Jackson Jambalaya

The Jackson Free Press is currently covering a story about a PAC mailing anti-Harvey Johnson circulars in Northeast Jackson. One member of the PAC, David Sanders (No relation to Enoch) wrote a column defending the committee, to be published in the next edition of the Northside Sun (due out Thursday). As the column will appear after the election, Mr. Sanders, with the Sun's permission, has provided me with a copy of his column. It should also be noted Projack wrote a post Friday on JJ denouncing the mailer. Below are excerpts from the column:

"Of particular local interest is the claim that raising the subject of crime is really only a covert way of raising the subject of race in an inflammatory fashion. In fact, the left increasingly identifies any subject it does not want examined as a surrogate for racial animus.....
Thus it unfolded that, when some of us who support Marshand Crisler in the current race for mayor formed a PAC (Political Action Committee) to campaign in support of our candidate, in part by pointing out the shortcomings of his opponent during the latter’s previous sojourn in office, we inevitably ran afoul of the local keepers of the mantra that any mention of crime constitutes an attack on black people in general. Chief among the local keepers of the leftist orthodoxy is a tabloid and on-line publication called the Jackson Free Press. Our PAC sent a mailer to parts of the city where crime is a salient issue, pointing out that our opponent failed to hire a police chief for fifteen months, while crime ran rampant in our city. The mailer also cited quotes from the Clarion Ledger referencing a study by an outfit called Morgan Quitno that ranked Jackson as one of the country’s most dangerous cities during that period when our opponent was mayor.
A commonly employed device at the JFP is to attack any document or publication it does not like by obsessively chanting that it is “taken out of context” or “misused,” without ever disproving any of its substantive conclusions. Thus, the Morgan Quitno study is definitively dismissed as “discredited,” much in the same way that the global warming hypothesis is enshrined as a “scientific consensus” even while thousands of scientists dispute it. Further proof – as if it were needed – that our PAC is contaminated by conspiratorial malice is that it includes one of the JFP’s leading bête noires, local lawyer Wilson Carroll, who had the effrontery to run for District Attorney against (Gasp!) a black woman supported by the JFP. The JFP “discovered” and trumpeted this damning connection between Carroll and our PAC, as if some attempt had been made to conceal it.
the folks at the JFP seem to think they have made some decisive, game-changing point merely by “revealing” that white people in northeast Jackson are talking about crime. From my eighteen years as president of our neighborhood association, I have first-hand knowledge that crime is the single issue most on the minds of people in northeast Jackson. It is not an irrational fixation: one of my neighbors on his daily pre-dawn walk recently had a car stop beside him, from which alit a young entrepreneur of crime who pressed a pistol to my neighbor’s temple and demanded valuables. My neighbor considers himself fortunate that he was not shot for failure to maintain on his person at all times an amount of money sufficient to relieve the financial distress of an indigent criminal....
So, after the high drama of the Melton years, we thought that the memory of the good ol’ Harvey Johnson days may have faded somewhat. So we set about to remind folks of that halcyon time, when we had a police chief who spent most of his time and energy arguing that the people he was selected to protect had overblown “perceptions” of crime and should just chill. And yes, we sent the mailer to areas where we thought that the message would resonate. (Our deviousness knows no bounds!) By election day (I am writing this on Sunday before the election) we will have also dispatched “robo-calls,” recorded messages urging recipients to go vote for our candidate. And, get this: we will run radio spots on Monday and Tuesday urging people to get out and vote. (The horror!) But that’s not all – we will run these spots on stations that we think will be heard by more people likely to vote for our candidate than for his opponent. (The inhumanity!)
And if it hadn’t been for the dastardly Jackson Free Press, we would have gotten away with all of this scandalous behavior right under everyone’s noses. How could we anticipate that they had such advanced skills as using the Internet to check an address? Curses!.......
Jackson, in my view, has a better racial climate than most other places. This arises in part from the division of political and economic power. Blacks have virtually all of the political power in Jackson and Hinds County, while whites still have a disproportionate share of the economic power. Each wants some of what the other has, which leads to trade-offs and bargaining, which leads to real relationships. Just as trade among nations generally produces peace and prosperity, so it is among groups of people. Jackson will probably have black mayors for as long as anyone can see into the future, or until such time as race truly no longer matters. That does not mean that white voters do not have a stake in matters or that their voice should not be heard. The JFP can indulge in all the flatulence its readers can stand about the “creative class” and other leftist fantasies. The people Wilson and I represent have equally legitimate political and social objectives. This is our city, too. Deal with it.

R. David Sanders

May 17, 2009"