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CANDIDATE PROFILE: Michalyn Easter-Thomas, Candidate for City Council District 7

GENERAL INFORMATION

Name: Michalyn Easter-Thomas

Candidate for: City Council District 7

Date of Birth: 11-07-1991

Occupation: Educator

Educational Background:

    • High School: Central High School
    • College: Christian Brothers University
    • Masters/Ph.D (if applicable): MAT, Columbia University; Ed.S, Arkansas State

Family: I married my high school sweetheart, Darren, in 2017, and he’s been my number one advocate and supporter since day one. Close behind – or maybe tied for first – are my mother, Cassondra, and my grandmother. My little brother, Bishop, is also rooting me on and helping out where he can. My father, Michael Easter, passed away in 2014, but I think about him every day and I know he’d be proud of what I’m doing.

Community Involvement: Our Grass Our Roots (OGOR), Founder and Executive Director
Shelby County Democratic Party, Grassroots Committee Board Member
BLOOM – A Partnership for Memphis Parks, Board Member
Memphis Greenline Collaborative, Board Member
Vollintine Evergreen Community Assocation (VECA), Board Member
Democratic Women of Shelby County, Member
TEA and MSCEA Member
SPARRC-NCR, Working Group Member
Recognized by Tri-State Defender and Memphis Flyer for community activities


WEBSITE/SOCIAL MEDIA

Official Campaign Website: www.michalynformemphis.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/measterthomas7/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MEasterThomas

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/measterthomas/


CANDIDATE SURVEY:

What background/experience distinguishes you from the other candidates who want voters to elect them?

Easter-Thomas’s response:

I am a born-and-bred resident of North Memphis and I’ve lived in District 7 virtually my entire life. Unlike many candidates who lack such deep community ties, I know first hand the needs and challenges in my community. Additionally, since founding the local nonprofit Our Grass Our Roots, I’ve worked extensively with NGOs and the local government officials and have a broad understanding of how they work together most effectively. Finally, I am a professional educator which makes me a lifelong student. I’m unafraid to learn about new issues and develop policies rather than simply mouthing talking points.

What are the top three issues facing the City of Memphis?

Easter-Thomas’s response:

Poverty. Lack of transparency and accountability in the city government. Crime.

What do you propose to address the three issues you rank as top priorities?

Easter-Thomas’s response:

The key to improving economic opportunities for Memphians and reducing poverty is by encouraging investment and development across the city instead of reinvesting in the same few areas over and over again. Increasing access to reliable transportation, reinvesting in the Shelby County Schools, and fighting to make sure new businesses brought in with PILOT offer real wages and benefits. Local workers spend money in their local neighborhoods, increasing opportunities for entrepreneurship and making further investment in those neighborhoods more attractive. But, for this upward cycle to take hold, there must be well paying jobs and the means to get to them.
In order to prevent conflicts of interest, Members of the Memphis City Council should be required to fully disclose financial relationships with corporations and local developers. Additionally, major city council actions should be given adequate time to be vetted by the press and public, especially in regards to tax breaks and grants given to large businesses and developers.
Finally, our city’s high crime rate continues to be the largest stumbling block in our city’s growth. Effectively decriminalizing possession through nonenforcement of cannabis possession laws will allow law enforcement and the court system to focus on violent and property crime. Also, if we’re being honest, one of the largest factors to predict a high crime rate is high levels of poverty. Despite recent growth, Memphis has one of the highest poverty rates and lowest median incomes in the nation. In this case, the old saw is correct: “Poverty is the mother of crime.” Until the local government actively pursues policies designed to help elevate Memphians from poverty, high crime rates will surely persist.

Do you favor the call for a half-cent sales tax increase to restore healthcare and retirement benefits for police officers and firefighters cut in 2014?

Easter-Thomas’s response:

I do, but with reservations. The city should fund the police and fire department pensions, as those deferred benefits have already been paid for and earned. The simple fact is that police services are the single largest line item in the city budget, accounting for nearly 40% of the total. This is higher than other cities in the area with comparable economies and populations. I believe the city and MPD can work together to improve cost efficiency, but the MPD must also be open to increasing the role of civilian oversight and work to increase transparency. I am also troubled by the city’s reliance on regressive taxation methods whose weight is borne disproportionately by the poor. The city must reevaluate both its revenue streams and its budget allocations before raising any new taxes.

Do you think the local PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) program needs to be reformed? If so, why and how?

Easter-Thomas’s response:

Absolutely.

PILOT’s goals have a merit, but these deals often occur under shaky pretexts and without proper oversight. We must examine how such deals are made in order to assure Memphis ends up with more than abandoned properties, canceled programs, and “take the money and run” disinvestment. We have played the sucker too many times in these deals and we can no longer give huge boons to companies that will create a few minimum wage jobs for a few years before closing up shop.

Assuring that jobs created by these partner corporations would be living wage jobs with decent benefits is critical to improving the city’s economic health, as would be including protection clauses in such agreements to extract penalties from the actions of bad faith corporations that fall far short of their promises.

Memphis is giving away grants and tax incentives to companies that come in, create fewer and lower paying jobs than promised, and then cut and run without penalty. The pattern has been clear for some time. I am not against these incentive programs, but the city government must be more diligent in making these deals and more willing to hold partner corporations to account.

In short, these deals must be made with the goal of stimulating actual economic growth and not to generate talking points.

Do you see a risk of displacement and gentrification connected to the development boom in Memphis? If so, how would you address that risk from the position you seek?

Easter-Thomas’s response:

Gentrification has always been one of the primary consequences of rapid growth and development. There are common sense measures the city government could take in order to minimize those effects.
To begin with, keep community residents informed about development plans well in advance. Memphians deserve to know the plans the city has for their neighborhoods. Negotiations with developers and the city should be done in the open and potential deals should be subject to public discussion. Additionally, local residents should be consulted and brought in as active stakeholders in the process rather than being merely passengers.

African-American-owned businesses have made up only 1 percent of all Memphis business receipts for several decades. If elected, do you see playing a role in changing that statistic? If so, what do you think that role would entail?

Easter-Thomas’s response:

In one way, it comes back again to poverty. For the entire postwar era, the average income of African-Americans in Memphis has been almost half that of white families. Wealth creates more wealth, and until the city crafts policies designed to reduce blight and increase development in the many communities forgotten by the local government, opportunities for black entrepreneurship will be limited. The city government has a great deal of power to remedy this situation, but has traditionally elected not to do so.

Home ownership is traditionally one of the most important ways for middle class Americans to assure stability and wealth. This may initially seem unconnected, but the fact is that many small business owners rely on their home’s store of value to fund their business operations through home equity credit lines. Increasing home ownership directly ties to the ability of communities to generate small businesses. Furthermore, the city is littered with properties owned by outsiders with little interest in maintaining local communities. Programs that penalize bad-faith, absentee landlords as well as those that work to allow community members to take ownership of blighted or abandoned property could be another vehicle to create generational wealth in black communities.

If the city would have a greater commitment to bringing living wage jobs to Memphis and take measures to assure partner corporations live up to their obligations, then our communities could begin to have the income required to trigger upward growth.

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