Throughout an area march organized as a part of a nationwide occasion, Tennessee clergy and nonprofit leaders denounced socioeconomic injustice throughout the state and lawmakers' try to diminish consciousness of such crises.
The Poor Folks's Marketing campaign, an area chapter of the non secular social justice motion, sought to articulate a extra progressive imaginative and prescient to deal with points such because the wealth hole, insufficient well being care, and underfunded public faculties.
Whereas the Nashville march was amongst 32 comparable occasions throughout the nation, it centered on native points on the middle of debate in Tennessee's ongoing legislative session.
“None of this, like a public college system that they're attempting to wreck after which current as unsalvageable, is unintentional,” stated the Rev. Dahron Johnson, a minister on the Nashville United Church of Christ. He stated it in a speech to about 50 protesters in a rotunda in entrance of the state Capitol on Saturday morning.
One of many greatest choices presently going through the Common Meeting is whether or not to increase college vouchers statewide to assist pay for Tennessee college students to attend personal faculties. Final week, a Home subcommittee permitted the common college selection proposal.
Johnson stated the college voucher proposal and different Republican-led training insurance policies restrict consciousness of varied social ills.
“When those self same folks attempt to rewrite our historical past, once they attempt to whitewash, whitewash, and whitewash not solely our textbooks and our lecture rooms… it's no shock that the tip result’s my, your, our elimination from public society. life,” stated Johnson, a trans girl.
Likewise, speaker Dustin Overton, chief of the Most Worshipful Prince Corridor Grand Lodge of Tennessee, an area chapter of a predominantly black fraternity of Freemasons, took concern with the blindness to the neighbors' struggles.
“Nashville, a metropolis recognized for its vibrant music scene and thriving financial system, hides a harsh actuality beneath its glitzy façade,” Overton stated. “Behind the brilliant lights and bustling streets, folks and households wrestle to make ends meet.”
Along with Overton's group, attendees at Saturday's march included pastors and parishioners from native church buildings and different nonprofits resembling Dawn Motion Nashville, The Fairness Alliance, Protect Cheatham County, Local weather Actuality Mission and Nashville Peace & Justice Heart .
The group met at McKendree United Methodist Church after which marched to the state Capitol, some carrying indicators and somebody blowing a trumpet.
Talking on these points from expertise, Memphis resident and seminary scholar Christine Fox stated her underemployment has led her to dwell under the poverty stage and go with out medical insurance. Fox cited statistics about different Tennesseans in comparable circumstances and criticized Tennessee's Republican supermajority for failing to deal with these wants.
“We’re referred to as to heal the injuries of others,” Fox stated in a speech. “We should not observe the instance of the Tennessee Republican Get together in therapeutic the injuries of God's folks as if their wounds weren’t severe.”
One other PPC Occasion in Nashville: Tennessee Clergy and Parishioners March to State Capitol to Protest Gun Violence
Liam Adams covers faith for The Tennessean. Contact him at ladams@tennessean.com or on social media @liamsadams.
This text initially appeared in Nashville Tennessean: Nashville Religion-Based mostly Justice March Denounces Pay, Well being Inequity