System in Pascagoula, Miss., Friday, June 24, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Sandra Fitch, from left, Sonja Jackson and Katherine Klonoski practice phlebotomy during the Health Care Academy Workforce Development Programs at Singing River Health System in Pascagoula, Miss., Friday, June 24, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Students can start in the academy as early as high school so that young people can get exposure to the medical field and make informed decisions about their career paths. Singing River has partnered with the Jackson County and Harrison County high schools to engage 11th and 12th grade students to participate in pre-apprenticeship programs and plans to expand to schools in Hancock County.
Singing River will offer immediate employment to qualified graduates in high-demand critical specialties such as certified nurse assistants, surgical techs and licensed practical nurses.
Kellie Powell, a 33-year-old mother of three originally from Texas, has worked at Singing River as a medical assistant for nine months. She will graduate from the LPN program Sept. 2023.
Prior to joining Singing River, she lived in New Orleans and worked for Ochsner Health System. After being displaced by Hurricane Ida, she describes coming to Mississippi as “a blessing in disguise.”
“My children’s father and I packed for three to four days to evacuate and discovered that we couldn’t go back home after the storm,” she said.
She went to Gautier with her family. Her employers at Ochsner told her to find a branch in the Gulf Coast area and start working.
“I found Singing River in Pascagoula and they hired me on the spot … I didn’t have any interview clothes or a car.”
She hopes completing the program will help her pay off her student loan debt from when she attended college.
“This program is the golden ticket. When I graduate, I will be debt free.”
After graduating, she will sign a contract agreeing to work at Singing River for at least two years after completing the program.
The hospital plans to build a new facility to house this program, which is currently operating in a temporary location, in addition to a community health education center.
Construction for this facility near Ocean Springs Hospital will begin soon and is being paid for with a $7 million grant from the state, Lewis said. Topics explored in the community health education center will include tobacco cessation, first aid, parenting, breastfeeding and childbirth.
There will also be an emphasis on mental health, Lewis said. All of these programs will also be offered virtually through their digital medicine program, a program made by Ochsner Hospital System, that allows individuals to manage one’s high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes insulin from your phone and provides telehealth visits.
When the last patient went inside Mississippi’s only abortion clinic on the final day of legal abortion in the state, escort Derenda Hancock packed up stray bottles of Coca-Cola and water next to the driveway she has guarded for nine years. Wearing aviator sunglasses that hid her eyes, she leaned silently against the pink stucco wall for a moment. Then she walked away.
The Jackson Women’s Health Organization provided abortions for the last time on Wednesday afternoon. Starting Thursday, Mississippi will permit abortions only in cases where the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life — a medically imprecise standard that may force doctors to wait for patients to deteriorate before providing care — or when the pregnant person reported a rape to law enforcement.
The clinic, which also offers contraceptives and other services, will likely close altogether. Director Shannon Brewer and a few staff members plan to move to New Mexico to open Pink House West.
The Pink House spent much of its existence fighting for its survival against laws and regulations designed to make it as difficult and complicated as possible to provide abortions in Mississippi. In the end, the facility at the heart of the case that overturned Roe was able to stay open longer than many others in the region of the country most hostile to abortion rights.
Since Texas banned almost all abortions last September, the clinic parking lot had regularly been crowded with Louisiana and Texas license plates. And for the last 10 days, it became an unlikely island of abortion access when other southeastern states halted the procedure almost immediately after the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
When Brewer arrived at work around 8:15 a.m. on Wednesday, the clinic escorts gathered in the parking lot. They applauded as she walked inside.
“That’s right, the hero of our age,” said John Busby, an anti-abortion protester.
“Turn to Jesus, Shannon! Repent,” shouted another frequent protester, Gabriel Olivier, who remained sitting in his camp chair across the street from the parking lot.
For the last four years, Busby has spent at least three days a week protesting at the Pink House. But he’s not satisfied with its closure.
He plans to travel to other states where abortion is still permitted, to preach and protest outside clinics there. And he wants to see Mississippi pass a “full abolishment” of abortion—no exceptions for rape or to protect the life of a pregnant person.
Cases where a pregnancy endangers the pregnant person’s life are “almost nonexistent,” he said. Between 1 and 2% of pregnancies – at least 350 pregnancies in Mississippi every year – implant outside the uterus and cannot be carried to term. They are always fatal for the fetus and unless treated can cause life-threatening bleeding. Busby doesn’t think abortion should be allowed in those cases.
“The baby either can’t be sustained because of an ectopic pregnancy, or it’s gonna, by a miracle of God, it’s gonna full term…What we do as a human race, we want to say, we know better than what God knows.”
As the first patients arrived before 10 a.m., Dr. Cheryl Hamlin, the Boston-based OB-GYN working her final three-day shift at the clinic, came outside to speak to reporters. Anti-abortion protesters chanted through megaphones while supporters of the clinic blew kazoos.
When Hamlin started working in Mississippi five years ago, inspired to do something after the election of President Donald Trump, she never expected she’d be at the clinic on its last day providing abortions.
“There will be women who will die because their OB/GYN or family doctor or whatever is afraid to treat them because they’re afraid of the implications,” she said. “‘It’s not quite life threatening yet. This may be only 50% life threatening. Or 75. Is that enough? Does it have to be 100%?’”
Sonnie Bane arrived around 9:30 Wednesday morning. She came to sit outside the clinic because the abortion she got there in late 2016 saved her life, she said. She was in an abusive relationship, and while “it wasn’t the easiest decision for me to make,” she’s never regretted it.
“I wouldn’t be the same person and I love who I am today,” she said.
Since the Court’s ruling in Dobbs, she’s spent most days sitting outside the clinic with a group. They’ve mostly gotten supportive honks from passers-by.
“I want someone to drive by that needs to see it,” she said.
Even with the clinic open in Mississippi, access was limited. The mandatory 24-hour waiting period between visits could force people to miss two days of work, especially if they lived far from Jackson. The state already had one of the lowest abortion rates in the country, and many Mississippians traveled out of state for abortions. Reproductive rights advocates say some people believed abortion was illegal already.
Now, people will have to travel hundreds of miles to get an abortion or order pills online—a practice which is prohibited by Mississippi law but which will likely be difficult for law enforcement to stop.
Advocates expect the closest clinic to Jackson will be in Carbondale, Ill., a more than six-hour drive away.
The abortion ban will disproportionately affect Black women in Mississippi, who get about three-quarters of all abortions in the state. Black women also face much greater risks during pregnancy: They are about three times likelier than white women in the state to die of a pregnancy-related complication.
Though southeastern abortion funds have vowed to keep helping patients pay for the procedure and travel expenses, they face legal uncertainty. The Yellowhammer Fund in neighboring Alabama has paused financial assistance for abortion while its lawyers assess whether the organization and patients could incur legal risks, deputy director Kelsea McLain said in an interview with Mississippi Today.
About 12 hours after the Court issued its ruling in Dobbs, she had to call a patient whose appointment was the next day to tell them Yellowhammer couldn’t help pay for the procedure.
“It’s become so accustomed to them that they run into barriers and obstacles that running into another one is not even that big a deal,” she said. “It’s expected. I don’t think it would have made it better, for people to lash out, curse me — but it just broke my heart even more that these people are depending on us. We were revoking that support, and they just understood.”
The Atlanta-based organization ARC-Southeast, which supports people across the South, including Mississippi, has not paused funding.
During the final days before Mississippi’s trigger ban took effect, the clinic escorts were exhausted. Hancock had started showing up at 4:30 a.m. to make sure she got there before the protesters.
“This last year has felt like the other eight put together,” she said.
On Tuesday morning, she sat in a green camp chair next to the driveway, with a waist-high orange and white traffic cone next to her. Olivier, who had started referring to himself as her “media partner” came over.
“What would we be if there was no man here?” escort Kim Gibson said. “At peace.”
“Chaos,” Olivier retorted. “Men run the world. Even just the small amount of authority you’ve been given, look how terrible things have gotten.”
Coleman Boyd, such a frequent presence outside the Pink House that the security guards working there since the ruling have nicknamed him “Ringleader,” came over and started jostling the cone. He sang “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang.
The three security guards who have spent 10 hours a day outside the clinic since June 24 had dubbed the experience “interesting.” One of the anti-abortion protesters repeatedly referred to his “colored” wife over the loudspeaker, and another had told one of the guards, a Black man, that he hadn’t had a father in his life.
“It’s almost like babysitting little children,” said Keswic Farrar. “That’s both sides included. It’s amazing how much they know about each other. They spend so much time hating each other. … apparently everyone’s opinion is the right one.”
“How you gonna insult someone?” said another security guard, who wanted to be identified as KJ. “If your goal is to argue facts and things like that, you can’t resort to petty insults and then say, ‘I’m doing this ‘cause God loves you.’ That ain’t how that works.”
Before 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Gibson looked across the street from the parking lot and recognized 79-year-old Dr. Beverly McMillan. In 1975, McMillan started working at the state’s first freestanding abortion clinic.
“I hope you’re happy for what you have wrought here,” Gibson called to her. “Women dying and babies in trash cans.”
McMillan said that she grew up Catholic but was secular when she moved to Jackson. A year after she started working at the abortion clinic, she encountered Christ and returned to reading the Bible. Then, after performing an abortion, she saw a “perfectly formed little biceps.” It reminded her of her youngest son, a 4-year-old who liked to show off his arm muscle.
“I got this sadness,” she said. “I couldn’t do abortions any more.”
By 1980, she had gotten involved in a local pro-life organization. She has regularly prayed the rosary outside the Pink House since it opened. She understood why Gibson had shouted at her, she said, and she would pray for her, too.
Another demonstrator came over to talk.
“Are you the lady that Kim was hollering at earlier?” he asked. Yes, McMillan said.
“It’s a glorious day,” he said. “I just feel like, go ahead and yell all you want, you know, because it’s a great day.”
Following the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn a federal right to abortion, two Mississippi district attorneys say they will not prosecute those who seek, provide or help someone obtain an abortion.
Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens and District Attorney Shameca Collins, who represents the sixth district for Adams, Amite, Franklin and Wilkinson counties, signed a joint statement published by Fair and Just Prosecutions.
They join 90 district attorneys and state attorneys general from 31 states who pledged to use discretion not to criminalize personal healthcare decisions. With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, individual states can decide how to legislate abortion.
“All members of our communities are our clients – they elected us to represent them and we are bound to fight for them as we carry out our obligation to pursue justice,” prosecutors said in the June 24 statement. “Our legislatures may decide to criminalize personal healthcare decisions, but we remain obligated to prosecute only those cases that serve the interests of justice and the people.”
Prosecutors said enforcing abortions bans goes against obligations and interests they are sworn to uphold. They also said it will wear down trust in the legal system, take resources away from prosecuting other crimes, retraumatize victims of sexual violence and hinder prosecutors’ ability to hold people accountablefor sexual violence.
Collins, elected in 2019 and whose office is in Natchez, did not respond to a request for comment. Owens, also elected in 2019 and whose office is in Jackson, was not available for comment.
Other district attorneys who signed the joint statement represent major cities in the South including Atlanta, Austin, Birmingham, Dallas, Durham, Nashville, New Orleans and San Antonio.
Mississippi is one of 26 statesthat have or are poised to ban or restrict abortion in most circumstances following the Supreme Court decision, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research and policy organization. Most of those states are in the South.
The state is also one of 13 with trigger laws that can go into effect now thatRoe v. Wadehas been overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Under those laws, people who seek abortions or those who perform them can face felony charges and prison time.
In Mississippi, a 2007 trigger law will outlaw abortion with two exceptions: when the mother’s life is in danger or a rape has been reported to law enforcement.
Anyone who performs an abortion here, other than the pregnant person, can face between one and 10 years in prison, according to state code.
Mississippi’s trigger law is set to take effect this week after Attorney General Lynn Fitch certified the law June 27.
A day after the law certification, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization – Mississippi’s only abortion clinic and the subject of the case that resulted in the Roe decision – filed a lawsuit that argued the trigger law is invalid because of a 1998 state Supreme Court decision said abortion is protected under the state constitution.
After a Tuesday hearing, Judge Debbra Halford denied the clinic’s request to block Mississippi’s trigger ban from going into effect.
Not all of the prosecutors agree about abortion on a personal or moral level, but they said in the joint statement they stand together because they have a responsibility not to use the criminal legal system against people for their medical decisions.
“Criminalizing abortion will not end abortion; it will simply end safe abortions, forcing the most vulnerable among us — as well as medical providers — to make impossible decisions,” the prosecutors said.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who recently argued in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that the last half-century of women’s economic advancement negates the need for safe and legal abortion, has closed the gender wage gap.
For white women, anyway.
White women working in the attorney general’s office have seen a median salary increase of a whopping $9,500 in the last few years since Fitch took office, the only demographic to see such a bump. While replacing many of former Attorney General Jim Hood’s employees, Fitch hired so many more white women in higher level positions that women now earn more, on average, than white men at the agency.
The median salary of Black women working for Fitch, however, has dropped about $1,200 since January of 2019, even as inflation soars.
Fitch, the only woman serving in statewide office, has loudly advocated for equal pay as a necessary balance to her other goal of outlawing abortion.
“The task now falls to us to advocate for the laws that empower women,” Fitch said in a statement last Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, all but ensuring abortion would become illegal in Mississippi.
But to some advocates, data from her own office could demonstrate which women she’s talking about.
“She says that she wants to be supportive of all women and we all need pay equity, but she’s not practicing what she says,” said Cassandra Welchlin, head of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, in response to Mississippi Today’s findings. “And Black women are not important to her. Their jobs are not important. Their salaries are not important. And that’s really wrong and really disappointing – completely disappointing – that she would say that she champions equal pay, but yet her own policies, pay practices are not equitable.”
Welchlin also argues that the equal pay law Fitch has touted, which takes effect July 1, actually makes it harder to prove gender discrimination.
Mississippi Today analyzed five snapshots of salary data from the attorney general’s office, one for each year from 2018 to 2022. The data showed that most recently in April, the median salary of 109 white women at Fitch’s office was nearly $73,000, up from $63,000 at the start of Hood’s last year in office, while the median salary of 53 Black women was just over $44,000, down from about $45,500. There were 100 white women and 57 Black women working in the office in January of 2019.
The pay gap between white and Black women in Fitch’s office – where Black women earn 61 cents for every dollar a white woman earns – dwarfs the national pay gap between white and Black women workers, which is 83 cents on the dollar.*
Michelle Williams, a spokesperson for Fitch, rejected the notion that selecting significantly more white women for higher level positions was intentional. She said statistics that show Black women more heavily represented in lower paying jobs are irrelevant and simply reflect the educational attainment and experience of the applicant pool.
“That's not General Fitch. That is a statement about where these women were when they got to this point, and that's not what General Fitch is doing,” Williams said. “General Fitch is doing what she can now with the tools that she has to empower them and to increase their salaries and give better opportunities within the office.”
Carol Burnett, a longtime reverend and director of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative, has spent decades working to improve policies and facilitate career opportunities for working mothers in Mississippi. The Roe decision Fitch helped usher is a blow to Burnett’s work.
“So much of the ground we've lost on women's access to reproductive health has also been the result of a decades-long, big lie put forward by the right-wing to try to erode public support for this incredibly important health care issue for women,” Burnett said. “And the loss of that is going to fall on the backs of women, and it's going to fall most heavily on the backs of low-income women of color. And the consequences are going to be forced birth that imposes a lifelong economic consequence for the women that are being forced into giving birth against their will by people who feel like wearing a mask is an imposition of individual rights.”
Mississippi was the last state in the nation to implement an equal pay law, which is supposed to give women greater avenues to legally challenge pay disparities among men and women who do the same work. Mississippi lawmakers passed this law in the most recent legislative session.
But longtime advocates for working women complain that nuances in the new state law, which permits employers to take into account an employee’s pay history, continuity of employment and negotiation attempts when setting salaries, may actually reinforce wage discrimination. The law took effect July 1.
“We will take a giant leap forward in closing the 27% pay gap – a pay gap that makes it harder for working women and their families, that leads to young Mississippi women taking their talents beyond our borders, and that perpetuates the cycle of poverty in our State,” Fitch said when the equal pay bill was signed.
In her own office, white women have fared so well that the average woman’s salary is now about $1,400 or 2% more than the average man’s, but Black women earn $19,429 or about 30% less than the average man, according to a snapshot from April of this year. In January of 2019 under Hood, white women earned $1,135 less than the average man and Black women earned $18,645 less.
Since then, the attorney general’s office has lost a net of 12 employees, while gaining nine white women.
The 27% pay gap Fitch cites is primarily driven by the type of jobs women, and particularly Black women, hold – and the value that society and the economy places on that type of work – as opposed to unequal pay for the same work. Fitch was able to close the gender wage gap in her office not just by paying women the same or more as men, but by hiring more of them in higher level positions, giving more women the opportunity to serve in roles historically dominated by men.
But when examining the salaries of employees in the same position, slight pay disparities remain. The most common job at Fitch’s office in April was “Attorney II.”
The 33 women holding that job earn $5,000 less on average than the 18 men with the same position. The seven Black women in that position earn even less, $72,156, compared to the median salary of $73,336 for 26 white women, $77,307 for 15 white men and $79,310 for three Black men.
Under Hood, pay disparities existed, but they didn’t always fall as heavily on Black women. In the most common position at the office in January of 2019, Special Assistant to the Attorney General, white men earned the most; Black women earned 98 cents for every dollar a white man earned; Black men earned 96 cents; and white women earned 95 cents.
Fitch has since reorganized the office, changing position titles and categorizing attorneys into three tiers. Williams said Fitch has embraced a new project led by the Mississippi State Personnel Board to create a more fair and equitable system for employee classification and compensation, which took effect Jan. 1. A new law that raises the cap of the attorney general’s pay from $108,960 to $150,000 also raises the cap for staff attorneys to allow the office to pay higher, more competitive wages starting July 1.
Williams said these efforts apply to women working in lower level positions, who have received pay raises under Fitch.
“Those people had been completely forgotten under the Hood administration. They hadn't been getting any raises,” Williams said. “... General Fitch has brought them all up. She's standardized her salaries. She's increased their salaries. And she's given them a better position and better voice and empowered them in their positions that they've got now.”
“You can’t see that in the numbers but I will tell you right now that that is exactly what is happening here right now,” she added.
Williams calculated the mean pay for all attorneys in the office under Hood and Fitch and came up with a similar analysis: White women in that position, which had historically made the least, saw salary increases of nearly $6,000 compared to virtually no difference for Black women or men attorneys.
“We are hiring a lot of younger attorneys, giving them a great opportunity to start their career in the law,” Williams said by email. “Yet, our salaries are still keeping pace with what AG Hood was paying. Again, I think that goes back to our overall goal of trying to pay all of our professionals at more competitive salaries.”
In a state with the highest poverty rate in the nation at nearly 20%, Fitch and other pro-life politicians have acknowledged the need to boost support for women beyond fighting for fair wages.
Fitch’s office has pointed to a new initiative called Her PLAN (Her Pregnancy and Life Assistance Network), a project of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (formerly Susan B. Anthony List), as the vehicle of these efforts. The plan’s lead organizer is Anja Baker, formerly of the Center for Pregnancy Choices, a Jackson-area crisis pregnancy center, and a contributing fellow to conservative policy think-tank Mississippi Center for Public Policy. Baker joined Fitch at a pro-life rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court building the day of oral arguments in the case in December.
“I would say our rights end the moment someone else’s rights begin,” Baker said, WAPT reported.
The Her PLAN consists of seven components: prenatal diagnosis; material or legal support; financial assistance, work or education; health and wellbeing; care for children; substance abuse recovery and mental health; and mentorship.
The project, which spans across four states, has a team of 11, including Baker in Mississippi – and all 11 appear to be white women.
The plan does not provide services or advocate for policy changes.
Instead, it aims to coordinate existing providers – those that do not refer for abortion – and create a repository of organizations providing resources to women. Mississippi’s directory isn’t public yet; Baker said she is still building relationships with providers and adding them to the list. The directory for Georgia and West Virginia is live, and the map so far contains 485 organizations across the two states – just 12 of which offer actual medical services.
Eight offer work opportunities. Five offer transportation. Four offer child care.
Baker doesn’t do case management or have clients, she told Mississippi Today, “but what I do is I meet with people who do, and then, I would say, 1) try to just identify what it is that they do 2) keeping it in mind to add them to our online directory so that it can be more visible, not just to their own community, but to other service providers as well.”
This doesn’t translate to providing more resources to women in a state with one of the most meager and punitive social safety nets in the nation, but Baker said Her PLAN has identified child care and transportation as two services that are lacking and hopes to aid in expanding access in the future.
To other advocates, abortion access and efforts to achieve economic equality for women, like pay equity, are part of the same conversation.
“Equal pay ensures that people have the economic security they need to decide when and where and how to raise their family or when to have children as they wish. And it’s not a substitute for one's ability to decide if and when to continue a pregnancy,” Welchlin said. “They go together. You can’t separate that.”
Especially in Mississippi, Welchlin continued, racism and white supremacy are at the heart of anti-abortion policymaking.
“Our bodily autonomy is central to our liberation. And if our freedom to make decisions about our own health and bodies are denied, we, as a people, are not fully liberated. It’s rooted in white supremacy or rooted in slavery,” Welchlin said. “Black women, our bodies were used at the control of white plantation owners and white men to produce labor for their fields which contributed to economic security for them and their white families. But not for us.”
*In 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey estimated the following median earnings for these demographics nationally: white men ($58,000), white women ($46,067), Black men ($42,067), Black women ($38,373). For this story, we only examined people identified as white or Black because the attorney general’s office currently employs just two people of other ethnicities.
Finally back from Omaha and still recovering from a big 4th of July weekend, Rick and Tyler discuss who makes the Atlanta Braves Mississippi’s pro baseball team and what makes this year’s team so good. Plus, Arch Manning signs with Texas and big money pushes USC and UCLA to the Big 10.
GULFPORT – The state’s largest tourism bureau is once again caught in the crosshairs of infighting by members of the Harrison County Board of Supervisors.
Coastal Mississippi, a taxpayer-funded tourism bureau, is tasked with marketing the entire Gulf Coast as a destination for Jackson, Hancock and Harrison Counties. But for the second time since September, Harrison County supervisors are at the center of strife that could affect the tourism agency’s ability to do business.
The tourism commission – which oversees the bureau’s spending – is without a clear president as Harrison County leadership spars publicly over the position’s appointment. The disagreement has brought forth allegations of vote-stacking and doing favors for friends from one side and claims of ignoring the letter of legislation from the other.
The latest wave of drama comes as Coastal Mississippi is preparing to receive more than $6 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds allocated by the state.
“Coastal Mississippi is vital to tourism marketing and not just for the three coastal counties,” said Sen. Scott DeLano, R-Biloxi, who has long supported the three coastal counties working together.
“It’s extremely important for the entire state of Mississippi to understand that Coastal Mississippi represents a large amount of tourism spending in our state and the importance of having stability on that board and for it to work together in a collaborative manner.”
But stability hasn’t lasted more than a few months at a time.
Within recent weeks, four staffers at Coastal Mississippi’s office resigned. In September, Coastal Mississippi’s director of over three years abruptly left. In October, Mississippi Today reported Coastal Mississippi could cease to exist, as local business and casino leaders shared concerns Harrison County might pull out of the three-county agreement that allows the counties to pool resources to market the region.
“We unanimously support the work that Brooke has done to really frankly bring us from the brink of collapse to a much more stable place,” Jonathan Jones, the general manager of Harrah’s Gulf Coast, said during a Harrison County Supervisor meeting in Gulfport on Tuesday.
Shoultz’s term ended July 1. She said she intended to continue with her role. The tourism commissioners endorsed her reappointment unanimously – with two absentees – during a Coastal Mississippi meeting on May 26. But Harrison County’s board has the ultimate authority of who gets appointed.
Last month, Harrison County Supervisor Connie Rockco came to the board saying Shoultz didn’t want to be reappointed. Rockco motioned to appoint a new president with her pick: Thomas Sherman, a Biloxi-based alcohol distributor. The board voted 3-2 to approve Sherman .
At Tuesday’s meeting in Gulfport, Shoultz came before the supervisors asking to be reappointed. She had the public backing of seven Gulf Coast casino operators and the Gulf Coast Business Council’s executive committee – all of whom signed letters in support of her leadership.
Shoultz said past comments about not wanting to do another term as president were months old and from a time when turmoil was high and she was traveling to care for her ailing mother.
“And then we hired Judy Young, who has been an exceptional executive director and professional,” Shoultz said at the supervisor meeting held in Gulfport. “Things changed. And it became a nice place to be. We were making some true reforms and really going in the right direction, getting the board to be more of an oversight board instead of day-to-day management.”
Rockco contended that despite the tourism commission vote, Shoultz didn’t properly inform supervisors she wished to be reinstated and that the new appointment should stand.
Harrison County Supervisor Rebecca Powers said she was blindsided by Rockco’s call to appoint Sherman. She questioned the choice and said he was close friends with another tourism commission member, Kim Fritz, and her husband.
Fritz audibly gasped from her seat in the audience.
“This is about stacking the vote and that’s all it is,” Powers said during the meeting. “I’m sorry I have to speak the truth. You deserve to know the truth,” she told the crowd. “This is ludicrous.”
Rockco stood by her choice, calling Sherman a hospitality veteran who is excited and prepared to take over the role and was approved fairly.
“You can throw out the rule book if you wish,” Rocko said. “But that is the rules and regulations and it seems to not matter if someone doesn’t get their way.”
No action was taken at the board meeting this week — supervisors are awaiting clarity on their bylaw’s wording from the state’s attorney general before making any more appointment decisions. That puts both Shoultz and Sherman in limbo.
“Tourism was sort of the shining example of the way the region can come together to market itself,” said Ashley Edwards, the president and CEO of the Gulf Coast Business Council. “The difficulties that that structure continues to run into all seem to surround sort of internal politics on county boards.”
Coastal Mississippi is funded by a 2-3% tax on hotel stays across Harrison, Jackson and Hancock counties. In a budget report to Harrison County made late last year, Coastal Mississippi reported about $5.2 million in its budget from the taxes.
The bulk of that tax revenue — about 80% of Coastal Mississippi’s funding — comes from Harrison County’s casino resorts and hotels. As a result, Harrison County has the largest voting bloc within the board of commissioners that approves Coastal Mississippi’s spending.
Rich Westfall, a former casino operator, finished his eight-year term on the tourism commission last year. Toward the latter years of his tenure, he said noticed more struggles for power.
“We shouldn’t be worrying about who votes for what and who’s leading and who’s not leading and where the power is,” Westfall said. “We need to worry about how many people are in hotel rooms and how many people are visiting Mississippi. If tourism goes on the coast, so does tourism in Mississippi.”
Harrison County has a regularly scheduled supervisors meeting in Biloxi Monday. Coastal Mississippi will have its regularly scheduled meeting with the tourism commissioners at the end of the month.
Chancery Judge Debbra Halford refused to block Mississippi’s abortion ban from going into effect on Thursday despite a 1998 ruling from the Supreme Court saying the state Constitution grants abortion rights.
Just hours after a 45-minute Tuesday morning hearing, Halford issued the eight-page decision ruling on Tuesday afternoon refusing to side with the state’s only abortion provider, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which had requested a temporary restraining order to prevent laws from going into effect banning most abortions in Mississippi.
Abortion rights groups had argued that laws banning abortions in the state could not go into effect until a 1998 state Supreme Court decision, Pro-Choice Mississippi v. Kirk Fordice, was overturned. The 1998 decision, the abortion rights supporters argued, could only be overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
But in ruling against the abortion rights groups, Halford said that it is likely that the current state Supreme Court will uphold the Mississippi laws banning most abortions now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that abortion is not a protected right under the federal Constitution.
Halford wrote that since a right to an abortion as granted by the U.S. Constitution “is no longer the law of the land, reliance upon Fordice almost certainly will not be well-founded when pursuing this case in the (state) Supreme Court.”
“We are going to review the decision and consider our options,” said Jackson attorney Rob McDuff of the Mississippi Center for Justice. McDuff and Hillary Schneller, senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, represented Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Tuesday’s hearing in the Hinds County Chancery Court building.
They argued that Halford should halt the abortions ban from taking effect because the 1998 ruling by the state Supreme Court was the law of the land in Mississippi. It would take a new ruling from the state Supreme to reverse the 1998 ruling.
“The primary issue before you is whether the decision of the Mississippi Supreme Court is binding and we clearly believe it is,” McDuff said during the hearing.
Halford ultimately agreed with the arguments of Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart, who argued on behalf of Attorney General Lynn Fitch. He told Halford that the 1998 state Supreme Court ruling was no longer binding law because of the recent landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the Roe v. Wade decision and the Casey v. Planned Parenthood decision that enshrined in the U.S. Constitution the right to an abortion.
“They depend on Roe and Casey. There is no Roe and Casey anymore. And there is no Fordice,” Stewart said, referring to the 1998 state Supreme Court ruling titled Pro-Choice Mississippi v. Kirk Fordice.
Stewart had also argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that resulted in the reversal of Roe and Casey.
What happens next depends on whether Halford’s ruling is appealed to the state Supreme Court.
As the issue is litigated, though, the clock is ticking on abortion rights in Mississippi. A trigger law is slated to take effect on Thursday banning all abortions in the state except in cases where it is determined the life of the mother is at risk or in cases where there is rape reported to law enforcement.
Another Mississippi law that would take effect based on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling would ban all abortion after six weeks except in cases of medical emergencies.
About 50 spectators heard the Tuesday morning arguments, and a small group protected outside of the Hinds County Chancery Court building.
Stewart did not try to argue that the 1998 ruling did not say abortion was a right under the state Constitution. Instead, he argued that the majority in 1998 ruled that abortion was a right under the state Constitution to be in alignment with the federal Supreme Court in the Roe v. Wade decision.
But McDuff said nowhere in the ruling was any reference made to the state Supreme Court decision being contingent on the Roe v. Wade decision. He said in other rulings, the state Supreme Court had ruled that the rights granted in the Mississippi Constitution did not “inflate or deflate like a balloon” based on the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. But on Tuesday, Halford disagreed with McDuff.
McDuff pointed out to the court that abortion had been legal for a vast majority of Mississippi’s statehood and that the judge should block the enactment of the laws banning abortion to give the Mississippi Supreme Court time to rule on the issue.
Stewart argued that it would not be a hardship to allow the laws to go into effect. He said programs had been put in place, such as pregnancy counseling programs, to help mothers who might otherwise had wanted to have an abortion.
Halford heard the case because all four Hinds County chancery judges recused themselves.
Cover of Milo Imagines the World, by Matt de la Peña Credit: Mississippi Book Festival
Gazing across a subway car full of enticing, strange faces, young Milo thrusts his imagination into action.
The wondrous train ride is the setting of “Milo Imagines the World,” a children’s picture book written by Matt de la Peña and illustrated by Christian Robinson.
The story follows Milo, who wields his sketchpad to explore the mysterious lives of his fellow passengers. But while diving deep into his make-believe backstories, the boy pauses to reflect, and begins to see the boundaries of first impressions.
“Milo Imagines the World,” published last summer, is the duo’s second picture book exploring the world of public transportation through the lens of working class communities. The two also partnered on the New York Times bestseller “Last Stop on Market Street,” which won the 2016 Newbery Medal.
De la Peña, set to appear at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson on Aug. 20, spoke with Mississippi Today about his latest work.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Mississippi Today: You mentioned having a focus on writing for working class folks and exploring public transportation, with this book and your last one, “Last Stop on Market Street.” Can you talk a little bit about that intersection in your work?
Matt de la Peña, author of the new book Milo Imagines the World Credit: Mississippi Book Festival
Matt de la Peña: I’m always drawn to working class communities, just because I grew up in one. I grew up near the border of San Diego and Mexico, and I have grandparents from Mexico, and my dad was first gen. So that’s something I always want to feature in anything I write, people who are working hard and trying to make a life in America.
The way I describe it is, my goal is to be as honest as possible, but in the back of my head I want to show moments of grace and dignity in these communities.
It’s funny because when I first started out writing, my stories would always be pushed toward kids who were living in those communities or who were diverse racially. That was annoying to me because these stories are for everyone. I think we’re seeing a push now, where a story that focuses on a kid like Milo, now will be celebrated in a private school with predominantly white kids, well-to-do kids. That’s a nice thing to see.
Early in my career, I remember a teacher at a conference finding me and saying, ‘Hey Matt, I really like your books. But I’ll be honest, we don’t really have those kids at our schools, so we don’t have that many copies.’
I remember saying to her, ‘How many wizards do you have at your school?’ Because of this idea of, we can read books about wizards but not kids from different backgrounds.
What’s interesting is public transportation, it really depends on where you are, who’s on it. So in “Last Stop on Market Street” and where I grew up in San Diego, if you’re on the bus, you are there – pretty much 99% chance – because you don’t have a car, you can’t afford a car. It’s usually all working class people on the bus. If you go to New York City, you could be on the subway next to a CEO, and on the other side of you is someone who cleans that building. So I find those stories change dramatically if you’re going to explore public transportation depending on what city it is.
That also factors into Milo’s journey. He’s looking around at these people and sees the kid with the perfect part (in his hair) and thinks, ‘This kid’s rich.’ He sees the guy with the scruffy face and thinks, ‘This guy’s poor and lonely.’ So part of his journey is to kind of challenge that idea.
MT: On the subway, you’re exposed to so much from so many different people at once. How do you capture that from a young child’s perspective?
MD: You know what’s amazing about public transportation is, you learn the truth, which I think kids growing up in car culture don’t quite grasp. The truth is, we kind of think our story is the most important. And if you’re in a car, you think that even more. It’s almost like everyone’s in the movie starring you.
But if you grow up taking public transportation and you just look around and watch people and listen to conversations, it’s so much easier to grasp that you are just one of millions of stories.
So I actually think that’s one of the healthiest parts about growing up taking public transportation, is you sort of position your story alongside other stories. And when you’re in a car culture, you don’t have as many opportunities to see that.
MT: I wanted to ask you about, you kind of summarized it nicely in the dedication page – the message: “For those who dare to imagine beyond the first impression.” It got me thinking about the fact you’re writing through a child’s perspective, and how we typically think of kids being more imaginative. I was wondering if you thought writing from Milo’s perspective made it easier to give him a broader imagination of what people might be like because he’s a kid and he’s got this creative mind. Is that fair to say?
MD: I actually think I would approach it almost the same way from an adult’s perspective. I just think the big difference would be the arc of an adult’s story. If it was the same storyline, I would approach the arc of it, the movement at the end where Milo’s re-thinking the pictures, I think with an adult it would be louder, and it would be more direct.
One of my favorite things about writing a picture book and thinking about the character’s arc is that, really, I don’t think it’s truthful if you get to the end of a picture book and the character has arced dramatically. I think it’s much more honest to show a character who is just beginning that arc. Things like Milo’s experience, it has to happen dozens of times for it to sink in and for you to move as a person.
As an adult, I think a lot of people are just as imaginative, maybe not quite as imaginative as a kid, but you still tell yourself the story of the people around you. But I think the ending of a picture book shouldn’t be as dramatic.
MT: (Spoiler alert) The end of the book (where the reader learns Milo is going to visit his mother in prison) caught me off guard. Was it important for you to make that a surprise, and if so what do you think was the effect of that?
MD: It is kind of a surprise, but my hope is that if you read it again, everything is leading that direction. He’s a shook-up soda, because he’s excited to see his mom but he’s also anxious. He doesn’t know how to feel about it. The whole story is about where he’s going, but it’s quiet. And then at the end it’s a revelation about where he’s going, but it’s not that I wanted it to be a big surprise.
It fits with the story, if that makes sense. He’s looking out so that he doesn’t have to directly look in, although like we talked about that’s what he’s kind of processing.
And at the very end he’s showing his mom this picture he worked very hard on the night before. He of course shows her a picture of them, sitting on the stoop, and she’s not in prison.
So he’s doing something that I have taped on my wall, above my computer, as a writer, I live by this motto: do not write what you see, write what will be seen. Because one of the things you can do writing a kid’s book is help sort of reveal the world of tomorrow. And I think what he’s doing when he’s showing them the picture is he’s also drawing not what he sees today but he hopes will be seen tomorrow.
Really, the surprise ending for me as the writer is not that his mom is in prison, but it’s the piece of art that he shows his mom.
MT: There was a part in the book, it might feel like a small detail, but it told me, okay, you’ve clearly spent some time thinking through the mind of a kid: Milo is looking at his reflection and thinking about his own life and his aunt’s apartment, and the fact he calls it his “aunt’s apartment near the cemetery” really stood out to me because that’s something I remember doing as a kid, associating these two things that aren’t related but are just next to each other.
How do you generally get in the process of getting into a kid’s mind and transport yourself there?
MD: Forgive me if I’m going a little too deep on this, but you identified what this book is really about. There is so much going on in Milo’s unconscious through the book. Because if you look at each vignette he comes up with for the people he’s looking at, he’s sketching out who he thinks they are, where they’re going, but he’s also sort of exorcisinghis own situation, because every vignette has some form of, either emancipation or building up a wall. He’s really thinking about his mother being in a place where he can’t access her all the time.
If you look at the first vignette, he’s looking at a bird in a cage, but in his vignette the birds get to go free. And the married couple, they rise above the walls of the city and they’re free. And then the boy who’s wealthy, he’s got this castle, and after he goes through, the drawbridge is going to close again so he can protect all his stuff. Every vignette is about other people, but he’s using it as a way to explore his current situation.
Now, does any kid get that? Probably not. But I have this theory, especially for writing about young people: we often say it’s more valid to get something consciously than it is to get it viscerally.
And what I love about kids books is, kids are mostly operating on that visceral feeling. Even if a kid can’t say, ‘Oh I see there’s a form of emancipation in each vignette,’ a kid might feel it. And that to me is just as valid as, you’re in a college course and pulling out every symbol and every detail.
MT: What do you think Milo learns on this journey? Like you said, it takes a while and it’s not a complete learning experience by the end, but how do you think this learning experience is helping Milo grow?
MD: I think what Milo is doing at the end of the book is he’s starting to question the way he sees other people, and whether or not his first impression is the right impression. And he’s starting to think that way because he’s also along the way starting to understand how others might see him.
So when he looks at his reflection, he’s starting to think, what do people think of my face? And then he lists a few things that are real, this is who he is to himself, but maybe others can’t access that. Through that, and misjudging this boy with the part, I think he’s beginning to question this idea of first impressions.
As kids, we learn how to access those stereotypes, but to be an intelligent person, you have to then almost dismantle those stereotypes. So he’s learning through early life how to acquire those stereotypes. Maybe he’s just beginning to question them, which may ultimately lead to him dismantling them.
