Upton Tire Pros

6371 Interstate 55 N., Jackson, 601-977-8473

210 Orleans Way, Brandon, 601-825-8473

5312 Lakeland Drive, Flowood, 601-919-8473

2019 Strawberry Hill Drive, Madison, 601-856-8473

uptontirepros.com

Mike Upton's business came from a love for cars and a desire to better his community. Upton, who has never worked on cars for a living—and promises that no one should ever want him to—respects those with the gift.

"These guys who (work on the vehicles) have a great talent, and they're not valued as much as they should be in general, because they really work real hard," Upton says. "This stuff almost comes to them intuitively; they can just look at a car or a part and know how to fix it."

While he can't work on cars, Upton is a talented businessman. He opened Upton Tire Pros to provide the community with quality tires and vehicle services nearly 25 years ago, and now Upton has four locations in the metro area: Brandon, Madison, north Jackson and Flowood.

In 1977, he left college to marry Denise, his wife of 38 years now. Upton started working with Firestone Complete Auto Care as a sales representative. He easily moved up the ladder to assistant manager, and eventually the company promoted Upton to manager of its Vicksburg location, a job he held for about 15 years.

Upton wanted to try working for himself and noticed a need in Brandon.

"There was just an opportunity there. They didn't have a nice, modern tire store in Brandon back in '89," he says.

He opened his first Upton Tire Pros store there in June of that year.

"It was exhilarating, which can be both fearful and fun—and it was a little of both," Upton says about opening his new business. "We had some good people working for us. I work real hard morning, noon and night to keep it going, and it worked out real well."

Several years later, Upton noticed a similar situation in Madison where he lives. He opened up shop there in 2000, and it gets the most business of his four locations. Upton continued to expand by buying a competitor's property in Jackson in 2003, and he opened his newest store in 2007 on Lakeland Drive in Flowood. "By size, it's our biggest store, and we have big hopes for it," Upton says.

Upton Tire Pros offers full auto services, from oil changes to engine replacements, and sells tire brands such as Bridgestone, Continental, Michelin, General and Goodyear. Upton says the business pretty evenly splits between servicing cars and selling tires.

With four locations, Upton can't be everywhere at once. To oversee operations for the stores, he employs four store managers and a general manager to oversee them. Despite this, he stays accessible and is fully involved with his company. "I'm easy to get a hold of if you need me in case something comes up—and it does in our business," Upton says. "I make sure we're doing the right thing for our customers."

Upton Tire Pros strives to be forward thinking with technology. Not only does each location have computers available for customers to use while waiting, but customers can also go online to book appointments, view prices and information on previously received services.

All Upton Tire Pros locations are open Monday through Friday 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Saturdays 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The Coffee Roastery

308 E. Pearl St.

601-949-6994

thecoffeeroastery.com

Debra Griffin has an honest attitude when it comes to past business failures.

After two decades as a hospital administrator, Griffin decided to open The Coffee Roastery in 2002 in the then-just-blossoming Dogwood area in Flowood. Although demand was high, the business ultimately wasn't successful. "I did it as a sole owner who had had some success in health care but maybe underestimated what it took to run a retail business," she says. "There was money to be made, but I had business flaws: My space was too large; I was too trusting with employees."

That original coffee shop closed in 2007 after five years, when the lease was up. "I was grateful for it. I exhaled," Griffin says.

"I've learned when something doesn't work out, I don't focus on it. It's just yesterday. The milk is spilled. Get a towel, wipe it up; try to pour another glass or get something else."

The experience helped Griffin realize that she wanted more independence in her work. When Humphreys County Memorial Hospital terminated her from an administrator position in 2007, she decided to pursue other venues of employment.

Although she hadn't necessarily plan to open another coffee shop, developer Ted Duckworth reached out to her, looking to add something to his downtown Electric 308 Building (308 E. Pearl St.).

"He knew my business in Dogwood and wanted a coffee shop in this space," Griffin says. "To tell the truth, he helped me to get this space open."

These days, the Coffee Roastery remains as dedicated to a quality product as it was in its previous incarnations, albeit at a lower volume of production. The shop roasts organic Camaroon Boyo beans onsite, as well as a decaf beans.

"I would say the reason I am committed to coffee is because I appreciate a good product," Griffin says.

"The reason I roast is because I can control the inventory levels, but also the inventory freshness. Coffee is like a produce: Anything that has been on the shelf for a certain amount of time, the characteristics and flavor profiles are going to deteriorate."

The Coffee Roastery remains a low-profit endeavor, but it's also a low-cost one. Griffin has no plans to expand, but rather wants the coffee shop to become a part of the downtown ecology. "My hope for it is to let it marinate and get integrated into the local downtown culture," she says.

Griffin says the most important thing she's learned is to balance personal enthusiasm with the professional 
business necessities.

"I think people that want to do something, they should move forward on it. The business plan is so important—it's a blueprint, and if you don't really understand your blueprint, you've got hodgepodge," she says.

"I think some people get jaded where they want to be the sole proprietor and get the profit.

But I say: You want to be the sole proprietor, you'll have to bring up all the capital. So I urge people to partnerships, because there are strengths and weaknesses in various people. What you can't bring to the table, someone else can. And spend a little money with an attorney and get a really good agreement."

Although she is the sole owner of the store, Griffin's day-to-day employment remains in the health-care world. She is an independent health-care consultant and co-owns Physician Hospice Care.

This summer, a couple of Walker's Drive-In employees painted a mural on the iconic eatery's patio wall in Fondren. It replaced a pockmarked and aging piece The Projectors, a trio of artists who still live and work in Jackson, did a decade ago.

In case you haven't heard, folks dig Fondren. The oft-heralded oasis that the neighborhood has become adds another layer of gloss to Jackson's collective memory of the artists who helped spur that momentum forward—folks such as Josh Hailey, Ginger Williams-Cook, William Goodman and Jason "Twiggy" Lott.

People remember Williams-Cook, Goodman and Lott as muralists The Projectors. They were also The Dirty Lipsticks (no gloss necessary), a band they founded just for fun. They performed only for each other and friends in their loft studio spaces in the building.

"We never actually played any shows or really even any instruments," Goodman says. "But we played in front of the camera. I think the idea of being in a band was wonderful to think about."

With tongue-in-cheek monikers, the artists, then all in their early 20s, were literally making names for themselves. The renovation on the Fondren Corner building, which would become their hub, wasn't finished when Josh Hailey moved into a studio there in 2005 and joined the others, including artist Jason Marlow, who has since moved away to work in New York City and Austin, Texas.

"William lived right off the elevator, and some of the letters had been scraped off the sign, so it just said 'evato,'" Hailey says. "There were five of us, so we were like, 'That's our name for our art making.' Twiggy was a graphic designer dabbling in painting, Ginger and William were painters, Jason Marlow was a multimedia artist, and I was a photographer. We all got together and made a hotspot for collective art."

That mixed-use building was the nucleus of the neighborhood's creative vibe. Fondren Corner residents bartered and exchanged energy. "It was like New York," Williams-Cook says. "'Loft living—this is so cool!'"

Warm as those memories are, nostalgic like Technicolor (many of them were archived and time-stamped by Hailey's lens), these four are still at work creating art that is more layered, mature and compelling than ever.

"We're here still. We exist, and we're still doing things," Lott says.

But they aren't in their 20s anymore, Toto.

In this story, the canine companion is Minerva, Lott's neurotic and irresistible Chihuahua. Their youthful personas have waned; not discarded, just outgrown. But the radioactive energy these harbingers of Fondren's artistic vibe created during the mid 2000s—running down hallways, keeping watch over the neighborhood for break-ins from high atop the roof, collaborating at insane hours, and donning props and costumes (and yes, dirty lipstick) for impromptu photo shoots—has not disappeared. The elements of their creativity have realigned and reformed, through all the learning and life and travel of a decade.

"Probably from the outside, a lot of people looked at us as these rebellious, crazy artists, which we were in a lot of ways," Goodman says. "But it started feeling good, at least for myself, when people started taking us seriously. It wasn't just some game."

Ginger Williams-Cook is now married and a mother of a little girl named Eloise. Goodman has grown and advanced in his art making. Lott has a dedicated studio space and workshop where he paints, assembles, builds furniture and creates full time. And Hailey, a self-described wanderluster, is on the highways in his van (heading toward Amherst, Mass., when we spoke) on the tail end of a two-year documentary project, Photamerica, in which he has interviewed countless subjects from all walks and explored the folds and complexities of the nation.

The presence of Williams-Cook's daughter, Eloise, is one of the most drastic life changes for any of the four (although Lott's paternal instincts showed as little Minerva sat on his lap and licked at his chin). "I'm incredibly focused and driven now," she says.

Even as we talked, her husband, Justin Cook, was back home taking care of Eloise, who is now about a year and a half old, making sure she didn't try to eat a paintbrush like she did during her first art session. "I want to be authentic when I tell Eloise she can be anything she wants to be," Williams-Cook says. "I want her to see art as part of her life."

Looking around the studio of Twiggy Lott, you'll see furniture he created with another collaborator, Josh Bishop, out of salvaged industrial materials and discarded bits of metal and wood. These beaten-down scraps and structures have outlived their intended uses and find new purpose as polished artworks. Similarly, the subject matter of Lott's paintings draws from that sensibility.

"My art now is influenced by the very incessant decay of the South. When I think of my home, it's junk cars sitting around rusting and old buildings," Lott says.

The inspiration that these four now find is heavily tied to home, but exploring new places invigorates it. Goodman references a recent trip and the sights that have seeped into his paintings.

"I spent a couple weeks in Miami this summer. Visual stimulation everywhere," he says. "Somebody had spent so much time doing a mural on one of the streets, and then someone rolled over some of it. Someone else had painted something else on top, and then that was rolled over. I'm looking at the paintings I'm doing right now as old walls that maybe somebody has written something on, and I'm trying to bring new life to it."

"I'll find I'm influenced by what I've seen when I travel but not even really know it," Lott says. "I'll come back, and the way I see that influence is through my work. It's a mirror for what I've experienced."

It isn't about getting out of Mississippi. Rather, discovery of other cultures and climes becomes additive to the art scene in Jackson when the artists return. "It's really about finding that creative pulse and energy and being authentic to that," Williams-Cook says. "Not feeling like you have to live in New York."

"To this day, I feel I can't live in another major metropolitan city and do my art full time," Goodman adds. "We're blessed that we have this place. Jackson's never given up on us. I remember that, and I know that."

Meanwhile, Josh Hailey was somewhere five, 10, 15 states away. But even his absence from Jackson for the better part of two years is in service to his artistic vision with the goal of bringing back what he learns to the state. In 2011, Hailey took a job art directing a photography project for the Mississippi Development Authority documenting workers throughout the state, which he calls "the best damn job I've had in my life." After that, he looked at the American landscape and saw the Occupy movement in full swing and a presidential election around the corner.

"I was watching 10,000 kick starters happening, and I was like, 'I'm not going to stand still,'" he says. "I can spend the same amount of money in my van and travel, do a documentary, make art and invest in trying to make the world a better place by talking to people."

Hailey made it through 35 of 50 states in 2012, supported by a successful crowd-funding campaign, and returned to Mississippi briefly to raise money for the final leg of his nationwide sojourn.

"Here I am, about to finish up," he tells me. "I'm bringing it back to Jackson in October, hopefully getting a storefront in Fondren, and putting a lot of effort into putting a showcase together for December to show all of this stuff from the good, the bad and the ugly in America."

These four artists are strangely in tune with one another despite the distance of separate lives and projects. Without prompting, they speak of the same themes and philosophies and express fondness for the place where they started. "Jackson's been good to the three of us," Goodman says, sitting with the other two Projectors in Lott's studio.

Speaking later from his van, rumbling down the road, it is as if Hailey had been listening in. "I love my state," he says. "And I always will."

Those years together in Fondren were central for all four artists. It wasn't about the physical place, necessarily, though they found the perfect arena for creative experimentation. Their relationships with each other bond them together as they pursue individual endeavors. They became intertwined back then, like tributaries colliding, making waves. That will be part of their narratives even if they leave Jackson. But for now, it looks like they'll be home for a while.

Paint fades, photographs yellow, and pieces peel off our stories. Details drop out, and we replace them with new shades, making confabulated compounds of recollection. The mythology to those early Fondren Corner artists will always be around, though it may continue to change forms as they grow professionally.

At roughly the same time as The Projectors' mural at Walker's vanished beneath fresh designs this summer, Goodman painted a mural downtown at Steve's Downtown Deli & Bakery, the first he'd done in two years, as if to prove that energy is never made nor destroyed.

Keep up with these artists at joshhaileystudio.com, gingerwilliams.tumblr.com, enhancedmixture.com and jasontwiggylott.com.

Prepare Now for the Zombie Apocalypse! On Oct. 26, as part of the fourth annual Mississippi International Film Festival, zombies and their attendant goons will overrun the Russell C. Davis Planetarium for the annual Zombie Ball. The best zombie or goon costume will receive a prize.

Beginning Friday night and continuing all day Saturday, the festival will screen films from countries all over the world including Iran, Germany and Japan. Friday night, the festival will pay tribute to Ward Emling, the current director of the film office, and the 40th anniversary of the Mississippi Film Office. The Friday night program will center around one of the films made in Mississippi after the creation of the film office, called "The Premonition." The 1976 horror movie was a modest success. Emling has a small speaking role and Gov. Phil Bryant, who was attending Hinds Community College at the time, was an extra. Some of the theatrical trailers for the films can be found on the festival website.

The festival is $10 per day per person. On Saturday, students from area colleges get in free with college IDs. "The prices are kept low by corporate sponsorship because I want everyone interested in filmmaking or acting to be able to get together and meet each other," says Edward Saint Pe', the director and founder of the festival. Additionally, on Saturday in the Planetarium lobby, experienced artists will teach a series of workshops on acting, screenwriting and the A-to-Zs of taking a film from concept to the final product. Workshops are $5 each. The 2013 Awards Brunch is in the planning stage. More details will be released soon. Go to weathervision.com/miss-intl-film-fest for more information.

The vinyl nirvana for Jackson's music nerds is returning, in the ninth 4 The Record! vinyl convention and swap, Sept. 28, at Hal & Mal's (200 S. Commerce St., 601-948-0888).

The first convention came together three years ago as the brainchild of Phillip "DJ Young Venom" Rollins, who often travels throughout the south visiting other vinyl swaps. The swap is held three times a year.

Since 2010, the event has become more popular with the recent resurgence of vinyl. "It's grown from two vendors and only 15 people coming to now two dozen vendors setting up, with about 200 people attending. It's grown every time I do it," Rollins says.

To sell records at the swap, simply sign up online at 4therecordswap.com. It is $25 per space to sell records and $10 per table if you don't bring you own. While the most common genres to swap are indie rock, punk and psychedelic rock, you'll see other genres such as hip-hop, soul, R&B, jazz and funk.

Admission is $5 for early birds, who get to shop the records first. General admission is $2, and kids under 12 can attend free with an adult. Call 601-376-9404 to volunteer.

The Mostly Monthly Ceili series is a Sunday night event that brings the art of the Irish jig to Jackson.

The Jackson Irish Dancers host the series.

"I lived in Ireland for a while and came up with the idea," says Catherine Sherer Bishop, a Jackson Irish Dancers instructor.

"Ben Cody, the manager (of Fenian's Pub) at the time, offered to open up the pub on Sundays once a month for the ceili."

A ceili is an Irish social gathering, usually with music and dancing. The dancers have performed at Fenian's since 2005. They show off an array of Irish dances, depending on what guests are interested in. "It can be any or all, a (solo or group set) of Irish traditional dancing, depending on who is there," Bishop says.

The ceilis are open to all ages and skill levels. The Jackson Irish Dancers don't focus on competition-level dancing, but on everyone enjoying the experience. Local Irish musicians tend to stop by for to give some musical treats. They bring along an Irish music-inspired instrument or a new song to try out.

"It is a social gathering that is fun, with an opportunity to participate in some Irish dancing," Bishop says.

Dancing goes on from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sept. 22, Oct. 20 and Nov. 17. Admission is free, and beginners are welcome. For more information, visit jfp.ms/ceili.

Jackson writer Eudora Welty inspired the name of the Cereus Readers book club, pronounced "serious." She and her friends would come together to watch the annual night-blooming of the cereus flower. They called themselves the "The Night-Blooming-Cereus Club."

The Cereus Readers book club gives people a place to gather to read and discuss the writing of Eudora Welty and other books that inspired the author. "I think the best thing about our book club is the range of readers in our group," says book club coordinator Lisa Newman. "We have members who had never read Eudora Welty's work before and members who are scholars of her work. Some were even dear friends of Miss Welty. Everyone contributes a unique perspective."

The books the club reads are available at Lemuria Books, where Cereus Readers receive a 10 percent discount on purchases. During meetings, members are welcome to bring their lunch.

The schedule for this fall includes three meetings. On Sept. 26 at noon: A listening of Eudora Welty reading "Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden" with discussion. On Oct. 24 at noon: Hunter Cole, friend and scholar of Eudora Welty, is the guest speaker. On Nov. 16 at 2 p.m.: This event will open with a talk on reading and collecting Eudora Welty's work. Lemuria will display a special collection of Eudora Welty books—from trade to fine first editions.

The club will not meet in December, but will resume on Jan. 23 at noon with the new titles posted on the Cereus Readers page at blog.lemuriabooks.com.

For more information about the club, call Lisa Newman at 601-366-7619 or email lisa@lemuriabooks.com.

When George Chuck Patterson's grandmother, Viola Donaldson, died of multiple myeloma, (a type of blood cancer), her battle had a huge impact on his life. He noticed a lack of awareness about sickle cell anemia, a disease that affects more African-Americans than any other group, so he became involved in outreach efforts to teach others about the disease. "I have been given purpose by the type of work we do. I try to use every opportunity to educate every person I come into contact with," Patterson says.

One of the ways Patterson raises awareness is through the Mississippi Greek Weekend, which he founded and chairs. This year, the sixth annual citywide event is Sept. 19-22.

He began the event to bring together Greek organizations and focus on issues that have been affecting people in the Jackson area. So far, mostly historically black fraternities and sororities participate, but Patterson's goal is to involve all Greek organizations.

The Mississippi Greek Weekend's fundraising efforts benefit the Cure Sickle Cell Foundation and the Light the Night Walk, which is the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's annual fundraising walk to help those battling cancer.

Parties will be at the M-Bar (6340 Ridgewood Court, 601-918-5649) from noon to 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20. The step show will take place at the Jackson Convention Complex (105 E. Pascagoula St., 601-960-2321) and begins at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m. A social after-party immediately follows the step show at Wasabi Sushi and Bar (100 E. Capitol St., Suite 105, 601-948-8808) in the courtyard. This event is free.

On Saturday, the citywide fundraising project will take place at Freedom Corner in Jackson from 8 to 11 a.m. The campus-community picnic is from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Tougaloo campus at the Coleman Athletic Complex. This picnic will include free health screenings, including dental checks, HIV testing, and glucose, cholesterol and blood-pressure checks.

Tickets for the step show are $10 in advance or $20 at the entrance For more information, visit msgreekweekend.com, or call 601-706-YARD (9273).

The Canton Gin Market, located in the Old Cotton Gin across the street from the train depot in Canton, is a mecca for local artisans and musicians.

Fraizer and Susan Riddell started the market seven months ago with the help of Jimmy and Janet Gates, Clifton Jennings and Berry Pace. The market displays crafts from various vendors from around the state. Some of the artwork for sale includes artist Deloris Townsend's plant sculptures, jewelry and tree art by Susan Riddell, birdhouses and woodworks by Janet Gates, ironwork art by Clifton Jennings, and various bottle trees and bottle dragons. The event is scheduled to happen every Saturday, but Riddell says to "call before you haul." The market runs from 8 a.m. to 11a.m. Call him at 601-859-8596.

After the market, Small Town Music hosts an open-mic event. Frazier is a guitar and saxophone player and usually plays with the other musicians who come to play. People can play an original song or their favorite cover at the show—anything from bluegrass to gospel, rock or country. "I wanted it to be more wide open," Riddell says.

The stage is set up outside the Small Town Music store in Canton. "It started out as a minimal setup, but it's turned into a bigger deal," Riddell explains.

Some of the musician regulars include Berry Pace, Tommy Hendricks, Janette Gates and Kevin Broughton. Instruments range from guitars, harmonicas and even a renaissance instrument called the dulcian. People can bring their favorite instrument and jam out but with most musicians. "We are always looking for more drummers," Riddell says. This event starts after the Gin Market and runs from 12 p.m. 
to 4 p.m.

For more information, look for Small Town Music and Canton Gin Market on Facebook.

The Vision 2022 plan (jfp.ms/vision2022) breaks down priorities, such as Leveraging Diversity, into possible actions.

4.3: Leveraging Diversity Greater Jackson is one of the most diverse places in the south, but stakeholders say more could be done to capture the benefits of this diversity for the overall wellbeing of the region. Many diverse U.S. communities have developed programming to leverage the dynamism of their local diversity; the Jackson area already has ongoing diversity-and-inclusivity focused efforts that could be enhanced and formalized into a broader campaign.

• Inventory existing diversity programs at the government, corporate, institutional, and organizational levels.

• Determine how to best weave existing programs together with new efforts into a cohesive and coordinated component of the regional campaign.

• Potential new diversity focused programs and events could include: a regional diversity council; hosting regular diversity summits; holding annual diversity festivals; and others.

• Publish regular diversity-focused articles and images in the regional unity campaign e-newsletter.

4.3.1: INTEGRATE DIVERSITY PROGRAMMING INTO THE PROPOSED REGIONAL UNITY CAMPAIGN (4.1.1).

Source: Vision 2022 Plan (See jfp.ms/vision2022plan

Health Care - grow our existing health care infrastructure, establishing the region as a center of excellence in health care service at reasonable costs as well as bio medical and clinical research.

Regional Infrastructure - develop important regional infrastructure projects such as the creation of regional water and wastewater systems as well as transportation improvements like a future trolley (light rail service) to position the region for future growth.

Aerospace - establish Jackson International Airport as the South's new location for the aerospace industry thanks to new opportunities presented by the opening of the East Metro Parkway.

Lake Development - work with local/state/federal officials, the U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers, and the Pearl River Vision Foundation to build a 1,500-acre lake in the heart of the region for flood protection, economic development and quality of place benefits.

Regional Marketing - utilize top CEOs as marketing ambassadors proclaiming Greater Jackson as the best location for business in the nation.

Core City - build a convention center hotel and support a quality housing initiative for Downtown Jackson.

Regional Trails System - establish a comprehensive bike and pedestrian trails system throughout the region.

Talent Attraction - design and implement a plan to attract "talent" to the region, with a special emphasis on retaining our homegrown local talent.

Arts and Culture - establish the region as an arts and culture destination, including opportunities to grow our region's film industry.

Education - launch an "importance of education" campaign beginning at the grassroots level and carried through higher education.

by R.L. Nave

Flooding is a persistent problem in Jackson, as residents are aware. And, as more time passes since the 1979 Easter flood, more residents and officials fear that the capital city could fall victim to an equally devastating, if not worse, flood.

Varying degrees of controversy have met flood-control proposals over the years because of costs or potential for environmental harm. Here are some of the plans developers, planners and environmentalists have considered:

• Shoccoe dam: Involved creating a dry dam near Carthage that would only kick in during a 100-year flood, when the dam would create a lake in Leake, Madison and Scott counties.

• Two Lakes: Transforming the Pearl River into 4,500-acre lake with developable shoreline and 700 acres of islands, formed by dredging. The islands could also be developed.

• One Lake: A proposed 1,500-acre, six-mile-long lake from Lakeland Drive south to the town of Richland. The plan would also feature dredging of the lake area to build developable islands.

• A different kind of 'One Lake': A single lake from just below Interstate 20 upstream to the low-head dam at Water Works curve on Interstate 55 just downstream from LeFleur's Bluff State Park. Under the plan, the lake's water surface would not exceed the top of the low-head dam.

• Property removal: Structures and other property that flooding might damage could be moved out of the floodplain.

• Building moratorium: No new construction would be permitted in the 
floodplain.

• Lend a helping fin: Build a fish-passage structure at the proposed dam, which would reduce harm to fish such as the endangered Gulf sturgeon.

• Levees and floodwalls: Build additional levees, floodwalls, and gate closures, and install pump stations.

• Storage and channel improvements: Build dams and other water-retention facilities upstream to hold water during floods (e.g. Shoccoe Dam).

• Do nothing: Without a federal project in place, local officials would continue responding to floods by temporarily raising or closing levees, sandbagging and evacuating low-lying areas.

SOURCES: Pearl River Basin Coalition, Pearl River Vision Foundation.

Vision 2022's Principal GOAL AREAS

• Creating PLACES: A reality of this talent-driven economy is that communities are increasingly competing for talent as aggressively as for companies. One differentiator in this competition is the attractiveness of a region as a place to live, work, and retire. While fast becoming an economic development cliche, place does matter when it comes to communities' successful futures. Thus, improving its "quality of place" must be a concern of all local leaders.

• Creating WEALTH: More than anything else, economic development is about improving residents' lives. This is done through the pursuit of employment that provides good wages and opportunities for advancement that will enable local workers to build wealth and contribute positively to the regional economy. Development strategies must be balanced between the retention and expansion of existing businesses, development of small businesses, and attraction of outside firms.

• Creating TALENT: The best jobs in today's economy go to those with the advanced skills necessary to perform them. Companies in technology-intensive sectors therefore show preference for communities with the workforce capacity to sustain the growth of their firms. It is critical that regions develop "cradle to career" talent pipelines to serve the businesses that are—and will—create the jobs that increase local incomes and overall wealth. This process must begin as early as possible to instill the value and importance of a quality education in every child and within every family.

• Creating CONNECTIONS: The most successful regions are those that work together across all boundaries, be they geographic, demographic, racial and ethnic, generational, or political. According to public input participants, Greater Jackson still has numerous gulfs to be bridged, relationships to be built and nurtured, and partnerships to be developed. Suburban and rural stakeholders must also 
understand and acknowledge that their futures are manifestly tied to those of the City of Jackson.

The greater metropolitan area of Jackson is a collection of loosely aligned, often-at-odds cities, towns and communities worthy of a university-sanctioned study on diversity and race politics.

It's roughly 540,000 people from almost every walk of life. From the shores of the Ross Barnett Reservoir to Westland Plaza to the Civil War battlefields of Raymond, there are "haves" and "have-nots." We have sensible folks and absurd sensationalists; we have honest politicians and self-serving narcissists. Jackson also has saints—both self-proclaimed and humble—and more than a few sinners.

Most Brandon and Madison residents don't seem to care what happens to Jackson, and in the same vein, your average Jackson resident doesn't trust his suburbanite counterparts. The race element is strong, and so is the class element. Divides are wide. The truth about the bigger picture in Jackson is complex, and it's not pretty.

Anyone who has history in and around Jackson knows the story, or should—the end of the Jim Crow laws and forced integration of public schools led to white flight in the early 1970s, and through the following decades, Jackson's suburbs grew faster than kudzu on a sunny hillside.

Thus, regionalism became the dream of a few who wanted to expand the scope of Jackson's shrinking populace, bringing the population that left city limits back into the fold, both to re-strengthen the city and to help those who fled reclaim power in the state's capital.

Enter the Greater Jackson Chamber Partnership, a conglomeration of metro businesses and civic leaders, and its 10-year strategic plan, Vision 2022, finalized in July 2012 by Market Street Services of Atlanta. Most chambers of commerce have a plan of some kind for the city or county in which they serve, but Vision 2022 casts a wide, ambitious net in a metro with difficult, unresolved power dynamics.

Fresno, Calif., has a 10-year plan to combat homelessness. Baltimore has a 10-year plan to repair broken inner-city schools. Anchorage, Alaska, has a 10-year plan to fight obesity.

Vision 2022, if ever fully implemented, would serve all of those functions and much more. Think of it this way: If regionalism is the bus we're going to ride into the future, Vision 2022 is the roadmap the chamber wants us to follow.

'Game-Changing Things'

The Vision 2022 plan has a 10-point strategy, with broad goals for each point.

It includes improving educational opportunities in the region, promoting arts and culture, attracting talent, building regional trails to connect communities, turning Jackson into a destination city, developing a 1,500-acre lake between downtown Jackson and Rankin County, creating an innovative marketing plan for the region, creating a market for aerospace technology, repairing and maintaining regional infrastructure, and helping the region become more healthy.

If that sounds like a mouthful, it's because it is. And they aren't just bullet points—for each initiative, Vision 2022 calls for a committee and several subcommittees.

Take the Core City Committee, chaired by restaurateur Jeff Good. Focused on Jackson proper, it branches off into subcommittees focused on neighborhoods, beautification, implementing one-stop service models, volunteer programs, housing, building a destination/events park, opening "healthy in a hurry" stores, designing a streetcar system to serve downtown, expanding downtown Jackson boundaries, creating activity centers called "livable centers," improving and promoting Farish Street, building a downtown arena, supporting small businesses, developing a convention-center hotel, and starting a blues and civil-rights tour.

Each of those goals has a team of volunteers working under a subcommittee chairman or chairwoman, and Core City is just one of the 10 tenets of Vision 2022.

Chamber organizers put the number of people involved at around 350. It's grown since the first coalition of private and public interests, including mayors and metro-area business leaders, travelled to cities around the southeast and midwest to steal ideas from other challenged metropolitan areas.

"I think the key here is that this is something that has never been done before," Greater Jackson Chamber President Duane O'Neill said. "It's such a comprehensive plan. Health care has done its own plan, cities have had their own plans, and we've had our own economic plans in the past, but now, we're putting all of that together so we can work off of everyone's synergy to really do some game-changing things."

Like Jackson, the metro areas visited, such as Oklahoma City and Nashville, have suffered from infrastructure problems, economic concerns, poverty-stricken communities and under-funded education systems.

Oklahoma City suffered greatly from its tax base emigrating to smaller bedroom communities, but Mayor Mick Cornett passed a $777-million infrastructure-investment bill that greatly improved the quality of life for residents by adding a 70-acre downtown park, improved sidewalks, hike and bike trails, a modern streetcar system, a new convention center, senior wellness and aquatic centers, and other amenities. Now, the city is on just about every top-five list you can find.

Tornadoes wrecked Nashville in 1998, but the disaster spurred a strong sense of solidarity and a flood of insurance money. Slowly but surely, cheap rent and innovative city planning led to an influx of young creatives. Entrepreneurs followed, and they transformed the city into a hub for the culturally savvy.

Helped along by big ideas and passionate citizens, those cities, along with others such as Memphis and Little Rock, are in the process of digging themselves out of holes that resembled the greater Jackson area's current situation.

Challenge of Regionalism

Jackson could be a unique case, though. Race politics are a divisive issue here, and the hostility these intertwined communities have for each other can be overwhelming, as evidenced by Jackson's recent election of Chokwe Lumumba, a mayor who is willing to unapologetically stand up for Jackson and negotiate with its bedroom communities with the same disdain their leaders have shown for the capital city in 
the past.

Research for Vision 2022 began long before Jackson's 2013 mayoral race, but that election could prove to be a turning point for the project. Former Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. sat on the Core City subcommittee, and Lumumba's primary run-off opponent, Jonathan Lee, still does.

Lee, who lived in Rankin County the majority of his life, ran as a business-savvy young gun who would open up Jackson's resources to collaboration with surrounding communities, including allowing them to buy into the Savannah Street Water Treatment Facility and creating a board, made up of shares based on usage, to govern the facility. He also promised to send the 1-cent sales tax to a vote, regardless of the makeup of the commission that would decide how the money would be spent—a sticking point for both candidates Johnson and Lumumba. (Lumumba has since reversed his stance on the 1-percent tax issue, saying the GJCP has agreed to allow the city to appoint its members to the committee, effectively giving the city a super-majority on the commission.)

That message of making concessions to bring other communities to the table, plus his ties to Rankin County and strong support by Republican campaign donors, ultimately sunk Lee's candidacy.

Instead, Jackson handily elected Lumumba, who vowed to vigorously protect Jackson's interests.

"Regionalism has sometimes not played a good role," Lumumba said in a recent interview. "When you have populations like ours, where the so-called minorities are in the majority, and people try to divest that population of the ability to make authoritative decisions, they do that in a number of ways. One is to disenfranchise the voters, and the other is to take all the issues that you really make decisions over, and transfer them to another regional form of government. That, I will not accept."

Lumumba might play ball on some of the Vision 2022 components that will benefit Jackson, but he's quick to point out that any shared projects between Jackson and its bedroom communities will have to be even-handed and fair.

"I'm not for relinquishing Jackson's control over water, transportation or communication resources. At no point will I be willing to relinquish our control," he said. "But once we respect Jackson enough and give Jackson the power it's entitled to over this city, we can have inter-local agreements where we can work together on some things ... so long as we're going to be contributing on a relatively equal level, and we're going to be making decisions on a level proportionate to our size and numbers."

The Jackson mayor said he likes the breadth of ideas in the plan for Jackson, including the business community's acknowledgement about education's role in the city's future. "Many of the things they are talking about were things that, without knowing about this plan, I came up with in my platform when I ran for mayor. Two of the things that come immediately to mind are the importance of education campaign. Now I don't know specifically how far they've gone with their research and what their goals are, but I think emphasizing the importance of education is critical.

"Of course I'm talking about city-wide and they are talking about region-wide," Lumumba added. "Also, the infrastructure issues—my focus has been on Jackson's infrastructure, but they address that as well."

'Trunk of the Tree'

Despite regional distrust, Vision 2022 architects such as Duane O'Neill and Greater Jackson Chamber Chairman Socrates Garrett, have worked to get the various civic and business leaders to work together.

Flowood Mayor Gary Rhoads has been on board since the beginning and, when he talks about the future of the metro area, all the phrases he uses sound like they are coming from a man who is ready to work 
with Jackson.

"Jackson is the trunk of the tree," Rhoads said in June. "Without it, all the branches will die, so we have to work together to make it—and us—as strong as possible. The key is finding ways to work together that are mutually beneficial. That's what makes (Vision 2022) so appealing; there's something in there for everyone."

For Flowood, that means flood protection and development from the lake project and a business boom from a proposed aviation and aerospace technology park near the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport.

The lake project, which was known first as the "Two Lakes" project in an earlier iteration developed by oilman John McGowan, before becoming a scaled-down "One Lake" plan due to cost and environmental roadblocks, promises to provide flood protection for Jackson and 
West Flowood.

The Vision 2022 organizers and materials also make no secret that One Lake is at the core of their overall vision. It's also the component getting the most resources so far, with the GJCP investing $250,000 and the Mississippi Development Authority throwing in $1 million to help with its 
feasibility studies.

Vision 2022 leaders are adamant that the rest of the plan can and will proceed even if this lake project ultimately fails.

"No one part of Vision 2022 is tied to another," O'Neill said. "The master plan isn't tied to the lake, and while it's the biggest project, it isn't the most ambitious in my opinion."

The proposed 1,500-acre lake would run next to downtown, south of the fairgrounds and east of Jefferson Street, creating waterfront residential and commercial space. In the past, the problem that has confronted the creation of the lake has been getting the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, the Levee Board, and the mayors of Jackson, Pearl and Flowood to agree that it's the best idea for flood control and worth the public money and controversy over taking property by eminent domain, not to mention environmental and downstream lawsuits sure to ensue.

An early salvo came on Sept. 5, when the St. Tammany Parish, La., Council passed a resolution opposing the project. Specifically, the council expressed concerns that the lake would lower water flows to the Lower Pearl, which are vital oyster beds and coastal marshes, and let in more salt water from the Gulf of Mexico.

Levee Board officials called the move premature because the plan is still under development and no final decisions have been made about which measure would be best to reduce flooding. As part of the federally requirement environmental impact study, developers must consider several flood-reduction options.

GJCP brass claims to have positioned all of its proverbial ducks into the right row to gain a consensus on the project.

"What I know is that the (Levee) Board is fully united in its goal to get this accomplished," said Garrett, a building contractor and newspaper owner who represents the Hinds County Board of Supervisors on the Levee Board and who supported Two Lakes as well. "We have implementation plans and a strategy to move the plan forward. We are getting unanimous votes to help move it forward. Hopefully, we'll be able to overcome whatever shows up."

Lumumba said he thinks the lake would be great for downtown, and could spur growth for Jackson's dwindling tax base. "I had a chance to meet with the 'Don' of the Two Lakes project and now the One Lake project, Mr. McGowan," Lumumba said. "I agree that something needs to be done on the development of a lake. It's been successful for many cities across the country, and I know there has been some skepticism about how much waterfront property Jackson would have. But if we will benefit from it as much as our neighbors will, it's going to be something we are going to support, going forward."

That kind of support, even if it is on one issue, is something O'Neill and the GJCP sees as an opportunity to build on. "The hardest part is something that is already being achieved," O'Neill said. "That part is getting everyone to believe it can be done. We have more enthusiasm around this than anything I've seen around here in the last 20 years. That's the big first step."

Big, Hairy Goals

Make no mistake: Jackson stands to benefit greatly from Vision 2022—probably more than any other city in the five-county footprint of the GJCP, which includes Hinds, Rankin, Madison and Warren counties.

The Core City plan is ambitious, so much so that some of the initiatives will take the full 10-year implementation schedule to complete, at least. A long-elusive convention-center hotel—stalled by a deal to give prime land to a poorly vetted Texas developer and a long struggle to get it back—is the first major piece of the puzzle, but other Vision 2022 plans include planning and building a major destination and events park downtown, constructing a state-of-the-art arena and finishing the Farish Street Entertainment District development. Those goals are going to require resources, which are going to be harder and harder to come by through taxes due to fiscal crunches brought on by a federal consent decree from the Environmental Protection Agency and education bonds that come must be paid next year.

All are reliant on large pots of taxpayer money mixed with degrees of private support.

This reliance on big, hairy, expensive municipal projects for Jackson's future draws dissent from some other big thinkers in the area. Architect and developer Roy Decker told the Jackson Free Press recently that the city needs to get past its obsession with huge projects, warning about "utopian planning."

"We don't need one big project here and another there," he said. "What downtown really needs is a coordinated, strategic plan that can build consensus among the city leaders." Because "there's no connectivity among the projects," he added, "they end up creating buzz, but produce no results." Certainly, words like "Old Capitol Green, "Farish Street" and any project involving the word "lake" so far proves Decker's point.

But the 2022 visioneers promise to change the Jackson landscape where the Next Huge Thing proves to be an empty promise. And, at least on paper and in committees, 2022 brainstorming is devoted to smaller efforts (although stories of lake proponents bursting in and taking over an unrelated meeting with cheers about the lake component are not uncommon among participants).

The GJCP already provided the city funds $1.1 million to begin paving the Museum to Market Trail, the first stretch of a planned system of walking and biking trails that will eventually connect the metro area's communities. Another project slated for 2013 is the development of a trolley service that would connect various Jackson attractions.

But all the work isn't in the downtown area, and it's not just about bringing Jackson into a larger regional system, Vision 2022 leaders are quick to emphasize. Vision 2022 calls for strengthening Jackson's neighborhoods by developing an "enhancement program" and an "infill development strategy" for disinvested Jackson-area neighborhoods, leveraging property code enforcement and aesthetic improvement programs to enhance the metro area aesthetically and financially.

"There's only one city (in the metro) that has its own committee and initiative, and that's Jackson," Good said during a Chamber presentation to the JFP in March. "Everything else is a big, hairy goal or a softer goal like talent retention or place-making." Good co-owns several Jackson restaurants, including Sal and Mookie's, BRAVO! and Broad Street Cafe.

"I'll add to that," O'Neill followed up. "Every single one of the other initiatives are things that will benefit Jackson greatly. The health-care corridor is going to be 80 percent in Jackson, and the lake project is going to be good for both Rankin county and Hinds county, but it should benefit Jackson tremendously."

That's true, but the divisiveness that has derailed other attempts to unify the greater metro area and Vision 2022's own ambition are obvious stumbling blocks that will take more than "consensus" by the people crafting Vision 2022 to overcome.

In the last public update of the plan's implementation on the GJCP web site, many statuses included the words "attended a meeting," "met to discuss" or "continued to research."

O'Neill points out that it's only year one of a 10-year plan, and many of Vision 2022's biggest projects—beyond priorities like lake development—don't begin for years.

"If we were only looking for low-hanging fruit, we wouldn't make a very big difference in this community," O'Neill said. "We would be a little bit better, but we wouldn't be great."

See also:

What Our City Needs

Green Space

Big Ideas: Getting Jacksonians into City Parks

Revisited: Town Creek

Defined: People's Assemblies

New Idea: More Than Sports

Bright Idea: Conserve Energy, Create Jobs

Filling the Emptiness

Your JXN Idea

Best Practice: Mid-South Minority Business Council Continuum

What the Heck Is An IBA?

Radical Idea: Vacancy Tax

Build a Bicycle- and Pedestrian-Friendly Jackson

Everyone Needs a Roof

Jackson Planning Map

Anyone who has lived in Jackson for a while, and gotten involved even marginally in the community, knows that there is no shortage of ideas on how to improve our city floating around. Sometimes it seems that everyone has a plan, or at least an ambitious thought. And we have creative, determined people here who care about our future, and that passion goes a long way.

But let's face it: The ideas aren't always, well, good. Often, they're not feasible or cost too much or rely on the same pool of public money that umpteen other projects want to share. They're not always vetted well, or compared to best practices in other parts of the country to see what worked and what didn't. They often don't get enough community feedback early enough in the process.

Sometimes, they're even ideas that haven't worked and that have lingered because some people wouldn't let them go—or were brought back with little study of why they didn't work in the first place. Or, worse, past elected officials tabled a great idea, and it is sitting in someone's desk gathering dust. 
We think there is a better way for Jackson warriors to make a difference.

Jackson needs to be a city where all good ideas, big and small, are encouraged. We also must be mature enough as a community to demand and welcome full discussion of all projects, including from dissenters who might not agree with a particular idea or folks who simply have questions that should be answered. And we must be open to shelving ambitious plans that prove too expensive or feasible and moving to the next idea on the list, or changing an idea to make it work for more people. Building a great city is a messy, fruitful process.

We need to hear questions and concerns early in development processes—when ideas are still on the drawing table and certainly before any public money is committed. A strong city is possible when passionate people can sit around a table and brainstorm, disagree, question, vet, and turn the idea inside out and upside down. All must be welcome at that table—and even more so when even one dollar of public money is needed.

This GOOD Ideas issue is dedicated to the idea that many different people have great ideas to contribute about our city. We may not agree or disagree with every idea, but we urge you to consider, debate and vet all of these ideas, and come up with your own.

The Jackson Free Press will soon launch a series of community forums to discuss ideas for the city and to give you-the-stakeholder a chance to be heard. We urge you to ask real questions and leave the ego at the house (as should the idea generators).

Many of the best ideas in history have resulted from a group of people brainstorming ways to make a flawed idea better. Or finding something better to replace it with—which often happens in early discussion phases.

Building a great city takes all of us.

Let's get started. Before you read about the ideas in the pages ahead, do some brainstorming of your own and fill in the circles on this page with your own ideas for Jackson. When you're done, head to jfp.ms/jacksonideas and share an image of your map, post your ideas or comment on others'.

Your voice is welcome.

See also:

Vision 2022: A Regional Vision

Green Space

Big Ideas: Getting Jacksonians into City Parks

Revisited: Town Creek

Defined: People's Assemblies

New Idea: More Than Sports

Bright Idea: Conserve Energy, Create Jobs

Filling the Emptiness

Your JXN Idea

Best Practice: Mid-South Minority Business Council Continuum

What the Heck Is An IBA?

Radical Idea: Vacancy Tax

Build a Bicycle- and Pedestrian-Friendly Jackson

Everyone Needs a Roof

Jackson Planning Map

To say Robert St. John is modest about what led to his success is to put it lightly. The Hattiesburg, Miss., native insists he "sort of fell backward" into the overwhelming success he's enjoyed as a chef, restaurateur, author, businessman and philanthropist.

But despite stumbling blocks and unexpected twists, today St. John is one of the state's most beloved chefs. At the end of the day, St. John says his greatest role is being a dad to daughter Holleman, 16, and son Harrison, 12.

I sat down with St. John in his newest establishment, the upscale cocktails-and-small-plates bar Branch in Hattiesburg—part of a grand renovation and expansion of his restaurant complex—to talk about flunking college, best-selling cookbooks, battling food insecurity and everything in between.

So, tell me about growing up here in Hattiesburg. Did you always want to be a chef?

I grew up about four blocks that way. My dad died when I was 6. My mom was a schoolteacher, never remarried, raised my brother and me. She was a single mom kind of before single moms were cool. Still to this day, she's 80 years old and still teaching school.

So, a great childhood. I started working when I was about in the sixth grade, mowing yards and whatnot. We didn't have a lot of money, so if I was going to have something to spend, I had to work.

When I was 15, I became a (radio) DJ. I worked 40 hours a week all through school and went off to Mississippi State in 1979 and thought I'd major in communications.

After a couple years, that wasn't working out for me, and Mississippi State decided they no longer needed my services in Starkville. So I left with whatever my grade point average was—there was nothing on the left side of the decimal point, whatever it was. It was bad.

But it's really, in retrospect, probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Because after flunking out of school, I came back to Hattiesburg and started working in a restaurant.

How did that go?

Two ladies wanted to open a delicatessen. They'd never been in the restaurant business before, which is evident because they hired me, as a 19-year-old college dropout, as the manager of the place. I had been a bartender at Starkville at a place where they would let you drink free beer while you worked—I thought, "This makes a lot of sense, I can make money and drink free beer, and this is where I'm going to be anyway."

That was all the experience I had in my hospitality-management career (before working at this restaurant). And I just fell in love with the restaurant business.

So I went back to USM after a couple years and got through pretty quickly—18 to 20 hours, summer school, the whole deal (while working 40 hours a week). I was pretty single-minded. I wanted to open a restaurant.

In '87—I was 26—I opened Purple Parrot Cafe. /Were you cooking as well?

The extent of my cooking knowledge when we opened was that I had asked for and received an Easy Bake Oven when I was 6 years old for Christmas. That was it. We had to fire our chef opening night, so night number two, I got kind of thrown to the wolves and in the fire.

There have been a lot of those things in my life where it looked like a bad situation or catastrophe or the worst thing that could possibly happen.

In retrospect over some years, you look back and go: You know what? It's better it happened that way. It's better we got rid of him opening night because I might never have gotten in the kitchen.

Since that second day in the kitchen, how would you describe your growth as a chef?

You know, I've been voted Best Chef in Mississippi (by Mississippi Magazine) three times, and I promise you I'm not even the best chef in my own restaurant. There are five or six guys that can run circles around me in this place.

To be honest, I'm a pretty mediocre chef who has just gotten really lucky. I'm a much better eater than I am a chef.

How did you get into writing cookbooks?

Here's the deal: I'm a mediocre chef, an average writer and a good restaurateur. But I hope to be a great dad, so there's that.

But the cookbook thing happened because I started writing a column. It was pretty bad at first but then I started developing a passion for that, too, and I really liked that. A lady who eats here all the time was always trying to get me to do stuff. She started saying, "Robert, you need to do a cookbook." And she kept on, and kept on and then one day she was sitting out at table 3 at the Purple Parrot with a gentleman, and she said, "Robert, come sit down. This is so-and-so with a publishing company. Tell him about your cookbook."

Well, I hadn't even thought about it other than telling her I didn't want to do it. So, trying to think quickly on my feet, I said: "Well, if I was going to do a cookbook, I'd have recipes I've developed here at the restaurant. I would have stories about the South and food of the South. And then I would have watercolors by Wyatt Waters."

And without missing a beat, this guy says, "Well, if you get Wyatt Waters, you've got a deal."

The problem was, I didn't know Wyatt Waters at the time. ... So very unlike me, the next day I drove up to his gallery in Clinton, walked in and introduced myself. And about six hours later, I think I left. We just hit it off instantly, and within a month or two we were best friends. We did that book, which was called "A Southern Palate," and it was just this crazy thing.

How so?

Well (we ended up self-publishing). So this book came out maybe the end of October, and we sold out before Thanksgiving. It was just nuts. There will never be anything like that, and there hasn't been. ... It was all we could do to keep up. We were out in three weeks, and we almost sold out the second printing without even having the book. We were selling these little packages that had a promise for a book.

"An Italian Palate" is your ninth book as author and third collaboration with Wyatt Waters. How did it come together?

Again, by accident. I don't plan a lot; things just sort of happen. My friend David Trigiani in Jackson is a dual-citizen Italian, and he's a great Italian cook, so I would go up once a week and spend time with him in his house learning his mama's gravy and this sort of thing. Wyatt would come over a lot, and the three of us would have lunch. I had been planning a trip with my wife and two kids to Europe—we did 17 countries on two continents in six months—and as I planned this trip, I brought it up to Wyatt and said, "Why don't you come over—maybe our next book is done in Italy?" And it was like (snaps fingers): Boom, he was in.

(My family) had been over in Europe; we had hit about 10 countries by the first of October, when we picked Wyatt up. He had been in Venice for 10 days, and then he spent the next 10 weeks with us. We covered from the southernmost tip of Sicily to the Alps.

In the morning we'd get in the car and go into Florence or wherever, and ... he would go paint, and I would go eat. He had the tougher job, really. Sometimes I would be back in the kitchen with the chefs in their restaurants. We made a lot of friends over there, and I would go to their homes and cook.

The thing about it was, Wyatt had never been in a situation where all he had to do was paint. ... In 10 weeks, he finished 128 watercolors. He was a machine over there. It's some of the most beautiful work he's ever done.

Tell me about your nonprofit, Extra Table.

We've always been plugged in to the community here. We just want to help everybody we can help, so we get a lot of calls.

I got a call one day from the Edward Street Fellowship Center, which is a mission pantry here in town that fed about 800 families a month (at the time—now it feeds 1,200). They had completely run out of food, and they were freaking out, and they said, "Is there anything you can do to help us?" So I said, "Sure."

I figured the easiest, best, quickest way to help them would be to call my Sysco rep, just put together an order and have them drop-ship the truck to the agency.

And I started thinking, bet people would give more often and more freely if there was an easier way to do it. So I went ahead and grouped all those foods I had found into three packages—$250, $500 and $750. And I went to Sysco and said, "I've got this idea: What if every restaurant, business and home had an extra table where they could feed those in need?"

(Sysco agreed to) deliver the food and give us rock-bottom wholesale prices.

Then I started traveling the state going to soup kitchens and mission pantries, and to be honest with you, I hate to admit it, but I was even a little skeptical that we had a hunger problem. This is the United States of America. And I learned quickly how wrong I was. It was a cold slap in the face of reality. I ran into single moms, like I had, who were holding down two jobs and trying to make ends meet. Seniors—a lot of what you see at soup kitchens are seniors living on fixed incomes trying to figure out, "Can I pay the light bill, or can I go to the grocery store?" And the worst of all are kids. There are over 200,000 kids in Mississippi who eat a school breakfast, a school lunch and then don't eat again until the next day.

So what we have is over 638,000—over 300,000 seniors and over 200,000 kids—who are what the government calls "food insecure." Which really means they don't know where their next meal is coming from. Now you think of kids who are having school breakfast, school lunch and don't eat again until the next day, and then you think about summer. What happens there?

What is different about the food you provide?

A lot of mission pantries are funded by food drives by churches and businesses, but unfortunately, a lot of the time what happens is people use it as an opportunity to clean out their pantry. So it's old food, it's dented cans, and you'll go through the shelves and see something like cherry-pie filling. People don't need that to live. These people are looking for food to live.

In doing the research on these places, what I learned is there is high instances of diabetes and obesity. And that's part of the problem that I couldn't make a connection. How could we be the most food insecure state in the country—and we are—and the most obese? But what I learned is those two always go hand-in-hand. Because if you don't have enough money to buy proper food, you go to a convenience store and buy junk food and fruity drinks, and that's what you live on. That's where obesity and diabetes comes from.

So all Extra Table food is shelf-stable, low-fat proteins, low-sugar fruits, low-sodium vegetables, healthy grains. It's a great system. Plus, if you wanted to give to Stewpot, say, and you went to the grocery store and bought a shopping cart full of food—well, because we are using our shopping power and buying wholesale, we can buy two shopping carts for the same amount of money.

Here's an example: Edward Street Fellowship Center here in Hattiesburg that was running out of food a few years ago, this year, because of Extra Table, from January through June didn't even have to buy food. The beauty of that is they have other programs. So the money they have budgeted for food they can put to afterschool programs with at-risk youth, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, a community garden. ... Stewpot, you know, has had to drop a couple of their services. Now thanks to Jeff (Good) and Dan (Blumenthal, both of Mangia Bene)—we're about to have a big launch up there for Jackson—we hope to get to the point where we're shipping enough food to Stewpot that they can take the money and put it back into some of those services that they are missing.

It seems like Extra Table is growing quickly. What is next?

I don't want to talk about moving out of Mississippi, yet, but our goal right now is to be supplying the Coast by the end of the year and then in the first half of 2014 we'll be in north Mississippi. We've got a couple grants out there that we are working on and hope to be supplying food to every county in Mississippi. That's our goal next year, to be shipping food to all 82 counties in Mississippi.

Visit robertstjohn.com and extratable.org for more information on the chef and his nonprofit. Robert St. John owns the Purple Parrot Cafe, Crescent City Grill, the Mahogany Bar and Branch.

Robert's Bibliography

"A Southern Palate," with Wyatt Waters (Purple Parrot Co. Inc., 2002)

"Nobody's Poet: the Food Columns of Robert St. John," with Marshall Ramsey (Different Drummer Press, 2004)

"Deep South Staples: or How to Survive in a Southern Kitchen Without a Can of Cream of Mushroom Soup" (Hyperion, 2006, $19.95)

"Deep South Parties: How to Survive the Southern Cocktail Hour Without a Box of French Onion Soup Mix, A Block of Processed Cheese, or A Cocktail Weenie" (Hyperion, 2006, $19.95)

"Southern Seasons," with Wyatt Waters (Purple Parrot Co. Inc., 2007)

"New South Grilling: Fresh and Exciting Recipes from the Third Coast" (Hyperion, 2008, $29.95)

"Dispatches from My South: Reflections and Recipes from a Southern Food Scribe" (Purple Parrot Co. Inc., 2009)

"An Italian Palate," with Wyatt Waters (Purple Parrot Co. Inc., 2013)

Barbara Correro's house sits just off an unpaved road of sandy, bright-red clay and under a canopy of shortleaf and southern yellow pine, sweetgum, oak, flowering dogwood, elm and hickory trees.

A few years ago, she built a deck on the front of her mobile home made out of wood from fallen trees in her 28-acre forest. Some years, she lacquers the porch with the spent motor oil from her car.

Correro considers herself a naturalist. She keeps an organic garden and a few chickens, and cans the occasional jar of honey from her neighbor's bees to take to friends. A retired oncology nurse, she's vigilant about the relationship between the environment and human health. When she retired from her job at an Atlanta hospital, Correro returned to Kemper County, where her family has owned land for generations and where her son, Michael, lives.

For the past two years, though, life in Kemper County's Moscow and Damascus communities has been anything but idyllic.

Correro recently started noticing an uptick in the number of animals that inhabit the forest on her land. There are more owls in the trees and, for the first time, raccoons and opossum trying to get into her chicken feed. The chickens themselves haven't been so lucky.

In the past year, she's lost 11 chickens, she believes, to an increased number of foxes. Some of the wildlife appears emaciated, as if they aren't eating enough, Correro's chickens not withstanding.

"It's just heartbreaking to me," she said.

Correro lays blame for the nature disruption at the feet of Mississippi Power Co. and the power plant and coal mine it's been building since late 2010. Correro and others complain that RV parks have sprung up, and residents have started renting rooms to cash in and accommodate the approximately 6,000 construction workers who are feverishly trying to get the plant completed by spring 2014.

In recent months, the amount of work—and, by extension, the noise, dust and number of people—has increased dramatically, Correro said. The first shift starts at 5 a.m., meaning heavy trucks start rolling down U.S. Highway 493 before sunrise.

To make room, Mississippi Power has razed some 2,968 acres of forest for the power plant and the accompanying lignite coal mine that will serve as the main feedstock for the 582-megawatt generating station. Once finished, the Ratcliffe plant will start putting electricity onto the grid for 23 counties in southwest Mississippi. Hence, the migration of wildlife to Correro's forest, she believes.

The plant itself is an impressive roughly 300-foot structure that looks so modern and high-tech that the sheiks of Dubai could have imagined it. Mississippi Power has touted the Kemper County plant's IGCC (integrated gasification combined-cycle) technology, which captures and stores carbon dioxide, as exemplary of the utility's ability to fight the world's climate crisis while not turning away from a useful, plentiful natural resource: coal.

Since its inception, the Kemper plant—the first of its kind to operate commercially the United States—has been steeped in controversy. Construction costs have more than doubled from the original estimated price tag of $1.8 billion; they're now closer to $5 billion. Officially, the Mississippi Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities in the state, capped construction costs at $2.4 billion. However, Mississippi Power can ask for permission to charge its customers more during so-called prudency hearings scheduled to take place the first part of 2014.

In the meantime, the company has already received the OK to raise electricity rates 15 percent this year, and it has approval to charge another 3 percent increase in 2014, even though critics believe the actual increases will be much higher.

Arguably, residents next door to the plant in rural Kemper County will feel the longest-lasting effects. From up to two miles away, they can hear beeps from the massive dirt movers and other construction sounds coming from the site. At night, neighbors describe the light emanating from the plant as similar to that of an international airport.

Correro and her neighbors look forward to the work being done on the plant—though many express skepticism about the stated end date—when the sounds of construction will go away, and the local highways during a shift change no longer resemble Southern California's gridlock. The locals want to feel comfortable keeping their doors unlocked at night once more. But even then, many fear that life in rural Kemper County will never be the same.

Money No Obstacle

In Barbara Correro's kitchen, cornbread and potato quiche bake in the oven as she pours glasses of unsweetened iced green tea for visitors, which included a Jackson Free Press reporter and photographer.

Correro assembled a group of friends and neighbors from the nearby Damascus and Moscow communities, some of whom have reaped benefits from the Kemper County plant but generally oppose it. But all are worried about the long-term effects of the power plant and lignite mine.

"The traffic is a nuisance, but that is not the issue here," said Correro's son, Michael, who lives about a half mile up the road from his mother.

Situated between them is an 88-acre tract of land that belonged to Correro family members before it changed hands—between family members a few times and a couple times between strangers. The current owner leases the property to Mississippi Power.

Michael Correro is one of the few people on his road who has not sold or leased their property. Scrubby sandy lots once lush with pine, oak and pecan trees surround his bungalow.

Near the Chickasawhay Creek, which forms the western border of the power plant and mine, Michael Correro notices a new fence. He says rust-colored gates in the driveways of handsome ranch-style houses that are now boarded up and fenced off make it easy to identify properties the mine operators now own.

"Money appears to be no obstacle," he said.

Neighbors wonder why the company has bought most of the land around the creek and is gobbling up more. At the price of $10,000 to $12,000 an acre and lease rates of $300 per square foot, the plant paid roughly three times the market rate before work started on U.S. Highway 493. Mississippi Power declined to confirm these sums, citing confidentiality agreements.

Some clues lie within in the 2009 draft environmental-impact study federal regulators required of Mississippi Power before the company could officially start work.

"Mississippi Power plans to acquire additional properties adjacent to the proposed power-plant site for use as buffer areas. Approximately 1,400 acres of land immediately north and east of the site have been acquired, optioned or identified for acquisition. None of the planned buffer land would be used during project construction or for permanent project facilities," the report states.

Information from Mississippi Power has been so closely held (the company declined to make officials available for this story as well) that word-of-mouth and the local rumor mill are the most reliable sources of news about the plant.

Back at Barbara Correro's kitchen table, the neighbors share gossip, which sometimes involves debunking some of the more popular rumors. When Michael Correro starts telling the story about a Kemper worker, who supposedly died from electrocution a few weeks ago, his mother cuts him off.

"No, it was a burn, but he survived it," Barbara informed her son.

"But the interesting thing is that they took him to Tennessee," Michael continued.

"Because they've got an excellent burn unit," Barbara explained.

Absent any kind of reliable community-engagement apparatus, local residents say they have no choice but to speculate. The utility does have a community-relations, Verdell Hawkins, who has an office near the construction site, but locals are largely unaware of Hawkins' presence.

"I don't know what's going into the groundwater, I don't know what's going into the air," said Barbara's friend Jennifer, a former federal employee who asked only to be identified by her first name.

Again, the environmental study provides some answers to Jennifer's questions.

Engineers designed Kemper to run on technology called TRIG, which converts lignite coal, which is soft but abundant in Mississippi, into gas. The plant will then burn that gas to power a turbine that will help offset increasing demand for electricity in steamy Mississippi. The process promises to capture as much as two-thirds of the carbon dioxide it produces rather than letting it escape into the atmosphere like traditional coal plants. But lignite is less energy-dense than coals that come from states like Wyoming and West Virginia, and it contains more pollutants including sulfur dioxide.

TRIG is designed to separate those harmful byproducts, and the plant could sell some of the waste, including anhydrous ammonia and carbon dioxide, as commodities.

In the mid-1990s, Southern Co., started developing the TRIG technology along with one of the world's largest engineering firms, KBR, which was part of Halliburton until 2006. Southern and KBR agreed that if the first facility in Mississippi proved successful, the partners could sell the technology to customers around the globe.

The companies inked a deal with Denbury Resources, which buys carbon dioxide and injects it into fallow oil fields to recover oil that is too deep for the conventional oil drilling technology of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Authors Dub Taft and Sam Heys explain the TRIG technology in Southern Co.'s corporate biography "Big Bets," available as a free download on Southern Co.'s website.

"I think those two projects are demonstrations that Southern Company is committed to leading-edge technology and finding solutions to move forward in how we make and use energy," David Ratcliffe, Southern Co.'s former CEO and namesake of the Kemper generation facility internally called Plant Ratcliffe, told the authors of "Big Bets."

"It is truly 21st-century technology."

A Heavy Load

In its literature about the Kemper plant, Mississippi Power's position is that the state is growing and needs more electricity-generating capacity.

"We need a large power plant to meet future energy-load growth. The Kemper County energy facility will help us to continue to serve our customers with reliable, affordable and environmentally friendly electricity," the company states on its website's frequently asked questions page for the plant.

The U.S. Department of Energy, which has supported the Kemper project, echoes this view.

In 2009, the DOE noted in its energy profile for Mississippi that the state's "electric power production is low given its high per-capita consumption, and as a result, the state imports electricity from neighboring states in order to satisfy consumer demand."

With the exception of one other mine in Choctaw County that supplies lignite coal to Mississippi Power's Red Hills plant, Mississippi utilities import most of the fuel used by coal-fired generators from relatively close states such as Kentucky and Illinois. Some coal comes from as far away as Colorado.

Entergy Corp., headquartered in New Orleans, runs the state's only nuclear facility: the Grand Gulf Nuclear Generating Station near Port Gibson. The approximately 1-gigawatt reactor provides electricity to a quarter of Mississippi, including Jackson.

Dr. Francis Tuluri, an associate professor of physics at Jackson State University, believes increasing the nation's nuclear capacity is a good idea, in addition to investing heavily in renewable energy.

"Solar energy was considered, and a lot of research was promoted 10 to 15 years ago on photovoltaic cells and semiconductor technology, but not much impetus is there," to promote large-scale production, he said.

Tuluri draws a parallel between using coal and using oil, another energy addiction that America has not shown the political will or cultural appetite to move off.

"Even for the past 10 years, the United States was considering automotive reforms but did not go ahead with new regulations or reforms because the abundance of gasoline is still there—and for years to come," Tuluri said.

Barbour's Baby

Jennifer, Barbara Correro's friend and neighbor, said she might not be so suspicious of Mississippi Power and as vehemently opposed to the Kemper plant if the politics that birthed it were less dubious.

"Coming from a federal contracts background, I was only allowed to accept a coffee cup with a contractor's name on it, and I had to report a lunch that was over five bucks. It's a little tricky when you start looking at how this came to be," she said of the plant's political origins.

In June 2008, then-Gov. Haley Barbour took to the podium for the traditional gubernatorial keynote at the Neshoba County Fair. Barbour, who was in his second term, wore a red-and-blue plaid shirt and dark jeans, and made an oft-repeated gag about his spouse of 25 years, Marsha, being a trophy wife. He then talked about developing the state's energy economy.

The capstone of Barbour's energy policy was the then-recently proposed $1.8 billion coal-gasification power plant in Kemper County. It would be the first commercial facility in the U.S. to capture and sequester carbon, and one of only a handful of new coal plants built in the U.S. in the past decade.

"Our energy policy is more energy," Barbour quipped.

In the ensuing five years, Kemper has consumed a tremendous amount of energy, politically speaking. The energy is necessary partly because of activism from environmental groups like the San Francisco-based Sierra Club—which usually shows up with lawsuits—and partly because utilities themselves started seeing the writing on the wall. Old, dirty coal plants represent a huge liability for them.

Louie Miller, state director of the Mississippi Sierra Club, which has somewhat slowed the plant's progress through the courts, said the latest cost overruns have demonstrated what his organization has said in court filings and public statements.

"The wheels are wobbling on this thing and, in all likelihood, (they're) going to come off," Miller said.

Mississippi Power is doing everything it can to prevent that. Shortly after receiving regulatory approval for the plant in 2008, Mississippi Power hired a small army of a dozen lobbyists. From 2010 to 2012, the company spent $500,000 on lobbyist salaries. The lobbyists themselves doled out thousands of dollars worth of meals to state lawmakers, their staffs and spouses.

Meanwhile, Southern Co. retained Barbour's lobbying firm, the BGR Group. Since 2000, Southern Co. has paid BGR Group more than $2.6 million, according to a database run by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. During his reign as Mississippi's governor, Barbour said he placed his BGR assets into a blind trust; however, when his second term ended in 2012, Barbour returned to the firm, where he remains a vocal supporter of the Kemper plan.

'Super Jobs'

Kemper County consistently ranks as one of Mississippi's poorest. As of July 2013, only six counties had higher unemployment rates than Kemper.

State Sen. Sampson Jackson, a Democrat from Preston, said that when the plant is finished, some of the workers might be able to secure employment with the coal mine. He also sees opportunities for ancillary, related and research-and-development businesses to locate nearby.

"They're super jobs. Anybody who wants to work can get a job there," Jackson said.

James Hurtt is a plumbing contractor who hoped to land one of the plant's lucrative subcontracts, but said he only received an invitation to bid on a few jobs. He was not successful in winning those bids.

"A local man can't afford to work over there," he said in a telephone interview. "I own my own business, and they offered me $12 (per hour) to come over there and work. I haven't worked for that since the 80s."

Residents complain that Mississippi Power hired far fewer local people than the company promised. As of July, the utility reported to the public-service commission that 1,932 Mississippians are employed as construction workers, but the company does not break the information down by county.

Patrick Scott, an Army veteran who lives in the area, disagrees with Jackson's assessment of the quality of the plant's employment offerings.

Scott said a friend helped him get a truck-driving job because he heard the contractor was offering $14 per hour, but when he accepted the position he learned that the rate was $11.

Wages vary from job to job and between contractors, but Scott believes he was laid off for raising a ruckus about the pay differences between people doing similar jobs.

Sen. Jackson admitted that there might be a shortage of local workers for some of the positions requiring more specialized skills (he also suggested that a handful of people who did not get jobs did not meet the drug- and alcohol-free workplace requirements). However, Jackson said Mississippi Power trained many people through a program it helped launch at East Mississippi Community College in nearby Scooba.

"I know two that didn't know how to do nothing. I mean nothing. And (Mississippi Power) hired them, and they trained them, and they're working out," Jackson said.

Ordinary People

The six people gathered around Barbara Correro's kitchen table readily admit that if a Mississippi Power executive asked for suggestions on how to alleviate their concern, their response would be a resounding "go away."

As such, the company has no incentive to improve its approach to community engagement, they acknowledge. For its part, Mississippi Power points to community-service initiatives it launched that benefit the area, including a neighborhood cleanup in DeKalb that was part of the Keep Mississippi Beautiful campaign.

The company also awards scholarships for Kemper County students to study engineering-related trades and, eventually, work at the Kemper site.

Although some neighbors seem resigned that they'll just have to live with the Kemper plant, others say that some hope rests in a case pending with the Mississippi State Supreme Court and with the so-called prudency hearing scheduled for next spring when the utility will ask the Public Service Commission for final approval to charge its customers for the plant's costs, including overruns.

Thomas Blanton, a Mississippi Power customer who lives Hattiesburg, sued the company last year, arguing that the 2008 Baseload Act, which permits the utility to charge customers for Kemper's construction costs before it is complete, is tantamount to an unconstitutional tax.

Louie Miller of the Sierra Club argues that Mississippi Power's ratepayers should be off the hook for every dollar over what it would have cost to build a natural-gas plant of comparable megawattage.

Brandon Presley, the Democratic Northern District commissioner on the three-member Public Service Commission, has consistently opposed what he calls making guinea pigs of Mississippi citizens. Like Blanton, Presley believes the Baseload Act is unconstitutional. He declined to discuss the prudency hearing, which remains on the commission's docket.

"I believe in pay-as-you-go, I just don't believe in pay-before-you-go. I feel like if it's such a good deal, they could have gone to Wall Street and gotten private investment to pay for it instead of making the ratepayers shoulder the burden," Presley said.

Kemper County is not in Mississippi Power's service area. Kemper residents get their power from a rural electric cooperative, and will not experience power-rate increases. That's not to say they won't feel its effects.

"We're losing our serenity we had here. It's gone," said Patrick Scott, who adds that local and state officials are unlikely to suffer political consequences from the unpopular decisions related to the Kemper plant.

"Most people are not concerned with politics until election time comes, so there's a good chance that nothing's going to happen. Most people are going to go cast their votes for all the same people who allowed all this stuff to happen," he said.

"I wasn't as outspoken as I should've been. Maybe we could have defeated the thing and kept it away from here."

Kenny Miles, a quiet bear of a man with a long, white beard, has profited from the plant by renting out several properties he owns to Kemper workers, despite his opposition to the plant and the lignite mine. But he disagrees with Scott that the community has not pushed back hard enough against Mississippi Power. As evidence, Miles points to the people sitting around Barbara Correro's table, whose opposition to the plant has strengthened their bond as neighbors and friends.

"Well, they come in here because it's the poorest part of the state," Miles said.

"They thought there would be so many ignorant people that would be so greedy to get that little dab of money, but there has been a tremendous amount of smart people that has stood up to them."

Dr. Hannah Gay

Age: 59

Hometown: Jackson

Works for: University of Mississippi Medical Center

Field of practice: Pediatric infectious disease

Education: Graduated from Wingfield High School; Medical degree from University of Mississippi Medical School

Family: Married 37 years to Paul Gay; four children, all grown

The headlines screamed the news across the globe: "Baby Cured of AIDS!" They weren't entirely accurate; nonetheless, the news thrust pediatrician Dr. Hannah Gay into the harsh glare of the spotlight last March.

Gay's patient, a toddler born to an HIV-infected mother in 2010, tested positive for the infection at birth and for several months while under Gay's care. Then, she and her mother stopped showing up for treatment. When the baby returned to the University of Mississippi Medical Center about 18 months later, clinicians could not find the virus in her blood.

A soft-spoken and fiercely intelligent woman, Gay insists that she didn't cure the child. The treatment she used was within the parameters of what she would use with any patient under the same or similar circumstances.

"I'm getting credit in a lot of the press, for 'discovering' the cure, or 'developing' the cure, and I'm going, 'Wait! I was as surprised as anybody!'" Gay said.

She gives full credit for the child's healing to God, and in retrospect, she can easily see the small miracles all along the path. "I just happened to be standing close by," Gay said. "I obviously was not trying to cure the baby. Cure was the furthest thing from my mind."

To imply that she has a cure for HIV, human immunodeficiency virus, the therapy must be proven in more than one patient, which has yet to be done. It's also unlikely that the specific results could be achieved in adults. None of that stopped the mainstream press, though.

In April, Time magazine named Gay and two colleagues, Katherine Luzuriaga, an immunologist from the University of Massachusetts, and Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins Children's Center, to its 2013 list of the 100 most influential people in the world for their contributions to the field of HIV research.

Gay has yet to become comfortable in the role of spokeswoman for Mississippi, UMMC, and the army of doctors and researchers working in the HIV/AIDS field. Clearly, she'd rather be working with children than talking to reporters or speaking at conferences, but she gracefully and generously accepts the need to do so.

In August, Gay granted the Jackson Free Press a wide-ranging interview that ran almost two hours. The edited version is below. You can read the entire interview on the JFP website.

If a mother is HIV positive, at what point can the virus be transmitted to the child?

Most transmission from the mother to the child occurs during the labor and delivery process. A smaller group, a minority, probably less than 10 to 15 percent, are infected in utero, during the pregnancy. But those almost all happen near the end of the pregnancy, in the last few weeks.

The reason we know that they're not infected prior to the delivery is that those who are infected at labor and delivery usually have negative tests at birth. This is kind of an artificial line that's been drawn, but we say if the baby has a positive virologic test prior to 48 hours of age, then we call that an in-utero infection.

So if the baby tests negative at birth, where do you go from there?

The national guidelines here in America are that we test at two weeks, and then between one and two months, and then again (at) four to six months. We do a little more; our routine here at UMMC is that we test at two weeks, one month, three months and six months. Those are all by what we call virologic tests. It's a very specific test looking for the HIV nucleic acids.

For an adult, we test antibodies to see if they have the virus. But that doesn't do us any good with babies because the 
baby does have the maternal antibodies, the antibodies cross the placenta. So a baby who is born to an infected mom 
will be antibody positive for up to 18 months. By 18 months, they have lost the maternal antibodies.

Back when I first started working (in this field), we had to wait 18 months before we knew if the child was infected. The kind of test that we do now, the nucleic acid testing, we can tell much earlier. So, like I said, we test at two weeks, one month, three months and six months. If all of those tests are negative, by the nucleic acid test, that baby is not infected.

In the early years of AIDS research, there was this meme that said, "If you sleep with one person, you sleep with every person that one has slept with." In other words, there's an incubation period for the virus to show up. How does that apply to babies?

For an average adult—and there are no average adults—(and) looking at a big group of people ... from the time they're infected to the time they start showing symptoms, (it) may be as long as 10 years. For a baby who's infected at birth, that period is shortened.

Because an adult who gets infected starts developing antibodies to the HIV, the infected immune system actually controls the HIV for what can be a very long period of time. Babies are relatively immuno-suppressed. The immune system normally develops over the first five years. So a baby doesn't mount the immune response to the HIV virus.

Before we had the anti-retroviral treatments that we have now, we used to say, "OK, an adult may start showing symptoms at eight to 10 years out, and then die, more than likely, some time after that. A baby who is infected at birth is likely to show symptoms at 1 to 3 years (of age), and die at 5 to 8." It was rare that we saw prenatally infected infants make it to their teenage years back when there was no therapy.

Now, however, HIV is no longer a fatal illness. It's a chronic, treatable illness. For my patients, I liken it to diabetes. It's a bad disease. It can kill you. But if you take your medicines and do the right things to take care of yourself, you can life a long, healthy life with the disease.

When the news was announced in March that this baby had been functionally cured, some people mistakenly assumed that this is the end of AIDS. What is the landscape of AIDS right now?

In the West, it is a chronic, treatable illness. In resource-poor nations, it may not be as easily treated simply because of not being able to get the treatment to the patient. In many parts of the West, it is no longer on the rise like it was for a long time.

Who is most at risk?

In the South, most of our transmission is through heterosexual contact, and it's much more prevalent in African Americans and Hispanics, women and men both. There are more men who are infected, but women are more likely to be infected through heterosexual contact. We do have some IV drug users who infect that way, but not nearly (as many).

So it's still on the rise in the South.

Do people believe HIV and AIDS are no longer much of a risk?

I'm afraid that's what's happening.

... In 1994, we had, across the nation, about 25 percent of babies born to infected moms were infected at birth. There was a large-scale study that was done that showed that if you treat the mom during pregnancy, and then we were also treating the mom with IV medicine during labor, and then treating the baby for six weeks afterwards, that you could reduce the risk of transmission down from that 25 percent average down to 8 percent average.

That's huge.

Huge, yes. Really huge. So in 1994, here in Mississippi, we started a program to implement that information. When I actually started this job in 1994, a big part of my job was to implement that in Mississippi where we started treating moms. At that point, we only had one drug. There were two on the market, but only one that we could use during pregnancy.

So at this point, are HIV-infected babies rare?

In the West, they're very rare because we do an awful lot to search out, find the moms who are infected during pregnancy (and) be sure we treat the moms adequately.

As a virus, HIV is constantly mutating to resist whatever you're trying to bombard it with, right?

Exactly. And that's why we use three and four-drug combinations in treatment, so that if you have a virus that's resistant to drug A, you've still got drugs B and C trying to eliminate that virus before it takes over the whole population.

Back early in the epidemic, we created a lot of the resistance due to the fact that we only had one or two drugs. The virus was becoming resistant to those one or two drugs we had. We treated patients with sequential monotherapy—as a new drug would come along, because that's all we had. Now we wish it had been different, because we had some patients who have multi-drug resistance.

Nonetheless, in the last few years, in the last five years, there have been two, actually three new classes of drugs that have been discovered. When we can talk the patient into being truly compliant—I'm not going to say that in every single case we can treat them adequately—but I haven't run into any kids that I've been unable to treat. Not since we've had the modern drugs.

There's a lot of talk lately about drug resistance.

Superbugs.

Talk a little bit about that in the spectrum of infectious diseases. And also rumors—such as vaccines are responsible for autism.

Right. There have been huge studies, meta-analysis of many huge studies put together that show no basis in fact on that.

I kind of go back to what my mother said when she started hearing about mothers who didn't want to have their children get vaccines. She said, "They just don't remember when, every summer in the hot South, when polio started going through." And (my mother) does.

Even when I was a baby, there was still polio every summer. She said, "We were all so relieved, climbing over people to get vaccine for our child."

I was still in preschool, I think, when we all had to go to elementary schools on three Sundays to get our sugar cube to get a polio vaccine.

I remember that, too: lining up for that sugar cube.

I feel like that people who have this philosophy against having the children vaccinated are thinking, "OK, at least in my imagination, there's a possibility that my child will have autism or something if they get vaccinations." They're not thinking about the fact that "If my child has measles, he may get encephalitis and die. If my child gets mumps, he may be deaf for the rest of his life. If my child gets chickenpox, he could have shingles as a result."

They don't think of these diseases. And now, we've got vaccinations for hepatitis B, which kills or becomes chronic illness. We've got vaccinations for H flu (haemophilus influenzae, an opportunistic bacteria can cause a range of illnesses from pneumonia to meningitis to infectious arthritis). When I was a resident, even, we would have two or three cases a month with babies coming in with H flu meningitis. We never see that any more.

With everything, from vaccines on, you have to do a risk-benefit analysis. I think that ... people are not trained at thinking in that way.

So you're saying there's no connection between vaccines and autism, right?

Right.

I heard you mention in a talk you gave that it wasn't you who affected the cure for the AIDS baby. It was God, and you were there.

Yeah. I just happened to be standing close by.

I obviously was not trying to cure the baby. Cure was the furthest thing from my mind. I was simply doing post-exposure prophylaxis.

We talked about how if we treat the mom, then the baby's at very low risk. ... This mom had not been treated, and we didn't know what her viral load was. In cases where—even if we have treated the mom, but not adequately—if she's got a high viral load, that's a high-risk baby. If other factors intervene, and I've got a high-risk baby for any reason, then my first effort is to prevent that baby from being infected by starting early post-exposure prophylaxis.

We do the same thing with, for instance, needle-stick injuries. If one of my nurses is drawing blood and gets stuck with a contaminated needle, she immediately starts HIV drugs as post-exposure prophylaxis. With sexual assault cases that I see in the ER, if there's been a significant exposure and possibly HIV involved, then I start that kid on post-exposure prophylaxis.

We use three drugs. ... We use the same drugs that we use on an infected patient. That post-exposure prophylaxis alone has been shown to reduce the risk of conversion, if it's started early enough. For occupational exposure, or non-occupational exposure like rape, we start the post-exposure prophylaxis as quickly as possible and within 72 hours. After 72 hours it probably has no effect whatsoever.

When this baby was born, knowing that the baby was at higher risk, I started three drugs.

Our national guidelines at the time, this was back in 2010, didn't actually give a recommendation for what to do or what to start in babies who were at high risk. The guidelines said something to the effect of, "In cases were the mom has not been treated, some experts would use more than one drug as post-exposure prophylaxis." It recommended that you consult the pediatric-HIV expert in your area.

So I looked around for one (swivels her head and laughs).

And there you were!

My choice was to start three drugs, which is the same thing that I would do for a needle-stick injury or an assault. I used the three drugs that I would most commonly start in a newborn that I knew to be infected.

Since 2010, our guidelines now address the issue. There was a study that was actually going on at that time, but now we have the results of the study. On the study, there were three arms (of research): One (study) arm got AZT only; one arm they got two drugs; one arm they got three drugs. What it showed that (the last two) arms were superior to the AZT-only arm. These (two) were equally effective at preventing infection, but the three-drug arm carried a little bit higher risk of side effects like anemia or a lower white blood count.

So, in the guidelines, they say, "(Monotherapy) doesn't work as well to prevent infection, so we're not going to use that. (The second and third) work equally, but the (third) causes a little more side effects, a little more risk with the therapy. So, we're going to recommend in our guidelines that you use two drugs for post-exposure prophylaxis if the mom has not been treated."

That's what's in guidelines now.

There's some art to medicine, and there's some use of basic logic. My basic logic that I was using at the time—and I didn't have to go through all this in my mind for that particular baby because I'd already done it, and it's what I was doing for all high-risk babies: using those three drugs. My philosophy was that if we can easily monitor for the (side effects), if those occur—and actually I've never seen it occur to a degree that I've ever had to do something about it—if they did occur ... then we could stop the medicines and the counts would come right back up. So it's totally reversible—easily monitored for and reversible.

HIV, on the other hand, is not reversible. If I use only two drugs, and then that baby turns out to be an infected child who's going to have to have therapy for the rest of their life, the risk of using only two drugs in that six weeks is that the virus would develop resistance to, particularly, one of those drugs that has a very low barrier to resistance. And then, I don't want to have to treat the child for the rest of his childhood with him already resistant to one of my classes of drugs. My reasoning leads me to say it's really safer to go ahead and use the three drugs.

One of the things I see in many religious communities is a resistance to science. You're a scientist, and you're also a woman with great faith. How do you marry those two together?

I was a person of faith before I became a scientist. For me, it's been very, very easy because as I studied science, it reinforced my faith in God. It didn't tear it down.

I remember very distinctly as a freshman in medical school, studying in embryology, and looking at all of what it takes to go from an egg and a sperm to a baby, and thinking, "Only God can do that." It's not something that can be programmed somewhere.

To me, everything that I've studied in science has reinforced my faith, that God is active and in control.

With this particular baby, there's no way to—actually, without putting you through medical school—to point out all of the actual miracles that occurred to make this case come to light. One of them, a very simplistic one: This mom went into labor, went into this outside hospital, they drew (blood to test for HIV), which is standard thing. If you don't have a negative HIV test on the chart from the first trimester and last trimester, then you do one when they come in labor.

They drew the test, and ... they got back, at this rural hospital, a positive screening test. That automatically kicks it over into sending it off for a confirmation test: a western blot. They sent it to a reference lab to have the western blot run.

Now, I have never, here at UMMC, gotten a western blot back in less than three days. Usually, it takes us five to seven days to get the results on a western blot test. When this baby got over here, we knew that mom had a positive screening test. We were very suspicious that (the baby) was indeed infected, but we did not have confirmation that she was infected. When the baby got here, the first thing that I did was to start AZT alone. I did not want to start three drugs on a baby without knowing that he was even exposed—you get back to the risk-benefit thing.

About 30 minutes after the baby got here, the outside hospital called me and said, "We just got back the western blot from the reference lab, and it's positive." It was less than 24-hours from the time it was drawn at the outside hospital.

I didn't believe them. I said, "You fax me a copy of that. I've never gotten a western blot back that fast." They faxed it over. It showed that she was, indeed, infected. I imagined very high viral loads, and started the other two drugs. Actually, the baby got started on AZT about an hour ahead of the other two drugs.

But an hour, not days, not weeks.

Right.

I'm convinced that it was God's hand to have that western blot come back that early. There were a number of things like that that happened along the way.

... All of these little things, these little definitions, of course didn't become significant until a year and a half later, or nearly two years later, when we're trying to figure out what happened. But to present this to the scientific community, you've got to be able to say, "I had two separate samples."

We had three other samples because, having gotten back (the first two) positive, I kept her on the medicine. We kept drawing viral loads to watch her viral loads coming down on therapy.

All of that became important, not at the time, but later on when we're trying to make the case that yes, this child was definitely infected. And now she's definitely not.

So you had steps that you can see in retrospect. Has any of that been reproducible?

We have not found another baby that we know has fit in this category.

What we have known for a long time is that babies who are infected, who are treated early ... at less than three months, ultimately do much better than children who are started on treatment later.

... Babies who are being treated at three months or less very often don't even make antibody to HIV because the amount of virus that they have in their blood, in their viral reservoirs, is so minute that their system doesn't even recognize it as there.

... Our advantage in pediatrics, of course, is that we know the time of exposure. Most adults don't.

... My baby had the measurable virus until she was 26 days of age and the medicines controlled it. Then, when she came off of medicines, her virus didn't come out of any reservoirs. We can't find any virus in the reservoirs. So, it has never reappeared, even to the extent to make her make antibody.

She, at this point, is negative by RNA test, which shows free virus in the blood. She's negative by our DNA test, which shows virus in the reservoirs, in infected cells, and she's negative by antibodies.

So, it's like she never had it at all?

Right. By all of our standard tests, she looks like a child who never had HIV. And yet we know that through the first month of life, she had it. She had five separate virologic tests.

Other than, "It's a miracle," is there any way to explain this?

Our hypothesis is that what happened is, by starting the medicines at 30-hours of age, we were starting to prevent the viral replication. The amount of virus in her blood was dropping like a rock, just like it normally does with treatment. We think that by treating that early, we prevented the virus from every seeding the viral reservoirs.

What we know happens with adults is that when you're first exposed, the 
virus gets into the blood, it starts attacking and entering the CD4 positive cells (cells that initiate the body's response to infection), the cells that have CD4 (glycoprotein) on their surface. Most of those cells are activated T-cells. Inside those active T-cells, the virus starts replicating very rapidly.

At the same time, there are some, what we call "resting" T-cells. They are also CD4-positive, and they also can get infected. But inside the resting cells the virus doesn't replicate. It can live there for as long as the cell lives, but it doesn't replicate inside a resting cell. The resting T-cells are what we call "T-memory" cells.

If you're 57, you probably had chickenpox as a child. When you had chickenpox, you formed T-memory cells to chickenpox. When you're exposed to chickenpox again, those T-memory cells become active. They fight off the virus before you can get chickenpox. That's why you don't get chickenpox twice.

Those T-memory cells can be very long-lived. They can live for many, many years. Any virus that gets into that chickenpox T-memory cell can stay there and stay alive as long as the cell lives.

That's the biggest portion of what we call viral reservoirs. It's those long-lived T-memory cells that got infected back at the same time as the exposure, but they're sitting there in latency. The patient may be taking their medicine and clearing the viral replication going on in all the activated cells, but once he stops taking the medicine, there's this reservoir waiting to receive the blood.

Waiting like little time bombs.

Our advantage, with the baby—the baby doesn't have T-memory cells. They start developing T-memory cells as they're being presented with antigen. So somebody who's never seen chickenpox doesn't have any chickenpox T-memory cells. A newborn doesn't have many T-memory cells at all.

Therefore, what we think we may have done—our hypothesis in this case—is that by clearing the replicating virus out of her active cells early on, we prevented it from ever getting to those newly forming T-memory cells—easier to do in a baby than in an adult because the adult already has T-memory cells on the day of exposure.

That's our hypothesis. To prove the hypothesis, we're going to have to replicate this. There's going to be a study, hopefully starting in the fall, or the first of the year, where they're going to take a number of high-risk babies—moms have not been treated (prenatally) so they're at high risk—and they're going to start the same three drugs I used as post-exposure prophylaxis in the first 48 hours of life.

At age 6 weeks, they will test the baby. If the baby tests positive, that it is an infected child, they will actually add a fourth drug, keep the baby on four drugs for three years. At the end of three years, they will start testing using these ultra-sensitive tests that are only available in the research labs to look and see if they can find any replication-competent virus in the reservoirs. If they can't, then they'll stop the drugs to see what happens.

All of that said, if that study replicates it, it's going to kind of at least semi-prove our hypothesis. It will at least show that very early treatment works.

And works definitively, correct? So the expectation is that this child is never going to show HIV virus again.

That's our expectation. I'm still paranoid, so I see her every two or three months and draw another viral load and just check to see. We have repeated cultures in the end of May, we repeated cultures yet again, and we have still to see any replication-competent virus.

This year's annual Project Censored list of the most under-reported news stories includes the widening wealth gap, the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, and President Obama's war on whistleblowers—all stories that actually received considerable news coverage.

Project Censored isn't only about stories that were deliberately buried or ignored. It's about stories the media have covered poorly through a sort of false objectivity that skews the truth. Journalists do cry out against injustice, on occasion, but they don't always do it well.

Academics and students from 18 universities and community colleges across the country pore through hundreds of submissions of overlooked and under-reported stories annually to pick the top 25 stories and curates them into themed clusters. This year's book, "Censored 2014: Fearless Speech in Fearful Times," just hit bookstores.

Brooke Gladstone, host of the radio program "On the Media" and writer of the graphic novel cum news media critique, "The Influencing Machine," said the story of Manning (who now goes by the first name Chelsea) was the perfect example of the media trying to cover a story right, but getting it mostly wrong. Manning's career was sacrificed for sending 700,000 classified documents about the Iraq war to WikiLeaks. But the media focused largely on Manning's trial and subsequent change in gender identity.

The media mangling of Manning is No. 1 on the Project Censored list, but its shallow coverage is not unique. The news mainstream media are in a crisis, particularly in the U.S., and it's getting worse.

WATCHING THE WATCHDOGS

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, which conducts an annual analysis of trends in news, found that newsrooms have shed 30 percent of their staff in the last decade. In 2012, the number of reporters in the U.S. dipped to its lowest level since 1978, with fewer than 40,000 reporters nationally. This creates a sense of desperation in the newsroom, and in the end, it's the public that loses.

"What won out is something much more palpable to the advertisers," says Robert McChesney, an author, longtime media-reform advocate, professor at University of Illinois and host of Media Matters from 2000 to 2012. Blandness beat out fearless truth-telling.

Even worse than kowtowing to advertisers is the false objectivity the media try to achieve, McChesney said, neutering news to stay "neutral" on a topic. This handcuffs journalists into not drawing conclusions, even when those conclusions are well-supported by the facts.

To report a story, they rely on words of others to make claims, limiting what they report. "You allow people in power to set the range of legitimate debate, and you report on it," McChesney said.

For example, reporting on the increasing gulf between the rich and the poor is easy, but talking about why the rich are getting richer is where journalists worry about objectivity, Gladstone said.

"I think that there is a desire to stay away from stories that will inspire rhetoric of class warfare," she said.

Unable to tell the story of a trend and unable to talk about rising inequality for fear of appearing partisan, reporters often fail to connect the dots for their readers.

The story, "Bank Interests Inflate Global Prices by 35 to 40 Percent," is a good example of the need for a media watchdog. Researchers point to interest payments as the primary way wealth is transferred from Main Street to Wall Street. It's how the banks are picking the pockets of the 99 percent. But if no politician calls out banks on this practice, if no advocacy group gains enough traction, shouldn't it be the media's role to protect the public and sound the battle cry?

"So much of media criticism is really political commentary squeezed through a media squeezer," Gladstone said.

For American journalism to revive itself, it has to move beyond its corporate ties. It has to become a truly free press. It's time to end the myth that corporate journalism is the only way for media to be objective, monolithic, and correct.

The failures of that prescription are clear in Project Censored's top 10 under-reported stories of the year:

1.

Manning and the Failure of Corporate Media

Untold stories of Iraqi civilian deaths by American soldiers, U.S. diplomats pushing aircraft sales on foreign royalty, uninvestigated abuse by Iraqi allies, the perils of the rise in private war contractors—this is what Manning exposed. They challenged the U.S. political elite, and they were enabled by a sacrifice.

Manning got a 35-year prison sentence for the revelation of state secrets to WikiLeaks, a story told countless times in corporate media. Though The New York Times partnered with WikiLeaks to release stories based on the documents, many published 2010 through 2011, news from the leaks have since slowed to a trickle—a waste of more than 700,000 pieces of classified intelligence giving unparalleled views of America's costly wars.

The media took a scathing indictment of U.S. military policy and spun it into a story about Manning's politics and patriotism. As Rolling Stone pointed out ("Did the Media Fail Bradley Manning?"), Manning initially took the trove of leaks to The Washington Post and The New York Times, only to be turned away.

Alexa O'Brien, a former Occupy activist, scooped most of the media by actually attending Manning's trial. She produced tens of thousands of words in transcriptions of the court hearings, one of the only reporters on the beat.

2.

Richest Global 1 Percent Hide Billions in Tax Havens

Global corporate fat cats hold $21 trillion to $32 trillion in offshore havens, money hidden from government taxation that would benefit people around the world, according James S. Henry, the former chief economist of the global management firm McKinsey & Company.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists obtained a leak in April 2013, revealing how widespread the buy-in was to these tax havens. The findings were damning: government officials in Canada, Russia, and other countries have embraced offshore accounts, the world's top banks (including Deutsche Bank) have worked to maintain them, and the tax havens are used in Ponzi schemes.

Moving money offshore has implications that ripped through the world economy. Part of Greece's economic collapse was due to these tax havens, ICIJ reporter Gerard Ryle told Gladstone. "It's because people don't want to pay taxes," he said. "You avoid taxes by going offshore and playing by different rules."

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, introduced legislation to combat the practice, SB1533, The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, but so far the bill has had little play in the media. Researcher James Henry said the hidden wealth was a "huge black hole" in the world economy that has never been measured, which could generate income tax revenues between $190 billion to $280 billion a year.

3.

Trans-Pacific Partnership

Take 600 corporate advisers, mix in officials from 11 international governments, let it bake for about two years, and out pops international partnerships that threaten to cripple progressive movements worldwide.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade agreement, but leaked texts show it may allow foreign investors to use "investor-state" tribunals to extract extravagant extra damages for "expected future profits," according to the Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

The trade watch group investigated the TPP and is the main advocate in opposition of its policies. The AFL-CIO, Sierra Club and other organizations have also had growing concerns about the level of access granted to corporations in these agreements. With extra powers granted to foreign firms, the possibility that companies would continue moving offshore could grow. But even with the risks of outsized corporate influence, the U.S. has a strong interest in the TPP in order to maintain trade agreements with Asia.

The balancing act between corporate and public interests is at stake, but until the U.S. releases more documents from negotiations, Americans will remain in the dark.

4.

President Obama's War on Whistleblowers

President Obama has invoked the Espionage Act of 1917 more than every other president combined. Seven times, Obama has pursued leakers with the act, against Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Bradley Manning, Stephen Kim, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and most recently, Edward Snowden. All had ties to the State Department, FBI, CIA or NSA, and all of them leaked to journalists.

"Neither party is raising hell over this. This is the sort of story that sort of slips through the cracks," McChesney said.

Pro Publica covered the issue, constructing timelines and mapping out the various arrests and indictments. But where Project Censored points out the lack of coverage is in Obama's hypocrisy—only a year before, he signed The Whistleblower Protection Act.

Later on, he said he wouldn't follow every letter of the law in the bill he had just signed. "Certain provisions in the Act threaten to interfere with my constitutional duty to supervise the executive branch," Obama said. "As my administration previously informed the Congress, I will interpret those sections consistent with my authority."

5.

Antigovernment and Hate Groups on Rise across U.S.

Hate groups in the U.S. are on the rise, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center. There are 1,007 known hate groups operating across the country, it wrote, including neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes, and others.

Since 2000, those groups have grown by over half, and there was a "powerful resurgence" of Patriot groups, such as those involved in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Worst of all, the huge growth in armed militias seems to have conspicuous timing with Obama's election. "The number of Patriot groups, including armed militias, has grown 813 percent since Obama was elected — from 149 in 2008 to 1,360 in 2012," the SPLC reported.

6.

Billionaires' Rising Wealth Intensifies Poverty and Inequality

The world's billionaires added $241 billion to their collective net worth in 2012. That's an economic recovery, right?

That gain, coupled with the world's richest peoples' new total worth of $1.9 trillion (more than the GDP of Canada), wasn't reported by some kooky socialist group, but by Bloomberg News. But few journalists are asking the important question: Why?

Project Censored points to journalist George Monbiot, who highlights a reduction of taxes and tax enforcement, the privatization of public assets, and the weakening of labor unions. His conclusions are backed up by the United Nations' Trade and Development Report from 2012, which noted how the trend hurts everyone: "Recent empirical and analytical work reviewed here mostly shows a negative correlation between inequality and growth."

7.

Merchant of Death and Nuclear Weapons

The report highlighted by Project Censored on the threat of nuclear war is an example not of censorship, strictly, but a desire for media reform.

A study from the The Physicians for Social Responsibility said 1 billion people could starve in the decade after a nuclear detonation. Corn production in the U.S. would decline by an average of 10 percent for an entire decade and food prices would make food inaccessible to hundreds of millions of the world's poorest.

This is not journalism in the classic sense, Gladstone said. In traditional journalism, as it's played out since the early 20th century, news requires an element of something new in order to garner reporting — not a looming threat or danger.

So in this case, what the project identified was the need for a new kind of reporting it called "solutions journalism."

"Solutions journalism," Sarah van Gelder wrote in the foreword to Censored 2014, "must investigate not only the individual innovations, but also the larger pattern of change — the emerging ethics, institutions, and ways of life that are coming into existence."

8.

Bank Interests Inflate Global Prices by 35 to 40 Percent

Does 35 percent of everything bought in the United States go to interest? Professor Margrit Kennedy of the University of Hanover thinks so, and she says it's a major funnel of money from the 99 percent to the rich.

In her 2012 book, "Occupy Money," Kennedy wrote that tradespeople, suppliers, wholesalers, and retailers along the chain of production rely on credit. Her figures were initially drawn from the German economy, but Ellen Brown of the Web of Debt and Global Research said she found similar patterns in the U.S.

This "hidden interest" has sapped the growth of other industries, she said, lining the pockets of the financial sector.

So if interest is stagnating so many industries, why would journalists avoid the topic? Few economists have echoed her views, and few experts emerged to back up her assertions. Notably, she's a professor in an architectural school, with no formal credentials in economics.

From her own website, she said she became an "expert" in economics "through her continuous research and scrutiny."

Without people in power pushing the topic, McChesney said that a mainstream journalist would be seen as going out on a limb.

"The reporters raise an issue the elites are not raising themselves, then you're ideological, have an axe to grind, sort of a hack," he said. "It makes journalism worthless on pretty important issues."

9.

Icelanders Vote to Include Commons in Their Constitution

In 2012, Icelandic citizens voted in referendum to change the country's 1944 constitution. When asked, "In the new constitution, do you want natural resources that are not privately owned to be declared national property?" its citizens voted 81 percent in favor.

Project Censored says this is important for us to know, but in the end, U.S. journalism is notably American-centric. Even the Nieman Watchdog, a foundation for journalism at Harvard University, issued a report in 2011 citing the lack of reporting on a war the U.S. funneled over $4 trillion into over the past decade, not to mention the cost in human lives.

If we don't pay attention to our own wars, why exactly does Project Censored think we'd pay attention to Iceland?

"The constitutional reforms are a direct response to the nation's 2008 financial crash," Project Censored wrote, "when Iceland's unregulated banks borrowed more than the country's gross domestic product from international wholesale money markets."

10.

A "Culture of Cruelty" along Mexico - U.S. Border

The plight of Mexican border crossings usually involves three types of stories in U.S. press: deaths in the stretch of desert beyond the border, the horrors of drug cartels and heroic journeys of border crossings by sympathetic workers. But a report released a year ago by the organization. "No More Death's snags the 10th spot for overlooked stories.

The report asserts that people arrested by Border Patrol while crossing were denied water and told to let their sick die. "No More Deaths" conducted more than 12,000 interviews to form the basis of its study in three Mexican cities: Nacos, Nogales and Agua Prieta. The report cites grossly ineffective oversight from the Department of Homeland Security. This has received some coverage, from Salon showcasing video of Border Patrol agents destroying jugs of water meant for crossers to a recent New York Times piece citing a lack of oversight for Border Patrol's excessive force.

The ACLU lobbied the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to call international attention to the plight of these border crossers at the hands of U.S. law enforcement. If ever an issue flew under the radar, this is it.

The Most Under-reported Stories in Jackson

With few exceptions, slow news days are rare in the capital city.

Jackson's Falling Crime Rate

Everybody loves to talk about how crime is out of control in the capital city, but aside from ignoring the systemic causes of crime, it's just flat-out wrong to say that crime is on the rise. The most recent information from the Jackson Police Department show that total major crimes are down more than 10 percent from last year, dropping from 8,472 at this time last year to 7,585 this year. And despite occasional spikes in various crimes, the crime rate has fallen steadily and dramatically in Jackson since the 1990s.

The Beer Renaissance

Soon, Lucky Town Brewing Co. will become the first microbrewery operating in the capital city in recent memory. Meanwhile, Kiln's Lazy Magnolia is earning a national reputation for the quality of its suds, and Jackson now has a store dedicated to the legal-at-last hobby of home brewing called Brewhaha. Those stories are widely reported. The story that has been under-reported is what a healthy craft-brewing culture means for social and economic progress in Mississippi. Microbreweries are a respectable portion of the U.S. beverage market, with about $10.2 billion in annual sale. Also, more than 2,300 craft breweries—which include brewpubs, regional craft breweries and microbreweries—operated during 2012 and 409 new breweries opened in 2012.

Continued Assault on Reproductive Rights

The Jackson Women's Health Organization has garnered national and international attention as the state's last abortion provider, but JWHO is not the final frontier of reproductive rights in Mississippi. Starting July 1, a new state law requires health-care professionals to collect and test DNA from the umbilical cord of mothers under age 16. Supporters of the measure, which included Gov. Phil Bryant, believe it will help curb Mississippi's high teen birth rate. Reproductive-rights advocates call the cord-blood law an invasion of privacy.

Juvenile Justice Makes Strides

Mississippi has a very troubled history with respect to youth corrections at Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility, Oakley Training School (now called the Oakley Youth Development Center) and Hinds County's Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center, just to name a few. However, there is positive news about the way Mississippi treats kids in its juvenile-justice systems.

An August 2013 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that Mississippi is one of three states where the number of children sent to youth correctional facilities fell by more than 75 percent between 1997 and 2011. The overall national rate fell as well, by 48 percent in that time period.

State Democrats Surge

The state Democratic Party may have overplayed its hand a bit by chest-beating about the party's successes in several major cities during this year's mayor's races in Jackson, Vicksburg, Ocean Springs, Hattiesburg and Starkville. The Dems' victories with Jason Shelton in Tupelo and Percy Bland, the first black mayor elected in Meridian, are notable accomplishments, but that's not really where the story is. Rather, it's the quiet success of the party's 1876 Plan, which involved ensuring that each of Mississippi's 1876 voting precincts has Democratic presence. In some of the state's conservative areas, having even one brave soul stepping up to carry the mantle of the party of Obama seems worthy of more coverage than it has received.

And it's newsworthy in its own right that the state's Democrats are increasingly running as progressives, rather than trying to out-conservative Republicans.

Gun Laws Confusing Law Enforcement

Are liberal gun laws having a chilling effect on the investigation of violent crime?

As predicted, a new state law designed to clarify the definition of open-carry of firearms appears to have created confusion among law-enforcement officials. Several people whose loved ones were killed by handguns have told the Jackson Free Press that police officials used the new open-carry law and the state's Castle Doctrine as an excuse to wash their hands of a prolonged investigation into the facts.

Over the summer, 20-year-old Quardious Thomas became the victim of a homeowner who claims Thomas was breaking into his automobile. In that case, Jackson detectives declined to pursue charges against the homeowner, citing homeowners' right under the Castle Doctrine to protect their home and vehicles. This, despite the fact that legal experts have pointed out that the Castle Doctrine requires that vehicles be occupied to justify deadly force.

In a separate case, William Brown was shot and killed as the result of an apparent feud. His family question whether police declined to press charges against his assailant because people have the right to self-defense and, under the new state law, they also have the right openly carry firearms.

Socrates Garrett sat silently in the second-story conference room of the Mississippi secretary of state's North Street offices on Oct. 29, his legs crossed and his eyes fixed on his former business partner, lawyer and developer David Watkins.

Watkins was there to deny allegations of securities fraud for misusing money from Garrett's company, Retro Metro LLC, when Watkins was the managing partner.

When the hearing adjourned, the men exited the building without saying a word to each other. The high-profile developer and contractor aren't talking these days, and what was once a budding business relationship between two of Jackson's biggest fish, built to rescue some of Jackson's more challenging projects, has devolved into a very public and messy battle.

In recent years, Watkins has taken credit for several successful renovation projects—the King Edward Hotel, the Standard Life Building and Retro Metro, which renovated a large chunk of Metrocenter Mall.

Watkins has other big ideas on the horizon with plans documented on a website that features a slide show which, if made into reality, would transform the capital city into a social and entertainment Mecca in Mississippi, including Town Creek waterfront development, a Mississippi arts district downtown and even a marina near the proposed, but still unrealized, downtown lake.

Urban development is a second career for Watkins, one he took on after 35-plus years of practicing law. He had made enough money as a lawyer to retire comfortably.

But now, the grandfather of four is waging the fight of his professional life—a three-front legal battle that could end his career, tarnish his legacy and indefinitely delay one of Jackson's most coveted development projects.

A Legal Morass

That Watkins is involved in all of these legal battles is no surprise—he has been a thread in much of Jackson's recent development scene, where legal disputes between contractors and developers are not uncommon.

That is certainly the case with the Farish Street Entertainment District, where two contractors have placed liens on the property against Watkins Development for unpaid work, and Watkins Development has placed liens on the same property against the Jackson Redevelopment Authority.

This is the first front on which Watkins is fighting for control and his image.

Watkins got involved with Farish Street in 2009. He was a hot commodity when he agreed to help with the project, as he says that some city officials begged him to do. The King Edward Hotel was freshly re-opened after 40 years as an eyesore, and the Standard Life building was looking grand again, transformed from an aging office tower into an apartment building for the young professional set, as well as corporate housing, with him getting much of the public credit. The Belk building at Metrocenter Mall, which sat vacant and was quickly deteriorating, housed part of the Jackson Police Department and had new life—at least in part due to Watkins and his partners in his various firms.

But Farish Street is a different kind of development. It's not a building; it's a district. Businesses already exist on the street, but the infrastructure was deeply challenged from years of neglect. The area, once a booming economic hub for the Jackson's black community, had been a proverbial wasteland for decades. 
'Unknown and Untested'

In 2009, Watkins took on $1.5 million in debt from the former leaseholder Performa, the company that had finished Beale Street in Memphis, and the Mississippi Development Authority kicked in a $5.4 million low-interest loan. He started a new firm, Farish Street Group, and brought in local contractor Socrates Garrett, attorney Robert Gibbs, businessman Leroy Walker, physician and professor Dr. Claude Brunson and former New Orleans Saint Deuce McAllister as partners.

Jackson architectural firm Dale Partners Architects developed the master plan for the entertainment district complex, which it described on its website as "five connected buildings in the Farish Street Historic District. These five buildings will support seven restaurants featuring four premier chefs paired with equally talented musicians from Jackson." The restaurants would have a centralized kitchen, the site said.

After he took over the project from Performa, Watkins put the MDA money into the infrastructure of the street and sewer system. He began to renovate the buildings and negotiate leases with potential tenants. He courted businesses such as B.B. King's Restaurant & Blues Club, a small chain with locations in Memphis, Nashville, Orlando, and Las Vegas that pledged to open an anchor venue on Farish in the block between Amite and Griffith streets.

In June 2011, Watkins kicked in $4.67 million of his personal money to the project. Watkins and the Farish Street Group then asked JRA for an $8 million bond in November 2011. In March 2012, JRA entered a memorandum of understanding that it would secure a loan for $10.25 million, to be paid back with proceeds from the entertainment district. But the JRA board never issued the bonds, saying in a lawsuit filed in late October 2013 against Watkins Development that FSG had failed to meet deadlines, constituting a default on the contract.

Build-out delays occurred, Watkins says, because financing was hard to find during the Great Recession and the project was "high risk" because Jackson is an "unknown and untested" market. The project suffered a crushing blow in June 2012, when a second engineering evaluation, requested by Dale Partners, found that the structure set to house B.B. Kings had no foundation beneath it. A structural engineer had earlier given the building a "good report," Watkins' attorney Lance Stevens told the JFP.

The foundation discovery added about $1.5 million to the total cost of the project, and forced Watkins to shuffle more resources into the first phase of the project. 


Liens and Acrimony

Two contractors—Ellis Custom Construction and Dale Partners Architects, P.A.—filed liens against Watkins for non-payment for completed work on properties on Farish Street in February 2013.

The situation quickly deteriorated into a war of words, with Watkins claiming JRA was responsible, and JRA claiming Farish Street Group was at fault.

FSG minor partner Leroy Walker told the Mississippi Business Journal that the JRA's decision to remove Watkins from the project was understandable. "I think that David is a credible individual," Walker told the MBJ's Ted Carter, but "I do think some mistakes were made... . I think his effort was outstanding, but not the results."

The JRA board asked Watkins for an update in April, prompting Watkins to draft an 834-page document outlining the work that Farish Street Group had completed to date, as well as the current standing and future outlook of the project.

Watkins appeared at the April 2013 JRA board meeting to present the update, but board member Beau Whittington had to leave, and the meeting abruptly ended when the board lost its quorum before Watkins could present. He refused to provide the "proprietary" document to the JFP.

With public scrutiny mounting and lawsuits moving forward, Watkins said he had a plan to sell the development project to a third party. Watkins would take a back seat to a new unnamed developer, who would take advantage of the contracts and leases Watkins had already negotiated, and use historic tax credits Watkins Development had accrued. Watkins says these tax credits, earned by investing in the buildout, would not be available if the remaining work is not done by or in conjunction with, FSG.

But the JRA Board abruptly canceled the master lease Watkins had held since 2009 on Sept. 25, 2013, Watkins and his lawyer Lance Stevens to write a 10-page letter to JRA Chairman Ronnie Crudup. In that letter, Watkins, through Stevens, detailed what they saw as JRA's lack of support and explained the setbacks they had encountered in renovating a historic district.

"In spite of the JRA and its agents and attorneys having actual knowledge of negotiations underway to sell the development project to third parties ... the JRA did not give Watkins or his partners notice of the termination before taking action or a reasonable opportunity to come before the board before taking such devastating action," Stevens wrote to Crudup Oct. 9.

"The details and history of this development plan are many and complex. However, the underlying and undeniable truth is that the JRA has been given inaccurate information and bad advice and has acted on that information and advice resulting in substantial violations of the personal, property and civil rights of Watkins and others."

JRA maintains that it did not secure the $10.25 million in bonds because "(Farish Street Group) failed to satisfy the requirements and consequently, no funds were ever provided by JRA to FSG." The JRA board, through spokesman Crudup, has since refused to talk about FSG or Watkins, citing the ongoing litigation.

"It's very frustrating that after 14 years, we haven't seen the area developed," State Sen. John Horhn, who sponsored the legislation that authorized the $5.4 million MDA loan, said in late October. "There are other financial contributors and developers interested, but the current parties are so angry at each other that they can't see beyond playing a game of 'gotcha,' and yet the project is going wanting all this while."


The Power of JRA

JRA itself is embroiled in controversy, and not just involving Watkins.

Tired of hearing about Farish Street delays, Ward 3 Councilwoman LaRita Cooper-Stokes placed on the Oct. 14 city council agenda a request to "unauthorize" the Jackson Redevelopment Authority.

Council clerk Beatrice Byrd read the motion and, after some brief confusion, Ward 1 Councilman Quentin Whitwell, Cooper-Stokes' polar political opposite, moved to adopt the motion. Council waited for another member to second, so it could be put to a vote.

And then, silence. All eyes were on her, but Cooper-Stokes wouldn't second her own motion, so it couldn't be considered for a vote. It died, that day, for lack of a second. Council President Charles Tillman placed it in the planning committee.

The scene was indicative of Jackson's approach to dealing with the bureaucratic entity, which was formed in 1970 and originally designed to develop and manage downtown parking garages.

The majority of Jacksonians can't tell you what JRA does, let alone name a member of its board, but these members manage more than $40 million in public assets. The terms of the board members are five years, but two, Ronnie Crudup and financial adviser Brian Fenelon, are now serving beyond their terms by more than a year, and a third, businessman Gregory Green, was nearly four full years out of term when Mayor Chokwe Lumumba replaced him last month with loan originator Michael Starks Sr.

The task to appoint these members falls to Lumumba, pending approval from the Jackson City Council. Crudup, the New Horizon pastor who calls the shots as board chairman, has been out of term since Aug. 13, 2011. Former Jackson Mayor Frank Melton appointed him, along with Fenelon and former state legislator John Reeves, whose terms technically ended on Aug. 13 of 2012 and 2013, respectively.

It's unclear whether a changing of the guard will change the way the board operates, but Lumumba said he thinks it will.

"Any time you have open positions and you can get your own people in there, that is going to make a difference," Lumumba said. As of Nov. 12, Crudup, Fenelon and Reeves still held their positions.

The seven-member board has power, under current state law, to establish and construct municipal parking facilities for motor vehicles belonging to members of the general public, and to rent, lease, purchase or acquire land and property for public purposes—the historic Farish Street district or the land on which the convention center now sits, for example.

It also has the power and authority, under state law, "to rent, sell, convey, transfer, let or lease such facility and related structures or any portion thereof, or any space therein, and to authorize commercial enterprise activities other than the parking of motor vehicles on leased property comprising any part of such parking facilities and related structures," which is what it is doing with Farish Street and, as another example, the land on which the refurbished and about-to-open Iron Horse Grill sits.

As with many laws passed when gas was less than 50 cents a gallon, the interpretation of JRA's charter has changed significantly over the years and without a single change in the language of the law.

JRA proponents will tell you the board has done some great things for Jackson. It systematically bought all the land on which the convention center now sits. It also bought the land on which a proposed convention center hotel will perhaps, one day, stand.

But even JRA's arguably biggest achievement, the convention center, comes with a caveat: the ongoing hotel dispute. During the Melton administration and under that mayor's orders, the board sold the land for the proposed site to Houston development company TCI, which unveiled impressive plans to build a hotel complex—that withered on the vine, leaving the city without access to the land until recently.

After Melton died and Harvey Johnson Jr. was returned to office, it took Johnson two years to get the land back and re-open the bidding process to build a hotel across Pascagoula Street from the convention center. After two requests for proposals and two submitted proposals, the city still does not have a developer for a hotel as of press time.

JRA also bought most of the land and buildings on Farish Street, and has contracted two different developers in the last 15 years trying to put businesses in those buildings.

Then There's the Secrecy

While most public entities have mechanisms in place to ensure public access to information, JRA operates, in many ways, like a private entity, although the city of Jackson and, thus, taxpayers provide its funding.

The monthly meetings on the third Wednesday of every month may be open to the public, but that notion is, to put it plainly, a farce.

Take the Oct. 22 meeting at the Richard J. Porter Building across from City Hall. At that meeting, the board took up three issues. The first was an ongoing discussion about Union Station, which had been experiencing break-ins and recently had the roof replaced (with insurance money, although JRA did pay the $5,000 deductible). The second was a change in plans on a property JRA had sold Jackson State University for the purpose of building a mixed-use building on the outskirts of campus.

The third item was titled "Consideration of and, if appropriate, actions with respect to Authority's termination of its lease with Farish Street Group LLC, litigation filed by Dale Partners Architects, P.A., against the Authority, Farish Street Group, LLC, and Central Mississippi Planning and Development District and lien notice filed by Watkins Development, LLC."

By lumping all those issues in the third agenda item together, the board used a legal excuse to go into executive session without publicly discussing the letter Watkins sent.

The JRA board did the same thing to discuss Farish Street and proposals for the convention center hotel at the Aug. 21 meeting, 28 days before they cancelled the Farish Street Group's contract.

Other public bodies, such as the Jackson City Council, discuss ongoing projects at length in public, right up until the point they need to receive an update on an ongoing legal dispute—which honors the spirit of open government.

Stevens also complains that JRA did not invite Watkins to a meeting to give an update on the project prior to the lease termination, nor did they, according to the Watkins camp, elect to call him to offer any notice that the contract was up for cancellation.

The Fraud Question

The second front in Watkins' battle is a fight to maintain his reputation, his career and his legacy. The challenge he faces here is an allegation of securities fraud.

Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, though his attorneys, is accusing Watkins and his company, Watkins Development, of committing securities fraud when he allegedly misused half a million in tax dollars awarded for the Metrocenter Mall redevelopment in Jackson to purchase a building in Meridian for a different project.

Secretary of state attorneys issued a "notice of intent" July 30 to impose administrative penalties and demand restitution from Watkins for the money transfer.

In conjunction with the order, the secretary of state held an administrative hearing that began Oct. 29 and concluded the next day to allow Watkins to address the allegations that he redirected part of a $5.2 million bond to help fund his Meridian Law Enforcement Center project.

Mississippi Business Finance Corp. awarded the bond April 12, 2011, for the revitalization of the first floor of the old Belk building in Metrocenter.

Watkins doesn't deny that he transferred $587,084.34 on June 8, 2011, from a BankPlus account registered to Retro Metro to a real-estate closing account in Meridian. He is arguing he was within his rights to do so.

As the hearing wrapped up, Watkins denied any wrong-doing and finished his testimony by answering his attorney Brad Pigott's query: Did he have any reason to conceal information from investors, as the state has suggested?

"Mr. Pigott, I have every reason to avoid any kind of concealment or any fraud," said Watkins, who, that same month, took over as the new chairman of Downtown Jackson Partners. "I've spent almost 40 years as a lawyer, and over half of those years in public finance and public bonding. Securities fraud is a career-ending disaster."

Watkins added that his "whole life has been one of integrity" and commitment to community and good works. "I would never do anything that would put myself in a position that would end my career or damage my reputation or the reputation of the good works I've been able to accomplish. This is a serious problem for me, personally. It's caused a lot of emotional distress, because it's undeserved," he said.

The secretary of state also accuses Watkins of failing to disclose in the bond documents "the intent to use and or convert any portion of the proceeds to finance the activities of MLEC." Because he did not disclose that intent, it could be "material omission" under the "General Fraud" section of the Mississippi Code of 1972.

Watkins' lawyers claim that the investigation is just an extension of the attack on Watkins by his foes—the JRA, its lawyers, and his former business partner, Socrates Garrett.

Garrett, who owns Garrett Enterprises and the Mississippi Link newspaper and is a former partner in both Retro Metro and a current partner in the Farish Street Group, has been at loggerheads with Watkins ever since Watkins sold his portion of Retro Metro late in 2011.

At least publicly, Garrett has been mum on the apparent feud. But under his leadership, Retro Metro also filed suit against Watkins Development for the money transfer the secretary of state is investigating.

Garrett did not respond to messages left at his office for comment for this story. His contracting company, Garrett Enterprises Consolidated Inc., is responsible for building several notable projects in the city, including the One University Place shopping center at Jackson State University. In 2010, his company completed New Horizon Church International, a new $2.5 million site for JRA Chairman Crudup's church. 


Tangled Legal Web

The other player in this story is the New Orleans-based law firm Jones Walker. It has avoided headlines to this point, but its lawyers are undeniably entangled in the Watkins controversy.

Jones Walker attorney Zach Taylor represents the JRA board in both litigation and bond proposals, and Jones Walker collects payouts as it serves as bond counsel for JRA on most of Jackson's development projects, most recently, the Iron Horse Grill under construction on Pearl Street.

Additionally, Jones Walker represents Retro Metro, and by extension Garrett and businessman Leroy Walker, another former Watkins partner, in two pieces of litigation against Watkins Development.

In March, Taylor filed for a waiver for conflict of interest so Jones Walker could represent a tech company that wished to lease space on Farish Street, and that would have placed a non-entertainment business in the entertainment district.

It was a Jones Walker attorney, Keith Parsons, who said, under oath on Oct. 29 that he filed the allegations against Watkins with the secretary of 
state's office.

U.S. News and World Report ranks Jones Walker as a tier-one firm, and both Taylor and Parsons are named among the nation's top attorneys in their field by the same publication.

"Jones Walker is the common thread for all of David Watkins' current problems," Sam Begley, a Jackson attorney and Watkins' former partner in Retro Metro, told the Jackson Free Press.

After JRA filed suit against Watkins Development in an attempt to recover the money Watkins had put into Farish Street, Stevens filed a motion Oct. 30 to disqualify Jones Walker from representing the board. In his motion, he charged that the firm was helping clients "attempting to steal the Farish Street project from (Watkins)" with its involvement with various lawsuits spinning around the beleaguered developer and his various projects.

Stevens argued that the tangled relationships between attorneys and principals involved in the various lawsuits create a situation that is "ripe for corruption and present an unacceptable ethical scenario."

In an interview, Stevens said: "David Watkins does not get a warm and fuzzy feeling when he hears the words 'Jones Walker.'  I think the feeling is mutual." 

When reached by phone, Jones Walker's JRA attorney Zach Taylor said he doesn't comment on ongoing litigation. "I know some attorneys think it's a good idea to play out cases in the media," he said, "I'm old school, and I am not one of those lawyers."

Parsons did not return phone calls for comment on this story.


'Delay or Doom'

While the litigation and acrimony play out, Farish Street sits unfinished. Completing the project was on the tip of every political candidate's tongue during the 2013 municipal elections, and getting a new developer for the project was a common theme.

Not much has changed in the past two years. Some of the facades on the buildings have been cleaned up, and the bricked streets with fancy light fixtures look nice. But the buildings are empty, many of the windows are busted out, and some buildings have what looks like kudzu growing through their floors.

In one of the abandoned warehouse spaces at 272 Farish St., in the first block between Amite and Griffith streets, the only signs of life are a makeshift pallet where a person has been sleeping and a pile of trash where someone had Krystal burgers for supper the night before.

Where the project goes from here is anyone's guess, but Watkins, in his 10-page letter to JRA, presented two scenarios through lawyer Lance Stevens.

The first: The JRA board stands by its decision to boot Farish Street Group from the project, and the litigation stands.

If that happens, Stevens warned Crudup that "the inevitability of protracted litigation in federal court could delay or doom the project" if Watkins does not continue to be involved at some level.

The second: JRA reverses its decision and brings Watkins back into the fold to sell the project to a third party, perhaps a new developer who can breathe in new life and finish the project.

Crudup said in an interview with the JFP in late October that JRA "made a decision as a board with what we think is the best interests of the city."

"That was our determination," Crudup added. "I'm aware of a lot of what is being said (such as in Lance Stevens' letter), but it's not productive for us to debate that in the press."

Both JRA Chairman Ronnie Crudup and Lumumba seem open to the idea of bringing back the other members of Farish Street Group, including Garrett and Walker.

"We're open to anyone who wants to come to the table and prove that they can do a deal that will help in developing the district," Crudup said.

"If some of those folks happen to be people who were involved in the previous deal, and they can prove to us that they have the capacity to finish the project, then we would consider them like anyone else."

What's Next for Farish?

Rumors surfaced last week that behind-the-scenes negotiations had begun in an attempt to protect the interests of all the parties involved, but neither side would confirm or deny that talks were under way.

The Central Mississippi Planning and Development District, the entity who represents the MDA's interests, sent a letter to JRA interim Executive Director Willie Mott on Nov. 12 urging the board to withdraw its motion to cancel the lease.

In that letter, the CMPDD said JRA did not give it proper notice under the terms of the loan, and asked it reinstate Farish Street Group, and submit notice of its intentions, before going forward with the termination.

Despite the acrimony, Stevens, speaking on behalf of Watkins, said there is still ample room for discussion between the parties to resolve the issue and get the project completed in a timely manner. "We have offered that olive branch," he said.

Sen. Horhn said he can foresee an agreement where Watkins is involved, but not in a leadership position.

"I think what needs to be developed is an exit strategy for Mr. Watkins from the Farish Street development, but one that compensates him fairly for the work that he's done," he said. "We're at a point where a new developer can come in with a fresh equity to get the thing done."

"I think that if cooler heads will prevail, and JRA and Mr. Watkins sit down and try to work their way through this process, we can get some development on Farish Street, and very soon."

This is part 1 in an occasional series on "The Battle Over Downtown." Have more information on this saga or others affecting downtown Jackson? Email City Reporter Tyler Cleveland at tyler@jacksonfreepress.com or call him at 601-362-6121 ext. 22.

The players:

David Watkins was once considered the Golden Boy of Jackson after he successfully led redevelopment of the King Edward Hotel and Standard Life Building. He is the owner of Watkins Development and founded Farish Street Group and Retro Metro, LLC.

Socrates Garrett is Watkins' former partner in Retro Metro and still a member of Farish Street Group. A contractor, he owns Garrett Enterprises and the Mississippi Link newspaper.

Lance Stevens & Brad Pigott are Watkins' attorneys. Stevens is representing Watkins in the ongoing dispute on Farish Street, and Pigott, a former U.S. attorney, is defending Watkins in his proceedings related to the Mississippi secretary of state's investigation.

Zach Taylor & Keith Parsons are both lawyers with the Jones Walker law firm. Taylor represents the JRA board, and Parsons testified against Watkins during the secretary of state hearings.

The companies:

Watkins Development LLC is David Watkins' main business entity. It's a company with around a dozen employees and more than 50 projects on its radar.

Farish Street Group LLC is a firm Watkins founded with initial investment from Watkins, Garrett, attorney Robert Gibbs, Dr. Claude Brunson, developer LeRoy Walker and football star Deuce McAllister to redevelop the Farish Street Entertainment District.

Retro Metro LLC is a company Watkins founded with Garrett, Walker, and several other small investors to renovate parts of Metrocenter Mall, mainly the abandoned Belk building.

One of the major complaints in David Watkins' attorney Lance Stevens letter to the JRA board is that neither the city, nor JRA, has invested in the Farish Street project. See page 17 for a list of investors in the project.

Initial Investors in Farish

Watkins Development, LLC $250,000

Robert Gibbs $50,000

Claude Brunson $50,000

Deuce McAllister $50,000

Socrates Garrett $50,000

LeRoy Walker $50,000

MDA/CMPDD loan $1 million

Subsequent Investment

Watkins & third parties $6.6 million

MDA loans to FSG $4.4 million

Total $12.5 million

On July 12, just after 5:30 a.m., the police scanner crackled to life after more than four minutes of radio silence.

"I have a domestic disturbance. ...," a female emergency dispatcher said.

"Her husband ... just shot someone trying to break in. ..."

"There is a possible shooting at this location ...

"PD is en route."

Seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds after the first communication, a male law-enforcement officer radioed a fellow cop who was already on the scene, at a cul-de-sac in the northwest Jackson subdivision of Lakeover.

"I'm en route. What happened?" he asked.

"It looks like the guy that's been breaking in vehicles around here already broke into their Park Avenue and inside the man's Chevrolet Avalanche," the officer responded.

"It looks like they shot him with a .38 revolver. ..."

"Got the suspect still here slumped over in the vehicle."

Radio chatter picked up for a while as the city stirred awake. Not far away from the shooting, a dispatcher reported that the owner of a white Chrysler Town & Country wanted to make a report that his windows were broken out. Six other property owners would also report that their car windows were broken out that morning.

Nineteen minutes after the initial disturbance call, a little before 6 a.m., an officer called into the dispatcher to request a criminal background search on the suspect: "Can you run me a Quardious Thomas ... April 3, '93."

Reasonable Doubt

Nothing about that morning makes sense to Thomas' mother, Tonya Greenwood. She doesn't understand why Quardious (pronounced KWA-dare-yee-us), slipped out of the house after midnight on a Friday morning or why the 20-year-old was at the Williams' home, much less anywhere near Eric Williams' truck. If it was her son's plan to break into cars, she's baffled as to why he would target a neighborhood where so many prominent, and powerful, Jackson citizens such as Hinds County Sheriff Tyrone Lewis and Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba reside.

Between the various reports of officials who responded to the scene and local media who covered the news, Greenwood is confused by the timeline of details and seemingly conflicting details of the morning's events.

And even if Thomas was inside the car, she doesn't understand why Williams would shoot into his own vehicle if he knew that his family was safe inside. She doesn't understand why Williams needed five shots to immobilize someone as skinny as her son. She doesn't understand why it took six days to be able to view her son's corpse or why the number of bullet wounds she and members of her family observed are inconsistent with the various medical reports that detail Thomas' condition before and after he died.

Most of all, Greenwood doesn't understand why Williams will never have to tell his side of the story in a court of law.

"That's the hardest part," Greenwood told the Jackson Free Press during a recent interview at her home in Jackson.

Jackson and Hinds County law-enforcement officials have declined to charge Williams with any crime for his role in the shooting or in connection with Thomas' death.

"(Williams) protected himself, he protected his property and, of course, his home, and he has every right to do that," Jackson Police Chief Lindsey Horton explained to the Jackson Free Press during an Aug. 7 interview.

The JFP used a public-records database to reach Williams. One number listed for his wife was disconnected; when a reporter reached Williams' father, Richard, he said he would have his son call back immediately. In a follow-up telephone call to the home of Williams, a woman said not to call again and threatened to "press charges."

The morning of the shooting, Sheriff Tyrone Lewis, who lives near Williams, told WLBT-TV that he got a text message about the incident from a neighbor around 5 a.m., a half-hour before the domestic disturbance call came in from the emergency dispatcher. Lewis said that when he went outside to head over to the crime scene, he noticed the windows of his personal vehicle were also shattered.

"Anybody that takes it upon themselves to intrude and impede upon people's personal property, they're at risk of losing their life or suffering the consequences that come with it," Lewis said.

Muddy Legal Waters

The law providing immunity for Williams is Mississippi's Castle Doctrine, which spells out a range of circumstances in which homicide may be justified. The Legislature passed the law in 2006 on a wave of similar laws around the nation that started with Florida's adoption of a similar legal tool known as "Stand Your Ground," which paved the way for a Sanford, Fla., jury to acquit George Zimmerman for shooting and killing unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin.

The Castle Doctrine applies to the immediate vicinity of an occupied vehicle, a dwelling or a place of business—essentially any occupied place with a roof, mobile or immobile—that he or she plans to occupy for at least one night, even a tent. It states that a person who uses the deadly force to do so "in resisting any attempt unlawfully to kill such person or to commit any felony upon him." The law also requires that the person who uses the deadly force must have a reasonable fear that his or another person's life or health is in imminent danger.

Originally designed to clarify self-defense rights, in practice, the Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground laws often muddy legal waters.

The doctrine often is not applied consistently, even within in the same jurisdictions. Five years ago, in 2008, a 36-year-old storeowner named Sarbrinder Pannu shot and killed another man, James Hawthorne Jr., after Hawthorne stole a case of beer valued at $15 from Pannu's store, J&S Food Mart on Medgar Evers Boulevard.

Police charged Pannu with murder, saying the Castle Doctrine did not apply because Hawthorne was fleeing, and Pannu's life was never in danger. Lumumba, then a Jackson councilman representing Ward 2, which includes Lakeover, said at the time: "We can't have people shooting people because they went into the store and got a beer. That's not an acceptable response in this society."

One of the best measures of Castle Doctrine cases is to examine records of the Mississippi State Supreme Court, which has considered only about 10 cases since 2012 where a defendant cited the Castle Doctrine.

Mississippi legal experts say most cases never make it to the courts because local cops and prosecutors make the call on the spot, as Jackson police did with the Quardious Thomas shooting.

Matt Steffey, who teaches constitutional law at Mississippi College School of Law in Jackson, isn't so sure that's the way the legal system is supposed to work. Steffey points to the Sarbrinder Pannu case, which resulted in his acquittal by a Hinds County jury.

"At the end of the day, anytime there is a homicide or a shooting, the district attorney certainly has the authority, the discretion—and the question is whether one thinks they have the duty—to present the facts of each one of these cases to a grand jury and let the grand jury decide whether there was self-defense," Steffey said.

"We don't take the word of suspects when explaining their actions. It is the job of the police and the district attorney to investigate and make sure the facts line up with the story," Steffey said. "If we took the word of the accused in all violent crimes, Parchman (state prison) would be an empty place."

A Good Family

Five months after the shooting, Tonya Greenwood is still mourning the death of her eldest child.

It took her almost three months to work up the strength to organize a vigil that about 30 of Thomas' friends and relatives attended at Lake Hico Park in October. The recent Thanksgiving holiday, the family's first without the young man everyone called "Q," was especially hard, she said. While the loss is great, Greenwood is perhaps more aggrieved over how so many people are almost giddy to paint Thomas as a street thug who got what he deserved.

Thomas was slender, handsome and giving, although Greenwood admits that her son's generosity at times agitated her.

"He would just give away brand-new school clothes that I just bought, just because his friends needed them," said Greenwood, speaking softly with one hand clenching a Kleenex and covering her face.

By some measures, Thomas comes from a good family. His grandfather, Mat Thomas, is a prominent businessman and serves on the board of the Jackson Redevelopment Authority. (He did not return calls for this story.) Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith is Quardious Thomas' cousin.

Thomas stopped going to high school. In 2012, he was arrested in Jackson for house burglary, a crime for which he was serving house arrest at the time of his death. The court never retrieved the electronic-monitoring device on his ankle; Thomas was buried wearing it.

Greenwood said Thomas believed his arrest brought shame on the whole family. After that, something in him clicked, she said: He wanted to grow up and prove that he was a changed person. In May, he completed a GED program through Jackson State University, and was accepted to Alcorn State University. Instead, he decided to get start his general courses at Hinds Community College and planned to major in business.

Less than two months after receiving his diploma, those plans were halted.

Many details of the July 12 shooting remain unclear, but documents compiled by several agencies help fill in some of the holes of the tragic story.

In an incident report Jackson Police Det. Obie Wells Jr. completed later that afternoon, the detective indicated that when he arrived to the home of Eric Williams and his wife on Tanglewood Cove, the primary officer on the scene led Wells to two vehicles, both with the driver's side windows shattered.

One of their cars, a Chevy Avalanche, had blood on the door and inside the vehicle, which appeared to have been ransacked. Wells' report states the homeowner caught an individual breaking into his vehicle, at which time "the homeowner confronted the individual and subsequently shot him."

By the time an ambulance arrived, 15 minutes after the disturbance call, at 5:46 a.m., Thomas was no longer slumped over in the SUV as initially reported. According to a report technicians from American Medical Response wrote, EMTs found Thomas combative, lying on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds. Thomas shouted that he couldn't breathe and fought with technicians, the report states.

Police transported the Williamses to JPD headquarters downtown for an interview, according to the incident report.

Thomas was taken to University of Mississippi Medical Center seven miles away, where he arrived in full arrest. Emergency-department staff noted six gunshot wounds on Thomas' body, in his left nipple, left forearm, right buttock, right lower back, left middle back and left upper back.

Doctors performed CPR on Thomas; despite the resuscitation efforts, he continued to flatline.

Meeting Force with Force

In a twist of irony, the Lakeover shooting might have made bigger headlines had it not coincided with another national story.

One day after the Jackson shooting, on July 13, a jury found neighborhood-watch captain George Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder for killing Trayvon Martin in February 2012.

Several parallels exist between the cases, but a few key differences conspired against thrusting Eric Williams and Quardious Thomas into the national spotlight.

In the Florida case of an African American teenager and a nearly 30-year-old man of white and Hispanic heritage, Thomas and Williams are both black and over the age of 18. Unlike Trayvon Martin, who was walking home from the store—a place he had a right to be—Thomas was in a neighborhood where he did not live and found inside a vehicle that did not belong to him.

A physical altercation ensued sometime after Martin asked Zimmerman why he was being followed. The JPD incident report states that the homeowner confronted the individual in his truck.

In November, Clarion-Ledger reporter Jimmie Gates wrote that a police report he obtained indicates that the homeowner told the suspect to raise his hands and shot when the suspect started to "reach and fumble around." It is unclear whether Thomas and Williams exchanged more words or had any physical interaction.

The cases are similar in that police in both cases initially determined the shootings to be acts of self-defense, protected by state law. Forty-six days later, a special prosecutor charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder, for which he stood trial and prevailed. Robert Shuler Smith, the top prosecutor in Hinds County, has not brought charges against Williams or publicly revealed his own family connection to Thomas.

Tonya Greenwood said she has spoken to representatives of Smith's office, the state attorney genera's office and a private attorney after the shooting, but that none of the meetings have prompted a closer look at the shooting. Attempts to reach Smith and one of his deputies to discuss the case for this story before press time were unsuccessful

The strongest link between the cases is the reason both Zimmerman and Williams are free today. During his trial, George Zimmerman's attorneys never explicitly mentioned Florida's Stand Your Ground law, but the jury's lengthy instructions mirror the statute.

They stated: "If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in anyplace where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."

When the trial ended, an anonymous juror appeared on CNN and told anchor Anderson Cooper that jurors also discussed Stand Your Ground during its deliberations.

"The law became very confusing. It became very confusing," the juror, whom the network identified only as B37, told Cooper July 14. "We had stuff thrown at us. We had the second-degree murder charge, the manslaughter charge, then we had self-defense, Stand Your Ground." The juror said the not-guilty verdict resulted in part "because of the heat of the moment and the Stand Your Ground (law)." Steffey, the MC law professor, believes the Castle Doctrine presents similar challenges for people who prosecute crimes.

"I think the main thing the Castle Doctrine accomplished was to make more citizens confused about what their rights were," Steffey said. "I'm not sure so sure it expanded anybody's self-defense rights, but it certainly made the issue more complicated."

The Way of the Gun

Guns have been a favorite cause of many legislatures in recent years. In 2013, Mississippi lawmakers introduced a barrage of more than 30 gun bills. One failed proposal, a response to the December 2012 shooting massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that ignited debates about gun control, would exempt Mississippi from complying with any new federal regulations on gun ownership.

A handful of gun bills survived, including one that would provide some state funding for armed guards in public schools, another that sealed concealed-carry gun permits from public records requests and another, House Bill 2, that backers called a technical amendment to an existing law that permits individuals to openly carry firearms.

In recent years, state legislatures have spun out gun legislation with great frequency, driven mainly by near-acts of nature that no person with a gun could have prevented. The combination of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Katrina, which happened four years later, made Americans feel less safe and more interested in buying guns, a 2008 report from the National District Attorneys Association found.

After 9-11, the National Rifle Association, one of the nation's largest and best-funded lobbying groups, working with the American Legislative Exchange Council, which develops model legislation for conservative groups and corporations, started petitioning statehouses around the nation to adopt Castle Doctrine-style laws.

The campaign started with Florida, which passed Stand Your Ground in 2005, and resulted in more than 30 states adopting one of the ALEC bills. It was a success even by ALEC's own measure, detailed in minutes from a 2007 ALEC meeting the Washington Post obtained describing the proliferation of Castle Doctrines as a "continuing success" for the organization.

The spread of the laws also came with unforeseen consequences. In June 2012, the Tampa Bay Times looked at 200 Florida stand-your-ground cases and their outcomes. The analysis revealed that 70 percent of people who invoke the law walk free and that defendants claiming self-defense are more likely to prevail if the victim is African American—59 percent of defendants suspected of shooting a white victim prevailed, 73 percent of people who used Stand Your Ground as a defense when killing an African American were successful.

HB2, the open carry law, was supposed to go into effect July 1, but Jackson-area officials including Smith and the newly appointed police chief, briefly blocked its implementation, citing worries that the law would lead to legal chaos. If implemented, Smith told reporters this summer that it would be "difficult to determine who is a threat, and (who) isn't a threat." Horton of the JPD agreed about the ambiguity, telling JFP in August, "It's going to cause us to police differently."

State Attorney General Jim Hood recently issued an opinion that broadens open-carry rights even further, stating that signs that some cities have posted banning conceal-carry may not be constitutional.

Horton acknowledges ambiguities exist in many laws his officers have to enforce, and said police agencies therefore should have a larger role in crafting policy.

"The same goes for the so-called Castle Doctrine. I don't remember anybody asking us, (and) we represent the capital city of the state of Mississippi. You would think (legislators) would reach out and want to know what we felt about some of this before they moved forward with that legislation. But that did not happen.

Speaking directly to questions the Lakeover shooting raised about the extent of owners' rights to use deadly force to protect their property, Horton offered: "Yes, more education is needed. No, you cannot arbitrarily shoot someone just because they're walking across your grass.

"Every case is going to be handled on a case-by-case basis and on its own merits. That's the frightening part of this. People think differently, and what constitutes fear for one person may not be for another. ... That's why you have courts and judges. It's tough, and citizens have no idea what it's like for officers to have to make an instantaneous decision."

A Mother Left Wondering

In the meantime, Tonya Greenwood's mind is left to wonder. She wonders about the conflicting timelines and why the funeral home would not let her see her son's body until six days after the shooting. She wonders why the number and placement of bullet holes on his body, which a relative documented on cell phone video and provided to the JFP, doesn't match up with several of the medical reports she has seen.

Greenwood wonders about the large purple bruise on his side, which the autopsy report states resulted from blunt-force trauma, and whether he had been in a fight before he died. And she wonders whether the discoloration around some wounds indicates whether some of the shots were fired at closer range than others and about the varying angles the projectiles entered and exited his body, according to the autopsy.

Taken together, Greenwood can't help but wonder if there is more to the story, if Eric Williams will ever have to provide a more complete accounting of the events that transpired that morning or if the police and prosecutors will ever do real investigation.

Greenwood doesn't know if her son was breaking the law that morning; she just doesn't think it matters. Nor did he have to die for whatever he could have been after in that truck, she said. Besides, had the police caught him, she thinks he rightfully would have been charged with a crime and appeared before a judge or jury account for his actions.

Eric Williams should, too, she said.

"They're scooting it under the Castle Doctrine," she said. "They made the law so easy—and just like that it's justified. (Quardious) never had a chance."

How do you resolve to make a difference in the lives of young people? Feel free to list them below and send to ladd@jacksonfreepress.com, post under this story at jfp.ms/kids2014 or just put on your fridge to remind yourself throughout the year. Meantime, here are a few thoughts we gathered on Facebook in answer to that question:

Langston Moore Invigorate them on a small change in their environment. Plant a one-bed raised garden. Ask for more fresh, Mississippi-grown products in the lunch line. Any small victory we can empower them to achieve will lead to a greater good in their community. Assist them in learning the process on a small scale. It is easily transferable to a larger scale. We have young, bright brains here. It's a matter of us encouraging, teaching and giving them the ball to run. I vow to plant another garden with my son. I proclaim that 2014 will be the continual lesson of those who have made Mississippi history and are right now. Dawn Beasley Macke We have a local group that would love to help, Langston. They built raised beds for me as a learner project but have greater goals: Self-Sustainability in Mississippi (find on Facebook).

Kass Welchlin I resolve to make a difference in young lives by being a consistent mentor, available friend and respectable role model. Helping by showing them the difference between a real friend and a Facebook friend. Show them the value of volunteering. STEM project that teaches them how to construct from scratch a computer, a model plane, and a telephone (putting STEM in motion).

Rashida Walker I will make a difference in young lives by continuing to teach a weekly Senior Rites of Passage class to about 22 high school seniors. It's Bible-based, but a few years ago I saw the need to be more on their level of what they face daily. So I developed a block of classes: Avoiding the Trap: sex, drugs, and alcohol. It has been a powerful movement. This year we had seniors that were in college to come back and share how those classes impacted their decisions as they were now in college trying hard to avoid the traps!

Larry Butts Baxter Hogue at Imagine Behavioral Health turns young people's lives around every day. He uses a treatment philosophy that affects the way they see themselves and the world around them.

When You Reach Out to Help Young People ...

A team of researchers studied youth mentoring programs and developed these principles to ensure that the program or effort is ethical—and doesn't backfire. Read the explanations at jfp.ms/mentor_ethics.

Promote the welfare and safety of the young person.

• Build rapport with proteges, as well as their primary caregivers to better understand expectations, belief systems and family circumstances.

• Do no harm. This includes sexual harassment, abuse and exploitation, but it means learning the skills to mentor well and use sound judgment. It also means not misusing your power (including religious or political proselytizing) and recognizing differences caused by class and privilege.

• Mentors can use their advantages for good, however, as a form of social capital to help the mentee with connections, experiences and resources.

• Establish appropriate boundaries with attention given to the problems with playing multiple roles in a child's life.

Be trustworthy and responsible.

• Never leave a mentee relationship with no communication. Plan transitions.

• Hold yourself and others accountable to mentoring guidelines and best practices.

Act with integrity.

• Don't change plans unless unavoidable. Be on time. Return calls and emails.

• Conduct selves with integrity in mentees' schools, homes and communities. Respect their customs and routines.

• Be wary of getting involved financially with the mentee. Express generosityby going through a brokered third party, for instance.

Promote justice for young people.

• Be careful that your biases do not result in prejudicial treatment of proteges. Seek out training in cultural competence and sensitivity.

• Use first-hand experience of challenges faced by young people to help redress social ills and policies that promote their well-being and health. Communicate what you learn to other adults.

Respect the young person's rights and dignity.

• Respect the mentee's right to make choices.

• Don't be the morality police. Behave in a fashion that helps, not interferes, with the right of protege and her family to exercise their own reasoning and moral judgment.

• Repect your mentee's and his family's right to privacy and confidentiality.

• Honor your protege's confidences—while making it clear that you must report any plans to harm themselves or others.

• Report to the mentoring program suspicions that child has been abused or neglected.

• Seek out training on how to deal with sticky confidentiality situations.

Source: "First, Do No Ham: Ethical Principals for Youth Mentoring Relationships"; read more at jfp.ms/mentor_ethics.

The word "mentor" is incredibly common these days—a good sign that more and more people understand the need to help young people, especially those unfortunate enough not to have a strong family support bases. But making a real difference in young people's lives isn't as simple as calling yourself a mentor, sending them motivational quotes or having coffee now and then (although those things certainly don't hurt).

And it's certainly not about lecturing—whether about studying, abstaining from sex or choosing the right way to worship.

Great mentors truly engage in their mentees' lives and model successful life skills, which includes emotional intelligence, grit and the other assets that young people need (see pages 15-17).

But mentoring is not without pitfalls, especially for children from the most challenging low-income backgrounds, and kids with behavioral issues can have the hardest time finding an adult to help them.

Then there's the longevity issue. Short-term mentorships are the most common type—an adult mentors a young person for a few months or maybe a year. Short-term mentorships, however, are not long enough to make a real difference in the lives of young people, especially those from high-risk backgrounds. And they can actually cause harm when the child experiences another adult not staying in their lives for very long.

Jean B. Grossman of Public-Private Ventures of Philadelphia, Pa., and Jean B. Rhodes of the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign studied 1,138 young, urban adolescents who had applied to the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. The study (jfp.ms/mentor_study) found the greatest mentoring benefit was to young people in relationships of a year or longer. Those in very short-term mentoring relationships actually "functioned" (to use the language of the study) worse than before. The terminated relationships were often with teenagers experiencing difficult circumstances.

"Matches with adolescents who were referred for psychological or educational programs, or had sustained emotional, sexual, or physical abuse, were more likely to break up. Additionally, matches involving 13 - 16 year olds were 65 percent more likely to break up in each period than matches with 10 - 12 year olds," the authors wrote.

The lesson is that mentoring is a serious commitment with a good outcome likely if both sides stick to it: "Mentor relationships that take hold, on the other hand, are likely to grow progressively more effective with time. Researchers generally agree that mentors promote positive developmental outcomes through role modeling and the provision of emotional support and positive feedback."

None of this means, however, that any of us should give up on short-term mentoring relationships we're in—but it does indicate that the Jackson community should look toward ways to create and sustain long-term mentoring programs that allow a young person to have a consistent adult in their lives, whether or not it's a parent.

Fringe Benefit

The Grossman-Rhodes study found evidence that mentors can also have a positive effect on the people close to the mentee, including their parents: "By helping adolescents cope with everyday stressors, providing a model for effective conflict resolution, and indirectly reducing parental stress, mentor relationships are thought to have the capacity to facilitate improvements in parent - child interactions."

Source: jfp.ms/mentor_study

Model Mentoring: Friends of the Children

Friends of the Children (friendsofchildren.org) is a long-term mentoring program founded in Portland, Ore., by entrepreneur Duncan Campbell. His idea was to make a real difference in the lives of children who need it most: those from high-poverty areas with unstable support bases who are likely to act out and get in trouble. The program succeeds with many kids because it pairs each of them with an adult for at least three years. The adults, who are paid to be mentors, must spend at least four hours a week with the mentees every week including summertime. Each child is mentored for a full 12 years, typically starting in kindergarten and ending with graduation.

As a result, the program reports remarkable success, such as with a boy The New York Times described in 2011 (see jfp.ms/mentorNYT). Samuel, a Harlem resident who never knew his father, went from being a troublemaker to an emotionally intelligent child with wide experiences, including museums, rock climbing, kayaking and tennis. He even became a role model for other children.

The group's philosophy is to insert good support in each child's life as early as possible—and before they reach the stage when they might get in serious trouble. "With someone to look up to, count on, talk to, help them with school work, comfort them, and align them with goals for the future, with someone who will be there for the long haul, these children will thrive. What they need is a Friend," its website states.

Friends' Goals for Mentees:

Goal 1

Success in school with a minimum of a High School Diploma (preferred) or a GED

Goal 2

Positive youth engagement including avoiding involvement in the juvenile justice system

Goal 3

Pursue a healthy lifestyle including avoiding early parenting

Tips for Mentoring

Be Consistent. Don't be flaky or disappoint your mentee.
Keep an open mind. It's OK if they come from a different background with different experiences. Model, don't judge.
Be firm, and friendly. Challenge them to push through their comfort zone, but with compassion.
Partner with the child's parent(s). Most parents want the best for their children—and know they can't do it alone.
Offer a different, new perspective. Good mentors help open a child's mind behind what is right in front of them.

Source: New York Metro Parents (more: jfp.ms/mentortips) 
Types of Mentoring

You may think that mentoring is only about one person helping another—and often someone younger. But mentoring can work a variety of ways, including:

• Group Mentoring: One adult works with a group of kids at one time, often collaborating on a specific activity or project.

• Team Mentoring: More than one adult works with several children at a time.

• Family Mentoring: An adult works with an entire family, often over a period of time, to help them develop skills to cope with challenges.

Source: New York Metro Parents (more: jfp.ms/mentortips)

Keys to Mentoring Success

• Training for mentors

• Structured activities for mentors and youth

• Frequent contact: kids need stability, and a mentor can provide it

• Parent support and involvement

• Monitoring the implementation of the program

Source: Jean E. Rhodes at infed.org.

When discussing the very difficult issue of violence, we find there are two types of people: those who don't care why criminals resort to violence, and those who get that preventing it can only come from attacking it at the roots. That is, we stop crime before it happens by trying to understand and fix why a young person takes that turn in the first place.

Yet, if you don't hold the clearly racist belief that young blacks are statistically more likely to commit crime because they're black, then logic dictates that we should seek out the reasons—and then change those conditions.

The Atlanta Black Star presented a compelling and unflinching "5 Reasons Young Black Men Resort To Violence" that circulated Facebook recently. In it, they quoted the late Dr. Amos Wilson, a Hattiesburg-born psychology professor and expert on black crime, who found that young black men resorted to crime due to a system that had "excluded and oppressed them for centuries."

"Personal responsibility is a factor, but understanding how the minds of young black boys have been negatively impacted by racial oppression may provide insight on what solutions will be effective in remedying the problem," Andre Moore wrote in the piece.

Here are the five reasons the piece gave; please consider with an open mind (and read to the end):

Slavery and Racial Oppression

Anyone who has a child or has been one, or who is the child of an alcoholic, knows that tough family issues can affect a child's self-esteem and chances for success. Now, imagine that your family descended from (recent) generations of oppressed people. It's hard to deny the clear truth that a history of enslavement, brutality, rape and disparagement of one's family can leave extremely deep scars.

"The trauma caused by this psychological brutality resulted in severe damage to the mind of the victims, which manifested as an identity crisis, self hate, low self worth, and a distrust of the world at large. This mentality has been passed down through generations," Moore's Atlanta Black Star post stated.

And those practices—and legal discrimination such as red-lining and job/education discrimination—led directly to the conditions of impoverished neighborhoods today: "low socioeconomic status, social deprivation, inadequate education, high unemployment, and the criminal industrial complex has reinforced this negative mentality," Moore wrote, backed up by scads of scientific research on the psychology of oppression.

Put another way, the hunted can become the hunters if we're not careful and proactive about changing the conditions caused by historic actions and brutality.

SOLUTIONS:

• Young people need to learn and appreciate the positives of their culture and history and people who look like them.

• It is important to teach difficult history not by shaming a child for not knowing it, but by making it interesting and relevant—such as by telling narrative stories that put the young person (or the adult) into the shoes of a slave or a Freedom Rider. Make it real and compelling for them, not judgy.

• Others should learn and understand the history of oppression in our state and nation—not to keep "apologizing for the past," but to help find solutions for the present and especially the future.

Being Devalued

It makes a lot of sense that young people growing up in devalued cultures then act in aggressive ways to try to command some sort of "respect"—even if it's a negative, violent kind. This is why it is so harmful for media and members of the larger community to make assumptions about children of color—or to apply double standards to them as happened in the Trayvon Martin case where his "self-defense" wasn't considered as important as that of his killer.

Experts find that cultural biases, often redistributed through skewed media coverage and obsession with reporting crime over positives in a community, contribute to the devaluation of a young person in his own mind, often leading to acting out or worse.

Lisa Firestone, a clinical psychologist and expert on the criminal mind, wrote in Psychology Today that people who resort to violence often have "voices" (negative thought processes) that flood their minds, setting the stage for aggressive behavior.

"Understanding what is going on in the mind of someone who is violent allows us to better assess the risk for violence and to intervene, protecting both the potential perpetrator and victim," she advises. "Many risk factors for violence can't be changed, but a person's thinking is a risk factor that can be."

Dr. James Gilligan, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine who specializes in the causes of violent crime, writes that being shamed is a major cause of violence. [P]eople resort to violence when they feel that they can wipe out shame only by shaming those who they feel shamed them. The most powerful way to shame anyone is by means of violence, just as the most powerful way to provoke anyone into committing violence is by shaming him," he writes.

Gilligan warns that traditional punishment of both children and criminals often induces shame, which in turn can make the receiver more violent. The violence is a direct reaction, he says, of the lack of self-love; his findings show that being aggressive is often a way to reclaim self-respect, or self-love.

SOLUTIONS:

• Firestone says violent people need to be taught what underlies their "tortured thinking" in order to better resist it.

• The larger community (including media) needs to work carefully to not promote biases against certain cultures—and to report at least many positives as negatives, starting with when crime has dropped dramatically among certain groups.

• Adults must mentor young people into pursuing and appreciating their own value, especially as part of a larger community. Don't assume young people are selfish; help them help others to increase their own self-worth.

Self-Hatred

This one is straightforward and seems commonsensical: "Feeling devalued in society creates self hate. Denied the love of others, a person's self-love, or soul, like money in a savings account, slowly but surely begins to wane," The Atlanta Black Star writes, referring to findings by Dr. Gilligan.

Young people, especially those in challenged communities, soak up the shame that the larger culture showers on them before they've even had a chance to do something bad. That pressure doesn't have the perhaps-intended effect of shaming young people out of trouble; it can affect their psyches and instill a sense of self-hatred in them. Put another way, if society doesn't expect them to be great, why should they believe they could be?

Most families know this is true of their own children: they need their parents and teachers to have faith in them and believe in their potential. Consider, then, how difficult it is for young people growing up amid a culture that expects them to mess due to their race or their neighborhood. Couple that with generations of a shaky family structure (see No. 1 above for a major reason), and these kids can get the shame inside their own homes and from the culture at large.

In turn, they "may develop false sense of pride or an over-inflated ego to compensate. Challenges to this exaggerated self-image cannot be tolerated by the individual who possesses it," the Black Star writes, referring to research by Firestone.

Kids saddled with self-hatred (through no fault of their own) often compensate by seeking an "aggrandized self-image." And, yes, that's where the worst behavior kicks in, often enabled by easy access to weapons.

SOLUTIONS:

• On a micro level, each adult needs to engage with helping kids get past self-hatred issues—by loving and trusting them (even, initially, in small ways).

• It is key to be interested in and find out how they're feeling rather than telling them how they ought to feel, therapist Rhoda Mills Sommers suggest on her website. This means non-judgmental conversation—and listening (a key to helping any adult or child).

• A young person needs passions and interests they can get into "flow" over; if you're mentoring a young person, find out what it is and help them do it.

• On a macro level, we all must work together to change the culture of shame. That means challenging our families, our neighbors and even media we consume to stop mis-representing children as "thugs"—especially those who justify the over-use of violence against them for relatively minor crimes.

• Watch your own stereotypes about what a young person might be interested in: Give a child the chance to choose dance over team sports, art over a business track, the violin over hip-hop—or vice versa.

Mistrust

"Social mistrust" contributes to violence among youth, especially those who grow up in communities historically mistrusted by society, a serious problem that is exacerbated by sensationalistic and biased media coverage. People who grow up in and then choose to live in divided communities that distrust the "other" contribute directly to this problem, the Atlanta Black Star reported. Social mistrust is a negative outcome from the perceptions that crime is "hopeless" in a community; such perceptions, in turn, fuel mistrust among residents and make it more unlikely that residents will believe that they can tackle the crime in their own communities. They're fearful, and lock themselves inside the house, for instance, rather than getting out into the streets and being active—which helps prevent crime, as well as presents positive, confident images to the kids of the community. It also can mean that the criminal element "wins."

Dr. Firestone warns about people assuming "a self-protective and defended posture from a perceived danger. Because the paranoia and misperception makes the threat seem real, people feel justified in acting out violence to protect themselves." This can cut both ways: Young people feel continually mistrusted and under attack so they might as well act out; and those who fear young people are more likely to respond to their fears with excessive violence (as in the Quardious Thomas shooting that the JFP featured last issue. See jfp.ms/quardious.) That, in turn, continues the mistrust/violence cycle, leaving no end in site—only more violence.

The Atlanta Black Star reported that research shows the long history of white supremacy, and the violence that kept it in place, has had a devastating effect on many African Americans, leading to self-hatred and distrust, which feeds the violence cycle. "This distrust is also prevalent among black youth, who sees his black peers through the eyes of his oppressor—someone who is different and not to be trusted," it added.

This problem isn't likely to be healed overnight, but it's one that must be tackled for us to have hopes of making young people safer, and more trusting and secure.

SOLUTIONS:

• In mentoring situations, adults can use their experiences and stories to convey trust to young people, as well as ensure that positive images of successful youth and adults are used to inspire them.

• Show them trust; don't assume they can't be trusted.

• Diversity in all components of society is key to reversing these tendencies: People need to see and feel how other people live and the challenges they face.

• Every person should challenge stereotypes in other adults and children. If you and your children live in non-diverse settings, be sure to reach across lines in every direction possible, regardless of your situation.

• Adults, even those who have had negative experiences with members of a certain group, including the majority culture, need to put that aside and teach young people to deal with others as human beings, not as a stereotype, in order to squelch the social mistrust that often leads to violence.

• Teach constantly, reaching through your comfort zone.

Violent American Society

This may be the toughest problem: violence begets violence. We live in a city where police do not seriously investigate the killing of an unarmed young man allegedly breaking into a car. Many justify lethal force against petty criminals. A man with Alzheimer's and a teen girl seeking help in a white suburb were gunned down. Not to mention our own state's violent history of enforcing white supremacy.

The Atlanta Black Star doesn't mince words on the challenges young people of color inherited: "Black people have been inculcated by a violent experience that includes white mob violence, lynching, slavery, suffering and death.  The history of violence against black people is so horrific as to be almost beyond belief. ... The violence we see among our Black youth is an emulation of the cultural ways of their oppressor." It added that psychologist Amos Wilson called internalizing the ways of the oppressor is called "intropression."

Acknowledging this rather obvious truth does not need to mean excusing the violence that results from historic oppression and the other issues above. But it does mean understanding why the violence may be happening in the first place—and where the cycles came from.

If we can do that, it makes it easier to engage if less shaming and blaming and, instead, embrace solutions that can make the community over all safer. It can also, with any luck, replace the wild and usually false rhetoric about communities of color being "more violent," which historically simply is not true.

Instead, we can get past assumptions about the "other," mentor more, have rich and informative conversations, and take more seriously the need for more-than-adequately funded schools and other programs that help lift young people out of the cycles they were born into.

SOLUTIONS: Learn and use history. Insist that the state put symbols of past oppression into museums for educational purposes, not on flagpoles sending the message that the old hierarchies are still in place. Challenge false beliefs about certain people being more "prone" to violence, and insist that laws are created and enforced that do not encourage rogue violence disguised as "self-defense." Limit the violent media kids soak up and avoid glamorizing firearms and other violent weapons. Teach children to always value human lives overmaterial things. Model love.