Montee Lopez
Memphis City Council rejects plans for Frayser landfill expansion
by Montee Lopez
Applause filled City Hall on Tuesday after the Memphis City Council rejected plans to expand a landfill in Frayser.
The proposed expansion by Memphis Wrecking Company had been in works for more than a year – much to the annoyance of residents in...
AFTER THE TAKEDOWN: Sons of Confederate Veterans’ Lee Millar: “I think they broke the law.”
Two weeks after the Memphis City Council voted in favor of removing the monuments of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Jefferson Davis and J. Harvey Mathes, statue sympathizers are still frustrated about how everything transpired.
Sons of Confederate Veterans spokesperson Lee Millar spoke with The New Tri-State...
#PositiveWhilePOZitive: HIV/AIDS – numbers, treatment and prevention
David Sweat is chief of the Shelby County Health Department’s Office of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases.
As part of the Positive While POZitive project by The New Tri-State Defender, Sweat laid out the numbers of those living with HIV/AIDS In Shelby County.
According to the health...
Trio of Democrats applaud maneuvering that led to removal of statues
From grocery stores to chat rooms and myriad points in between and beyond, Memphians continued to decompress on Friday from the suddenly new reality that long-standing reminders of the Confederacy no longer occupied their prominent positions in two city parks.
In the new normal, the...
Greenspace group is in the middle of monument-less times
“Yesterday (Dec. 20), I celebrated the 73rd birthday of my father in a park where he was Intimidated to walk, and would dare not sit down.”
Those were the first words Van Turner, a member of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, uttered as president...
TAKEN DOWN!
For many, it was a night akin to Nov. 4 2008 when President-elect Barack Obama gave a victory speech in Chicago, signaling that something they thought might not happen in their life time had occurred – the election of an African American to serve...
PositiveWhilePOZitive: ‘‘I have HIV. HIV not gon’ have me’’
Jeremie McClain received his HIV diagnosis nine years ago – while going to get tested with a friend.
“The nurse said, ‘Jeremie, come here,’ ” he remembered. “I was thinking something was wrong with my friend. Turns out, I was positive.”
It took a while for...
Council readies steps to repeal ranked-choice voting
Memphis City Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to add a referendum to the next ballot in hopes of repealing instant runoff voting.
“I’m proud of my council members,” Councilman Edmund Ford Jr. said. Ford has been nothing short of vocal about repealing instant runoff voting,...
PositiveWhilePOZitive: ‘You definitely can thrive with (HIV)’
“I wasn’t expecting it to be me.”
Former Friends For Life counselor Eddie Wiley was supposed to take an HIV test with a friend, who feared he might be positive. It was supposed to be a simple home test.
His mind and heart racing, Wiley worried...
PositiveWhilePOZitive: AIDS Survivor Mildred Richard works to help others cope
“To some I’m a mother, sister, aunt,” Mildred Richard said in a happy, joyful tone when The New Tri-State Defender sat down with her.
She has been HIV-positive since Oct. 30, 2000. That’s 17 years of living with the virus that causes AIDS, 17 years...