Is Burning Cars a "Violence"?

“This is not targeting our police,” said Councilmember Preptit, while resurrecting a bill during last night’s Metro Council meeting. “In all actuality, this measure is aimed at strengthening the trust that our community has in our police.”

Back in July, the Brookmeade council member introduced legislation to track affiliations between MNPD officers and “hate groups and paramilitary gangs” in reaction to neo-Nazis marching downtown. Unfortunately Preptit, in his quest to cleanse the city of hate, majorly overstepped the boundaries of the First Amendment. The first draft of his bill didn’t just allow for monitoring the associations of officers, but also explicitly prohibited “posts, ‘likes,’ jokes, memes, retweets, and other statements that advocate racism, violence, misogyny, homophobia, or other kinds of hate or discrimination.”

Jasper Hendricks, Chair of the Metro Fair Board, found the council member’s overcorrection unnecessary. “There are [already] policies on the books,” he explained on Fox 17 last Sunday. “But also, how can you tell a police officer, or anyone for that matter, what they can and cannot do on their own time?”

Former Vice Mayor Jim Shulman agreed. “I worry, particularly, when you start trying to define ‘What is a hate group,’” he said. “You can look at anything— jokes, tweets, retweets—and something that's offensive to [you] may not be offensive to me.”

After a three-meeting deferral, Preptit reintroduced his bill with a substitute. This time, it was marginally less Big Brother-esque: the portion that would allow Metro employers to monitor online jokes was eliminated; most of the language that defined the conditions qualifying an officer or emergency responder’s affiliation with a “Hate Group or Paramilitary Gang” was changed from “association” to “participation.”

The legislation drew quite a bit of discussion on the floor, which led some to revisit the George Floyd protests four summers ago. “Based on the actions a couple of years ago where this building was on fire, cars were damaged, businesses were looted,” Councilmember Jeff Eslick asked a representative for Metro Legal, “would that group be considered a hate group under this bill?” 

After some hesitation over the definition of “organized” violence, Associate Director Lora Fox agreed that it was possible the 2020 rioters “could be caught by this, so to speak.” Eslick followed up by asking who would be in charge of defining the term hate group. “This is an employment law question,” said Fox. “So the appointing authority would be disciplining an employee if they were found to participate in a hate group that incites violence.”

Shortly after the exchange, Councilmember Porterfield weighed in on the 2020 riots. “I do want to remind people that violence happens against people, not against property,” she told the body. “Property crimes and violence are not the same thing, so setting a building on fire and damaging a car is definitely not the same thing as actual violence.”

In the end, the council passed Preptit’s bill on first reading; only Councilmember Eslick voted it down. However, the rest of the members gave it the green light, allowing the committees to comb through the new language over the next two weeks. Likewise, a few skeptics vowed to propose amendments to modify the bill on second reading. MEGAN PODSIEDLIK

📝 The Manifesto In Full Two days ago, the Tennessee Star released an unredacted 80-page version of the journal found in Audrey Hale’s car after the Covenant tragedy. In the weeks following the event, I maintained that we, as citizens, would be wise to incinerate the writings of school shooters and let them be reduced to ashes. Over the years, The Violence Project has done extensive research on commonalities between school shooters—and the most common unifying thread is that they drew influence from previous school shooters.

The writings from each shooter form a body of work that future imitators study, as you or I would a topic we find deeply interesting. The further perpetuation of these journals and tapes and transcripts both enables the legacy of the school shooting to continue and infuses it with further dimensionality. If we want to halt the never-ending roll of mass shootings, we should take steps to bury their “creative output” indefinitely. I went on Blaze News Tonight to talk about some of this yesterday.

However, as Blaze Media editor-in-chief Matthew Peterson notes during our discussion, these tragedies have become political footballs. Denying the release of the Covenant documents stands in stark contrast against the near-instantaneous leaks that often follow in the wake of similar incidents, especially if the perpetrator betrays a more right-leaning political orientation. It was very obvious from the outset what Hale stood for, and thus, we might understand the blockage as an attempt to quell whatever political animus might arise because of them. Admittedly, as Leahy has battled for their release in court, I’ve softened my position on whether or not to release the writings given this dynamic.

If you remember, in the days following the tragedy, the Biden administration rolled out a series of statements declaring solidarity with the trans community. NBC News published an article headlined ‘Fear pervades Tennessee's trans community amid focus on Nashville shooter's gender identity.’ From this vantage, it’s easy to understand that there likely exists a political motivation for preventing the release of the writings. Though I think we should have the courage to say that everything we have subsequently learned about Hale through her writings were self-evident in the act itself. But in this highly politicized environment that chalks them up to score one Red team, score zero Blue team, my thinking changes a bit.

That said, in a vacuum, burying these tragedies as a rule and not giving the assailants’ grievances air time should be a policy enacted. DAVIS HUNT

You can watch my appearance here.

⚒️ Jobs, Jobs, and More Jobs Despite national trends to the contrary, the Nashville area job market remains robust. Nationally, the unemployment rate sat at 4.5 percent for July, a 0.7 percent increase from a year prior. Of the fifty-one Metro areas with populations over one million, the Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin area had the lowest unemployment rate at 2.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As is common with reporting on Nashville, the Tennessean, in their reporting on this data, did not bother to disentangle Nashville proper from the broader Nashville Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes thirteen other counties and contains 2 million residents. We’ve talked about it before, but this omission obscures that much of the growth occurring in what is commonly referred to as Nashville occurs in the ring counties outside of Davidson. DAVIS HUNT

DEVELOPMENT

• Riley Green bar opens in Midtown (Post)
• Winstead opens Nashville office (Post)

✹ NATION'S FIRST GEN IV NUCLEAR REACTOR COMING TO OAK RIDGE

The last time we checked on the nation’s energy industry, the Biden-Harris administration banned drilling for gas and oil on 28 million acres of Alaska (rescinding the order signed by President Donald Trump).

However, there is better news on the nuclear energy front. This is good news given that nuclear energy is the only rival to fossil fuels in efficiency and cost-effectiveness and is worthy of supplying power on a civilization-level.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved construction of the first fourth-generation nuclear reactor in the country.

THINGS TO DO

View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.

📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.

🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.

👨🏻‍🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide and yearly festival guide.

TONIGHT

🎸 The Red Clay Strays @ Ryman Auditorium, 7p, $25+, Info

🎸 An Evening with Strawberry Guy @ The Blue Room, 7p, $34.61, Info

🪕 Kristi Cox & Grasstime @ Station Inn, 8p, $20, Info

🪕 Bluegrass Night @ The American Legion Post 82, 7p, Free, Info

📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.

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