Reckless 2020 protests destroyed civil rights history
The view from the front lawn of the Historic Metropolitan Courthouse on the final weekend in August 2020 is a bit better than it was 90 days ago. But the glaring wounds from the final weekend of May 2020 are still all too obvious. And if you are ready to put Mayor John Cooper on a three year clock before we send him back to private life, I am right there with you. I would never hold Nashville back for three years. But barring a major turn of events, I will be voting for a change in the Office of the Metropolitan County Mayor in 2023.
On or about May 30, 2020, John Cooper, realizing fully that we were still in Phase 2 of the COVID-19 reopening nightmare, found a reason to throw his own orders (or was that the orders of the public health department with the "encouragement" of the mayor?) out the window, wear a mask, and join thousands of protesters for a march protesting the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Later that day, Cooper learned that the protests got a little close to his home office at 1 Public Square. The newspaper reporters captured what the police were not immediately able to: Torching, obscenity, and extreme vandalism at the Historic Courthouse. Part of what was destroyed, per The Tennessean, was an elegant plaque commemorating the work of Z. Alexander Looby, Esq.; Fisk University student Diane Nash; and other brave leaders of the civil rights movement in the year 1960, the year that Nashville made history by becoming the first Southern city to integrate something that we have no more sixty years after the event: lunch counters.
And it doesn't take our newspaper to let me know about this awesome plaque about true black pioneers of the civil rights movement of 1960 and beyond. I mostly practice law at the juvenile court building at 100 Woodland Street - "across the river", as some lawyers say from time to time. But now and again, I am at 1 Public Square, mostly for divorce client representation.
Cooper's actions are not congruent at all. They aren't consistent, either. First, he joins the protesters in violation of his own public health order (or was that the health department LOL?). Then, the same protest results in unacceptable destruction at the building he works in. Then, it results in the destruction of a monument honoring Alexander Looby and Diane Nash.
To top it all off, Cooper seems to continually disregard the folks who make his town famous: The service industry workers and musicians at the honky tonk bars of Lower Broadway and 2nd Avenue North. The solution to the protests? Slap the honky tonks with a curfew. The solution to the resurgence of COVID-19 in Nashville in the summer of 2020? Close the bars for an extended period of time.
HUH? When Karl Dean was mayor, he lauded our local musicians as the "greatest in the world". He treated them as the VIPs that they are. Note that I am NOT defending all honky tonk bars against allegations of public health violations. I am simply stating that they have been treated as second class citizens. They are far from second class. In fact, they make Nashville the IT city that it will continue to be once the vaccine distributes and COVID-19 is in our collective rear view mirror.
Cooper is smart and a good listener. Hopefully, he will convince me and others in the next three years that he can govern as a listener and a mayor who can see life more moderately than he has seen it here in 2020.
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