Highlights from our first ever TENNESSEE HOLLER FEST, featuring inspiring voices from across the state lifting up the issues we face – including STELLA PARTON, JUSTIN JONES, REP. JIM COOPER, REP. STEVE COHEN, THE EQUITY ALLIANCE and much more.
Here’s a quick highlight reel.
Watch the FULL VIDEO HERE and LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
Wilson County Resident Trisha Farmer talks to Wilson County Commissioner Bobby Franklin about their “unkind” anti-refugees proclamation intended to send Gov. Lee a message, which will be voted on tonight.
Franklin says he takes issue with the resources refugees take up – but only 13 refugees have been placed in Wilson County since 2002. The impact on Wilson County’s budget is statistically insignificant.
He also says people are being “recruited”, a dubious claim, and says in Minnesota refugees are changing things “culturally” which he calls a “downside” – clearly toeing the line of racism and bigotry at worst, xenophobia at best.
Governor Lee has been attacked by conservatives for his willingness to allow refugees to continue to come to Tennessee.
The Wilson County vote is scheduled for TONIGHT.
Holler at the County Commissioners HERE.
Take Action: Earlier this week, we defeated anti-refugee resolutions in Bedford, Greene, and Madison Counties. But on Monday, Wilson County is considering a similar resolution. We need you to take action again! https://t.co/C0tfmkamTC
— TIRRC Votes (@TIRRCVotes) January 24, 2020
The Tennessee Farm Bureau lobbies on behalf of the state’s farmers. TN’s is the largest Farm Bureau in the nation, with more than 677,000 members. Bureau President Jeff Aiken was re-elected this week, and Aiken had some frank words about Trump’s Trade War and the “pain” it’s causing our farmers at their convention at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Cool Springs Tuesday.
Below are some excerpts from Aiken’s speech, courtesy of the Columbia Daily Herald:
“Trade is vitally important to Tennessee farmers. Many of the commodities we produce are heavily dependent on the export market… Most have endured about all of the pain we can stand. The trade war with China has caused soybean exports to decline by 52%, forest products by 43% and cotton by 36%. The Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation and the American Farm Bureau Federation remain vigilant in sharing that message.”
To put a few more tragic numbers on it – Trump’s ex-senior Econ advisor Gary Cohn recently pointed out USA AG Exports have dropped from $30 Billion to $9 Billion in the wake of Trump’s Trade War, and Tennessee has been the hardest hit state by far.
And no, China is not paying for the tariffs.
Aiken then went on to talk about the need for MORE immigration/immigration reform, to provide farmers with an informed, motivated labor force:
“Farmers across Tennessee have trouble finding workers who understand agriculture and show persistence on the job. The country needs a comprehensive guest worker to allow migrants to enter legally, but reform has been slow with the fight over illegal immigration in Washington…
For those who face the challenge of an available workforce, your patience is probably wearing thin as well. We have not had any meaningful reforms to our guest worker programs for 25 year. There is legislation in the House of Representatives now, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2019, which addresses farm labor. AFBF believe the bill has severe shortcomings and must be substantially modified before we can support it. However, at this time, AFBF has not taken a position of opposition because it is most likely the only chance for needed reforms.”
That’s a starkly different message from the one emanating out of the Oval Office, where Trump has been clamping down on immigration and taking drastic measures at the border, including separating families to send a message of deterrence. (likely the work of Stephen Miller, who was recently revealed to have White Supremacist beliefs, causing 27 senators to send a letter calling for his removal.
Aiken then closed with an inspirational story about Jim Thorpe having his shoes stolen and running in the Olympics with someone else’s shoes.
“These are stressful times in agriculture. I love the Farm Bureau because it allows the voice of farmers to be heard… I want to close with a story about Jim Thorpe. He was from Oklahoma and was representing the U.S. in track in the 1912 Olympics. On the morning Jim was to compete, his shoes were stolen. Luckily, Jim found two shoes but they were not the same size. One of the shoes was too big so he had to wear an extra sock to make it fit. Wearing these shoes, Jim won two gold medals that day. Life is not always fair, but we can’t let obstacles keep us from running our race. We can have reasons or we can have results… but we can’t have both.
Again, Tennessee is being hit the hardest by Trump’s trade war by far.
At a House Budget hearing Dept. of Agriculture commissioner Charlie Hatcher was very frank about the pain being caused to Tennessee farmers by Trump’s tariffs, pointing out that 60% of our exports WERE going to China before the Trade War, but China is now importing from other suppliers (including Russia), and that even if the tariffs were to go away today it would take years to recover, despite repeated claims by Trump that the multi-billion farmer bailout is making them whole.
?NEW: “60% of our exports were going to CHINA.”
WATCH @TNAgriculture commissioner Charlie Hatcher tell the TRUTH about how Trump’s TRADE WAR is crushing our FARMERS. TN is the #1 HARDEST HIT STATE BY FAR. ??? ??? pic.twitter.com/rw2vl68ez3
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 22, 2019
He also said the farmer bailout funds are not making farmers whole, despite what the president has been saying. Farm bankruptcies, and suicides, are both skyrocketing.
Farmers want trade, not aid. Trump needs to stop stealing our farmers’ shoes and end this disastrous Trade War.
By Alexandria Huff
This Post was first seen in Die Barliner – The Bard College Student Blog
As activists around the United States mobilize against the unacceptable conditions inside of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, the agency continues its operations on the ground in American cities. On September 5th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shot Jose Fernando Andrade-Sanchez in his car as he attempted to leave the Food Lion parking lot in Antioch, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville.
The shooting, which occurred in broad daylight at a heavily trafficked intersection, left the 39-year-old Mexican man alive but with bullet wounds in his stomach and his elbow that required surgery at a Nashville area hospital. At the end of the day on September 6th, local students were so disoriented that their teachers rode home with them on the school bus. “There was such a concern and fear in the community because children didn’t know what they were coming back to [after the shooting]. And it’s all because of this one ICE agent who has no accountability to anybody,” Brenda Perez of The MIX, said in an interview with Democracy Now.
Bradley Thomas Epley, a 49-year-old former Border Patrol officer, was one of the two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents present in the Food Lion parking lot on September 5th. Though ICE spokesperson Brian Cox told reporters that Andrade-Sanchez drove towards the officer as he fled the scene, video footage shows an agent drawing his gun and following the vehicle, and firing two shots through the windshield.
A closer look at Bradley Epley’s history as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent reveals allegations of illegal activity, violence and at least two cases of mistaken identity. Epley was named in two federal lawsuits alleging illegal search and seizure in 2010. Both lawsuits were settled out of court.
In 2017, Epley arrested Faustino Rodriguez Hernandez in a Nashville courthouse on federal immigration charges. Hernandez had appeared in court that day to settle a traffic violation. In July of 2019, Epley was in the news again when he and another ICE official attempted a warrantless arrest of a Hendersonville man and were blocked by a human chain of the man’s neighbors. Many Americans, including some politicians (after being pressured by directly affected communities), are seeking to abolish ICE. The cruelty and incompetence of the agency is illustrated by taking a closer look at the public record of an agent like Bradley Epley.
VIDEO: “Human Chain In Hermitage”
Watch neighbors form a HUMAN CHAIN in Hermitage yesterday to protect a father and son from ICE and allow them to get from the van they were trapped in for hours into their house.
(Video from @OccupyDemocrats & Nashville Noticias) pic.twitter.com/j5sBk5D00O
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) July 23, 2019
The first federal lawsuit in which Bradley Epley appears was brought by David Tapia-Tovar and Ana Maria Vazquez. Epley was named as one of several ICE officers who forced their way into Tapia-Tovar’s home, grabbed him by the arm and forced him into his living room as other officers then searched the house without a warrant. A complaint filed on Tapia-Tovar and Vazquez’s behalf in Nashville district court reveals that not only did the ICE officers force their way into Tapia-Tovar’s home without a warrant, but that Tapia-Tovar was not the intended target of the search:
53. As he sat handcuffed on the couch, David asked the first ICE agent why he and the others had entered their home.
54. In reply, one ICE agent held a file folder a few feet in front of David’s face. Attached to the front of the folder was a large photograph of a man of Latino appearance.
55. The man in the photograph bore no resemblance to David. His skin was darker, his nose was wider, and his eyes were set differently.
56. No reasonable person could mistake the man in the photograph for David.
57. Printed on the cover of the ICE folder was the name “David Tovar-Najera.”
58. David and Anna had never known or even heard of a person named David Tovar-Najera before this encounter. [*1]
Tapia-Tovar, an undocumented immigrant, was removed from his home and taken to the ICE office where deportation proceedings were initiated. His complaint alleges that Epley lied to the immigration court about how ICE agents were able to enter Tapia-Tovar’s home. Epley also stated that “[Tapia-Tovar] had entered the United States at an unknown time of day and at an unknown location,” which is the “policy and practice of the Nashville ICE Office…when completing ICE database processing of suspected aliens ICE agents encounter,” the complaint states. The lawsuit calls Epley’s statement “[another] utter and transparent fabrication.” The lawsuit, which was filed by Ozment Law, was settled out of court.
The second lawsuit Epley appeared in that year was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of fifteen plaintiffs, including American citizens, who lived at the Claremont Apartments in South Nashville. They were illegally detained by Epley and other officers when they raided the complex without a warranton October 20, 2010, leading to the arrest of twenty people. Lindsay Kee of the ACLU of Tennessee described the scene:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began hitting objects against the bedroom windows, trying to break in. Without a search warrant and without consent, the ICE agents eventually knocked in the front door and shattered a window, shouting racial slurs and storming into the bedrooms, holding guns to some people’s heads. When asked if they had a warrant, one agent reportedly said, “We don’t need a warrant, we’re ICE,” and, gesturing to his genitals, “the warrant is coming out of my balls.” [*2]
The lawsuit alleged that Epley and the other ICE officers at the Clairmont Apartments physically and verbally abused the plaintiffs, including pointing guns at the heads of two men, Jesus Villalobos and Javier Deras. The city and federal government settled the lawsuit for $310,000.
Whether Epley or the other agents cited in these lawsuits were punished by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is unknown.
In June 2017, in the months following Donald Trump’s inauguration, Bradley Epley arrested 33-year-old Faustino Rodriguez Hernandez in a Nashville courthouse. Hernandez is an Hounduran man who was in the court of General Sessions Judge Lynda Jones for a traffic violation; he had been caught driving without a license. The ICE officials on site took him into custody on an ICE warrant, which was not signed by a judge and doesn’t allow court officers to detain an individual on ICE’s behalf. Assistant Public Defender Mary Kathryn Harcombe told The Tennessean that court employees typically don’t understand the distinction between an ICE warrant and a standard warrant and might have illegally detained Hernandez, who was handed over to Epley while Judge Jones was out of the room. In an admission to The Tennessean via email, Judge Lynda Jones said that Epley nearly arrested the wrong man earlier that day: “The agent [Epley] informed my court officer that the true warranted individual was the ‘spittin image’ of the gentleman who was almost wrongfully arrested. My court officer stated that the ICE agent then said, ‘TRUST ME.’”
On the morning of July 22, 2019, Epley and another officer arrived in the Nashville suburb of Hermitage in a white pickup truck, and pulled into the driveway of an unnamed family home, blocking a van that the man and his son were sitting in. The man and his son locked themselves in their car to avoid the ICE agents, initiating a four-hour-long standoff. The Nashville Scene reports that more than a dozen of the man’s neighbors, as well as local immigrant rights activists, gathered in the front yard with snacks, water, cool towels to fight against the heat and gas to keep the van running. Like the warrant Epley brought to the Nashville courthouse, the warrant on July 22 had not been signed by a judge and did not allow officers to forcibly enter the man’s car or home. The MIX reports that at one point the father and son were told by an ICE agent, “We’ll just call the cops and they’ll arrest you, and then when they’re done with you in the jail, then we’ll get you.” Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) officers were on the scene during the standoff.
Eventually the man’s neighbors made a human chain so he and his son could safely exit the car and re-enter their home. By 10 AM, Epley, his fellow officer, and the MNPD left the scene. The attempted arrest was conducted as a part of President Trump’s Operation Border Resolve, which targeted 2,000 families and resulted in 35 arrests. Local resident Angela Glass told the Scene, “These people, they’ve been living there for 14 years,” Glass says. “They don’t bother anybody. Our kids play with their kids. It’s just one big community. And we don’t want to see anything happen to them. They’re good people. They’ve been here 14 years, leave them alone.”
On 17 September, 2019, less than a month after being shot by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Jose Fernando Andrade-Sanchez was arrested outside Ozment Law, an immigration law office in Nashville, Tennessee. Ozment Law, which in twenty years has never had an enforcement operation conducted on its property, said in a statement:
“Immigration agents’ decision to make a violent, aggressive arrest on a law firm’s private property sends a chilling message that even those with valid claims to adjusting their status and continuing their lives in this country are at risk.”
Andrade-Sanchez, who has previously been deported, has been charged with illegal reentry into the United States.
The record of Bradley Epley illustrates how Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aided by the Metro Nashville Police Department and Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall, has terrorized the Middle Tennessee community for over a decade, traumatizing individuals and families. Increased scrutiny of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration has caused some Americans to boycott companies like Amazon that provide ICE with facial recognition technology, to call for the immediate abolition of the agency, and to demand that 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates make the abolition of ICE a part of their 2020 platform.
A week after the shooting of Jose Fernando Andrade-Sanchez, theNashville Scene published a two-piece cover package on the deportation pipeline. As the MIX’s Brenda Perez pointed out on Facebook, “I’m glad the Nashville Scene is covering this, I will be more enthused when they center and interview undocumented people on issues that affect us. We have been here and our daily lives are the front lines.”
Bradley Epley is still employed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He lives in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Notes:
[*1] http://www.lawreport.org/pdf/ICETennessee.pdf
[*2] https://www.aclu.org/blog/we-dont-need-warrant-were-ice
Watch Rep. Mark Green use the memory of fallen soldiers to try to delay Rep. Underwood’s bill which would provide Electronic Medical Records at the border – as requested by border officials – to keep immigrant kids from dying in our care, which is happening for the first time in a decade.
A heated Leader Steny Hoyer points out Green’s MTR “does nothing for veterans”, and would simply be a delay tactic.
Watch Zulfat Suara react to her history-making win, saying she’s proud of her diverse support-base which she takes as a mandate for the council to help create a “NASHVILLE FOR ALL”.
Watch a group of immigrants in Nashville turn out to vote for immigrants running for office in Nashville.
Election Day is September 12th!
David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling writer
The New York Times best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss says the Trump era holds many similarities with Senator Joe McCarthy’s 1950s Red-baiting period.
Maraniss, recently in Nashville on tour for his latest book, A Good American Family, discussed the comparison over coffee with The Tennessee Holler.
“There are obvious parallels (between Trump and McCarthy,)” said Maraniss, noting he started the book prior to Donald Trump’s 2016 election as president. “There’s the same use of fear as a political weapon and the demonization of outsiders as a tool.”
A Good American Family is a biography of sorts, with the focal point being the work of House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in Detroit in 1952. One of the men called to testify on charges of being a Communist: Elliott Maraniss, David’s father.
Maraniss, only two years old at the time of the hearings, had no memory of the hearings but knew the experience shadowed the family’s history. The day Elliott Maraniss was issued a subpoena, he was fired from his job at the now-defunct Detroit Times. Thus began a five-year odyssey for the family, as Elliott moved about the Midwest, losing one job after another as part of a blacklist, before settling at the Capital Times in Madison, Wisc.
For Maraniss, the conundrum at the heart of the book is what it means to be American. How was his father, despite commanding an all-black company for the U.S. Army in World War II, considered ‘Un-American’? Or his uncle, Robert Adair Cummins, who fought against fascists in the Spanish Revolution, and also a HUAC target?
Both were active in the Michigan Communist Party of the 1930s and ’40s, but America was founded on the basis of free speech, a point Elliot made in the three-page statement he prepared for his HUAC testimony, a statement he wasn’t allowed to give and that Maraniss only found in the National Archives in 2015.
While McCarthy exploited Cold War-era fears about the USSR and the rise of Communism, Trump uses an older tactic to manipulate fear for his own gain.
“Race is at the center of American politics and always has been,” he says. “It’s always been easily manipulated and Trump very easily exploits that.”
“The concept of America and who is American . . . Who decides that? Native Americans weren’t American enough, blacks weren’t American enough,” said Maraniss.
(Meanwhile, Congressman George Stephens Wood, the chairman of HUAC — someone who, presumably, WAS American enough — was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in his home state of Georgia and had been present at the lynching of Jewish businessman Leo Frank in 1915.)
As president, Trump is far worse than McCarthy, says Maraniss.
“There’s a huge difference between then and now: Trump has a lot more platforms and as president, a greater ability to disrupt the government.”
A Good American Family is Maraniss’ 12th book. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his coverage of President Bill Clinton and again in 2007 as part of the Washington Post team that covered the mass shooting at Virginia Tech. He has also been a Pulitzer Prize finalist another three times, a writer and editor with the Post for more than 40 years, and a visiting distinguished professor at Vanderbilt University.
Support local bookstores by purchasing A Good American Family at Parnassus Books in Green Hills or Landmark Booksellers in Franklin.
We’ve all heard by now that President Trump has declared a “National Emergency” at the border as an end-run around congress to get money for his Wall.
As we mentioned this weekend, Senator Lamar Alexander spoke out against the move calling it “Unconstitutional”, while the rest of the Republican Tennessee delegation has been supportive despite fancying themselves *strict constitutionalists* in favor of *limited government*.
That group includes Rep. Mark Green of TN-7, an army veteran who lives just outside of Clarksville in Ashland City.
What we’re now learning is that included in the list of 400+ projects the president would be steering funds away from to build the wall is “the operation of a middle school at Fort Campbell”, which would likely be unwelcome news to our brave men and women up in Clarksville, where half the base is located.
The Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle has already made note of this, asking Green for his position on it just yesterday. Green had this to say:
“I support it because I believe it’s a crisis. My biggest concern is the narcotics. I think it’s the right thing to do. I think it’s certainly within his legal rights. I think very clearly people want the legislative branch doing legislative stuff, and the executive branch doing executive branch stuff. But the legislative branch has given authority to the executive branch in those certain circumstances where emergencies require action that Congress can’t be quick enough to respond to.”
Reading betweens the line of this “stuff”, Green has tried to make the case that this emergency declaration by Trump is not unprecedented since there have been 58 emergency declarations by presidents in the past – but not one of those has involved a president going around congress to get money for a campaign promise.
As for why the “emergency” is suddenly an emergency now when it didn’t seem to be for the first 2 years of the Trump presidency, there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer.
Green added:
“This is all within the power that’s been granted to the president.”
That will be for the courts to decide. Lawsuits have been filed, and they will likely cite the president saying “I didn’t have to do this” in the very press conference where he made the announcement as evidence for why this emergency is not actually an emergency at all.
More from Green:
“He made a promise to the American people. I think he’s just doing what he thinks he was elected to do.”
Green on the other hand was elected to look out for the interests of Clarksville, a military-heavy district, and it will be up to the residents and the soldiers there to decide how they feel about his decision to prioritize a wall on the Southern border over a school in their own backyard.
Incredibly, when asked about this, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina actually said the kids will be better off not getting the money:
“I would say it’s better for the middle school kids in Kentucky to have a secure border. We’ll get them the school they need. Right now we’ve got a national emergency on our hands.”
It seems Rep. Mark Green agrees. We wonder if the parents up in the Clarksville area do too.
It’s funny how the people who are the loudest about their undying support for The Constitution seem to forget what it says when it gets in the way of the things they want.
Holler at Rep. Green HERE if you’re in Clarksville and have any thoughts.
In the meantime, enjoy a fun cartoon from Modman, showing that there really is nothing this president does that Mark Green won’t support:
This column is the opinion of Chris Rowe, 2020 candidate for Congress in Tennessee’s 1st District. Follow Chris on Twitter here.
Friday, we saw our president appear on national television and declare a state of emergency for an artificial border crisis. At the same time, he admitted that not only was it unnecessary, but that he knew it was an abuse of his power.
He asked the supreme court to support his decision anyway.
Many members of congress, regardless of their party affiliation – including our own Republican Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander – saw this for the blatant “unconstitutional” act it was and decided not to back him.
Rep. Phil Roe on the other hand, in a move that added to a string of questionable decisions recently, has come out in support of the president’s illegal power play.
This is not a decision that should be taken lightly by Tennessee’s voters. We need to hold him accountable for his actions, particularly as a member of the party that purports itself to be in favor of the “Rule of Law.”
Therefore, Congressman Roe, I have an important issue to address: If law is to rule, then the onus falls to you to take the president to task for this action, and publicly rebuke it. We cannot simultaneously advocate for “law and order” while condoning the highest office in the land making a mockery of the same.
You’ve already supported multiple unconscionable actions by our president, including holding hundreds of thousands of hard-working Americans hostage for an unnecessary wall. But declaring an unconstitutional “state of emergency” that will divert funds from actual emergencies and cost American lives should be a firm red line for anyone.
Many members of your party have already seen this for what it is, so I ask you now: can you somehow not see for yourself how damaging this is to our union? Or are you simply too afraid to stand up and fight for what’s right just because it may cost you a handful of votes?
Whichever it is, you’ve let your constituency down, you’ve let your country down, and it’s time to step up or move aside and let someone else show you how it’s done.
It’s this type of abdication of your responsibility to protect and uphold the Constitution which has directly led to my challenge for your seat, and I intend to be certain that voters remember your failure to serve them come election time.
Chris Rowe is a Democratic Candidate for Congress in Tennessee’s 1st District. Chris is a 6 year veteran of the Air Force, and a current graduate student at East Tennessee State University.
Chris has decided to take money only from real people and small businesses, not from large corporations or super PACs, to ensure he remains free of any obligation to “big” anyone.