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OPINION: I SPEAK FOR MYSELF, REP. TIM RUDD

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Earlier this year, President Biden announced that employers with 100 or more employees will need to mandate COVID vaccines or weekly testing for their workers. Although this was intended to help ease the effects of the pandemic, many people believe this new mandate crosses the line; including TN representative Tim Rudd (R-MURFREESBORO).

Rudd, who wrote an opinion piece in The Tennessee Conservative in September, claims Biden isn’t helping anybody with this mandate, especially Tennesseans.

I, an East Tennessean with medical professionals in my family, am here to tell you that Rudd is wrong.

Nearly four months after this mandate was first implemented, a new variant of the virus has moved into our country, and (according to USA Facts) there is a daily average of 2,437 COVID cases in Tennessee. I do not believe the 20,000+ deaths my state has witnessed are something that should be politicized. My community, my family, and my friends are all suffering from COVID in different ways; I am not embarrassed to admit that my state needs help controlling the pandemic and its fatalities.

But, like Rudd, some of us feel this mandate couldn’t possibly be helpful since it was put in place by a Democrat. Rudd explicitly states that “you are either on Biden’s side or the side of Tennesseans”, and it is quite evident by his language that he believes Tennesseans don’t want to abide by this mandate.

While his beliefs are not far-fetched, Rudd has forgotten that Tennesseans, regardless of their political identification, do not want their voices muffled by politicians.

Tim Rudd does not speak for me or for other Tennesseans. We speak for ourselves. Our opinions, regardless of what they are, are special to us. We pick and choose our own battles, and we allow ourselves to have respect for one another.

Rudd’s willingness to assume that all of us feel threatened by a vaccine is insulting, and quite frankly, humiliating to myself and others that I know. His promises to protect all Tennesseans might as well be empty, as he seems to care only for certain groups of people.

His opinions, though not the same as mine, are ones that I respect. I ask that Rudd treat opposing views with the same respect that I offer him.

COVID is something we all wish would cease to exist. Nobody enjoys living in a global pandemic, especially one that has changed our realities so drastically, but it is our responsibility to take steps that protect ourselves and our loved ones. Everybody should have the opportunity to feel safe and to protect their communities, and in my opinion, this mandate helps to make that happen.

It is within all of our best interests to help protect each other and to acknowledge our differences instead of ignoring one another.

Lauren Barton is a sixteen-year-old writer living in the Knoxville area. She is the founder of Tectonic Magazine and often writes about local politics. You can follow their Twitter: @laurenbarton03

GOV. LEE’S BOARD OF ED APPOINTEE LINKED TO AMMO SALE TO AURORA KILLER

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Governor Bill Lee has just appointed Jordan Mollenhour of Knoxville to the State Board of Education, the governing and policy-making body for Tennessee’s Pre-K-12 public education system – which through partnership with the TN Department of Education maintains oversight in K-12 implementation and academic standards.

According to Knox TN Today:

“Mollenhour is co-CEO of Mollenhour Gross LLC, an investment company based in Knoxville. He will represent the Second Congressional District… Mollenhour’s term of service is for five years….”

What the article does not mention is Mollenhour’s very concerning history as an online ammunition dealer, owning an online company with an obscure ownership trail that according to the St. Louis Dispatch sold thousands of bullets to at least one mass shooter.

In a 2014 article called “HOW THE AURORA SHOOTER GOT HIS AMMO” by Todd Frankel, then of the St. Louis Dispatch, Frankel follows the trail of the sale of the bullets used in the murder of 12 people and the injuring of 58 others in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater all the way to Knoxville, and then on to Atlanta.

The article reads:

“The answer appeared to be an online company in St. Louis… but the trail leads not to St. Louis but to Knoxville, TN, and on to Atlanta, to a secretive company considered to be among the nation’s top online ammunition dealers. It’s founders – a pair of former real estate developers – sell bullets using far-flung P.O. Boxes, different corporate entities, and online marketing tactics that have offended even some firearm enthusiasts. By last summer, these entrepreneurs stood perfectly positioned to close on a quick, legal sale to a deranged killer.”

Those “former real estate developers” were Jordan Mollenhour and his partner Dustin Gross. Both are University of Tennessee graduates. Governor Lee has just appointed Mollenhour to the Board of Education.

According to the article, their company was called www.BulkAmmo.com, and operated under the names www.luckygunner.com, www.ammoforsale.com, and others. In the article Frankel tracks their web of corporations and business names to a distributor in Atlanta, but he’s never able to contact them for comment.

Frankel also summarizes the history of the ammo business in America, pointing out that it wasn’t always possible to order thousands of bullets online and have them show up to your door no questions asked, but that a piece of legislation in 1986 changed it so that they could.

Maybe Chris Rock is right – If gun control is impossible to pass in our messed up, gun-sick nation – maybe restricting the ammo is what we should be focusing on? But in the meantime it seems fair to ask why Governor Lee is appointing someone with a sordid past that includes enabling at least one mass shooting in Colorado to a board of education overseeing what our kids learn.

Selling thousands of bullets online to a mass killer wasn’t illegal, but it probably should be, and at the very least we shouldn’t be putting people who think it’s ok to make a living doing that in charge of our children’s education.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t Lee’s only questionable education appointment – Lee and Speaker Sexton just also recently appointed anti-Muslim 9/11 Truther Laurie Cardoza-Moore to the textbook commission.

Extremism at the highest levels of Tennessee’s government is on full display. And it’s our kids who will suffer.

The Power of Campaigns and Community Organizing

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State Representative Gloria Johnson is back with an episode talking about the heart and soul of a campaign:  the person who manages it. Hailey Shastid joins to talk about her experience managing Rep Johnson’s campaign and how she fell in love with organizing in her community.

FULL PODCAST available on Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you like to listen.

UT-Knoxville Student: “If Anyone Dies, Blood Is On Her Hands.”

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“I have read people say, kind of cynical people I think, young people won’t do it, College students won’t do it. They will not stop partying.”

On the 21st of August the UT Knoxville YouTube channel uploaded a video of Chancellor Plowman addressing her student body. This video is meant to reassure students that she believes in us, and that she thinks that we can make this work.

What she does not acknowledge is the fact that these ‘cynical people’ are the student body she’s trying to ‘inspire’.

To be fair, I see where she’s coming from. There is not one person in this generation that I know who is not sick of older generations thinking we are too lazy or entitled to care for others. If you want to pander, this is a good way to do it, especially for ‘cynical’ people.

What this message fails to realize is that those cynics are not the ones who need to be inspired to follow the guidelines. The students who need to be inspired are the ones who do not care, as the consequences don’t have real impact for them.

I am one of those ‘cynical’ people who does not think that is going to work. I would love to be proved wrong, but I cannot afford to be optimistic when it could have dire consequences for those I care about.

What I do not think the chancellor is taking into account is the very real lived experiences of the students she is supposed to serve.

I am currently lucky enough to have all online classes, however one of my roommates isn’t so lucky. The problem is, I am now exposed to the campus environment even if I don’t set foot on campus at all this semester. I also have to work, and so does my roommate, which means we are both at a bigger risk of being infected.

We have been told that there will be consequences for students who do not adhere to guidelines, and that these students could get expelled. This would be great, if this was not a virus with a two week incubation period. By the time these students are facing consequences students who are immunocompromised will also be facing consequences of the now-expelled-student. If it were me, and my life was now on the line, I would not be happy with that student simply being expelled.

I am so scared to go home, my brother has asthma, my dad just beat cancer, and my mom was a smoker for so many years. If I brought COVID-19 home, and someone in my family passed away because someone who had the virus decided to come out and not isolate, Chancellor Plowman expelling them would mean nothing to me.

That doesn’t bring my family back.

Risking students’ lives, their families lives, and other citizens of Knoxville, so the university can play football and make money from that is horribly unethical. This chancellor has lost a lot of my respect even bringing us back to campus. If she keeps us here, she will not be redeemable.

If anyone at UT dies, their blood is on her hands.

Rainey Dinsmore is a student at UT-Knoxville

“Rocky Top Sunrise” – A Better World with Matthew Park

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Hosts Isabella Killius and Cassie Jackson interview Matthew Park in a special episode! Matthew is a candidate for State House running in District 15 in Knoxville. Sunrise believes he is one of the most thoughtful and inspirational candidates running in Tennessee right now, and he’s the only candidate to be endorsed by Sunrise Tennessee’s statewide coalition because of his strong stances on climate and his progressive, moral vision for what Tennessee could be.

Sunrise Tennessee Interest Form

Follow Sunrise Tennessee on Twitter and Facebook.

FULL PODCAST available on Apple Podcasts and wherever else you like to listen.

UT-Knoxville Student On Video Saying Vile, Violent Racist Slurs Claims “Catfish”

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In a video circulating online, UT-Knoxville Student Garrison Pike is seen saying vile, violent, ugly racial slurs, using the “N” Word repeatedly and threatening to “rape” black people who he says are “nothing”.

UT Knoxville acknowledged the video yesterday in a tweet and said they are looking into it.

Many UT students are outraged and say they’re afraid to be at school with Pike around, calling for his expulsion.

Friends of Pike’s have contacted the Holler to give what they say is “context”, sharing text messages in which Pike attempts to explain that he was drunk and essentially catfished by an African-American person he was exchanging messages with on a dating site who “said they were into slavemaster shit”.

TEXT FROM GARRISON PIKE

PIKE’S TEXT TO A FRIEND READS:

“So when I broke up with my ex I was really depressed and I was talking to this person on a dating site who said they were African-American and we talked for about a week and a half and they said they were into slave master shit and sent me a text of what to say to them and I waited a few days before I said it because I was drunk and just wanted to make someone happy and it turns out they were a catfish but they told me they wouldn’t share the video with anyone and now it’s blown up and I’m getting death threats and was suspended Ik what I said was shitty but it’s not me. Now i have the cops driving by my house every hour and my address in on twitter.

To be clear, the video is EXTREMELY nasty and disturbing, and no amount of context excuses ever saying ANYTHING like this, let alone recording yourself doing it and sending it to a stranger.

We will let y’all decide what you believe here.

Some on twitter have posted what they claim to be an exchange with an ex of Pike’s who says HE is the one with the slavemaster fetish, but we have been unable to confirm.

We’re told Pike is receiving death threats, has been suspended, and it seems likely his enrollment at UT is in jeopardy.

We’ve communicated with students who went to Ravenwood High School in Williamson County with Pike, who was class of 2018. They seemed surprised but not altogether shocked.

One said this kind of racism was not the norm in their experience, but another told us that on cultural heritage day the student body president brought a confederate flag to school, which many minority students were upset by, and felt black students in Williamson County are appreciated only for their athletic ability.

Not long, ago Williamson County parents were up in arms about the school system trying to introduce some racial sensitivity and “white privilege” training for teachers into the program.

It’s also worth pointing out that Williamson County still has a confederate flag on their county seal, which many residents would like to see changed (including Holler founder Justin Kanew)

It stands to reason that as long as things like that are allowed to exist, we should expect more incidents of this nature.

We will update the story surrounding Pike as it develops.

GUEST COLUMN: “BIG DATA ON ELECTION NIGHT”

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Mark D. Harmon is a professor of journalism and electronic media at the University of Tennessee

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“BIG DATA ON ELECTION NIGHT”

From the Not-So-Farfetched File…

RACHEL MADDOW: Good evening, and welcome to MSNBC’s Election Night 2020 coverage.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: We still have two hours to go before voting locations close on the East Coast, but we do have public opinion polling to give us some fascinating insights into the electorate.

MADDOW: For that we go to Steve Kornacki at the big board.

KORNACKI: That’s right, Rachel and Brian. We’ve been able to use what data experts call common reference points to link standard election polls to all sorts of other Big Data information. Let’s start with comparisons to 2016.

Donald Trump is down ten points among pick-up truck drivers, but up two points among drivers of vehicles with slogans or female images on mud flaps. Joe Biden’s commuting habits seem to be paying off for him. He is winning three-to-one among people who’ve ever traveled by train, two-to-one among those who as a child had model trains. He’s also winning big among those who ever watched Soul Train, or can sing at least some of the words to “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

MADDOW: You have other information about Georgia as well?

KORNACKI: Yes, we discovered that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, known for his botched response to coronavirus, is now less popular than the virus itself.

WILLIAMS: But he’s not on the ballot this time around.

KORNACKI: That’s right, but our numbers indicate he would lose a recall effort by roughly twelve to one.

MADDOW: Any other big surprises?

KORNACKI: Yes, going back to 2016 comparisons, turnout overall could be up by as much as ten percentage points. Those who think it’s okay to cast a third-party protest vote is down 93 percent.

WILLIAMS: I understand you also have social media data.

KORNACKI: Oh, large amounts of social media data. Trump and Biden overall are dead even among Facebook and Twitter users-with Trump holding a strong lead among first-time users from foreign domains.

Looking at just Twitter users, Trump leads among those with spelling and grammatical errors in their posts, and with those who use multiple exclamation points, or who link to conspiracy sites. Biden leads only among those who link to established news and information sites. And to draw users into reading such content, these people may have used growth services like Upleap or buzzoid to ensure that they can boost the number of followers that they have to their account. Trump and Biden may also do this if they get given the chance.

We have even more on tweets. Song birds that tweet daily are breaking big for Biden. Parrots are tilting toward Trump. We’re pretty sure Big Bird, and most of Sesame Street-excepting Oscar the Grouch-will be going for Biden. Trump, by the way, scores well among vultures and all creatures who feed on dead flesh.

MADDOW: Wow, that’s a broad database.

KORNACKI: Yes, it is. We even have foreign data. Biden is doing much better than Trump with Americans living in France, those who ever have visited France, and among French people who wish they could vote in this election. Trump leads only among those who can’t find France on a map.

WILLIAMS: You also have some other data you’ve told us is hard to categorize.

KORNACKI: Correct. Trump is down ten points among those who use “summer” as a verb, but he’s up five points among residents of mobile homes who have thought about bleaching their lungs or admit to snorting Lysol.

We can’t give away too much, but I can say all indications are this election night will please a lot of people who shop on Thursdays, post photos of children, and drive automatic transmissions.

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Mark D. Harmon, a professor of journalism and electronic media at the University of Tennessee, is an award-winning freelance columnist.

OPINION: INDYA KINCANNON SHOWS UP (Knoxville Mayor’s Race)

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Indya Kincannon shows up, and when the votes are counted on November 5 it will be clear that voters showed up for her as a result of her accessibility and overwhelming qualifications for the job of Knoxville Mayor.

Indya Kincannon shows up to listen. It’s hard to recall a public meeting, forum, or event where the tenacious and hardworking Kincannon hasn’t been present, listening to the concerns of voters and soliciting feedback about the issues they face and the ways they feel local government can improve. In order to speak directly to area residents, Indya has personally spent countless hours knocking on doors and making phone calls, rather than relying on paid canvassers to do it for her. She understands that often, the best ideas come from the people most impacted – and she genuinely wants to know where the pain points are and how to best streamline the City’s processes.

Indya Kincannon shows up to solve problems. While the mayor can’t solve every problem alone, Kincannon has often said that she would be the “convener-in-chief” – pulling together a coalition of area nonprofits, faith groups, and others to stretch the government’s limited resources and make Knoxville stronger, healthier, and more economically sound.

Indya Kincannon shows up to lead.She has the leadership experience to step into the City County Building on day one and get the job done. As Chair (for three years) and member of the Knox County Board of Education (10 total years), she helped lead a $450m organization with 8,000 employees. Comparatively, the City of Knoxville has an annual budget of $231m and 1600 employees. Additionally, she served the City of Knoxville as the Mayor’s Liaison and Special Programs Manager, and with the Arizona State Legislature as a Budget Analyst. She understands that government work requires a level of accountability and transparency far beyond what is needed in the business world, and she’s an effective communicator who welcomes that transparency.

Indya Kincannon shows up to build consensus.A natural collaborator, she also knows that in the public sector it is imperative to build consensus. Throughout her career, she has shown time and again that she has the ability to pull together groups with competing interests in order to accomplish goals. At no time was this more apparent than when she successfully lobbied to include protections for LGBTQ+ students in the Knox County Schools anti-bullying policies.

Indya Kincannon shows up to get things done.Quite simply, Indya Kincannon is a pragmatic progressive who gets things done. Her tenure with the Board of Education shows a laundry list of accomplishments: her stalwart support  of Project GRAD, the rollout of a new family-friendly school transfer policy, dramatic improvements in graduation rates at area high schools, the launch of Community Schools, and new educational programs like the Kelley Academy, Career Magnet Academy, and L&N STEM Academy. As Mayor, she’ll continue to connect people with the educational, training, and workforce development opportunities that will help them to become more successful members of the community. Kincannon knows that Knoxville’s people are its greatest value, and that when we invest in them we will win.

Indya Kincannon shows up to stand up. When the going gets tough, Indya stands up for what’s right – even if it isn’t the popular thing to do. As BOE Chair, she successfully fought against a plan to outsource school janitorial services. On the campaign trail, she hasn’t been afraid to tell people that something won’t work – but she’s always quick to explain why and provide alternative solutions. She’s the rare honest, transparent candidate who doesn’t make promises she knows she can’t keep.

Indya Kincannon shows up for all of us. Indya isn’t a rich philanthropist; she has been involved in the way we all can be involved – leading her neighborhood association, serving as PTA  President, coaching youth soccer and basketball. When she saw a need in her community, she jumped in to help however she could – whether that meant volunteering for a local nonprofit or running for school board. Indya has done the hands-on kind of work that it takes to make a difference from the ground up. She’s not beholden to special interests, and her priority is to make Knoxville work for all residents – not just the wealthy and connected.

On November 5, let’s show up for Indya Kincannon.It’s time to vote for the candidate with the qualifications, temperament, experience, leadership skills, and moral compass to lead Knoxville forward. It’s time to vote for Indya Kincannon.

Chyna Brackeen Is The President of Attack Monkey Productions

CANDIDATE SPOTLIGHT: Marshall Stair for Knoxville Mayor

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Our video of Knoxville mayor candidate Marshall Stair, a city council member running for mayor. He’s against vouchers, believes Detective Fritts should’ve been fired, and sees diversity as a strength. He see affordable housing as a major issue facing the city.

Learn more about him HERE.

VIDEO: “My Uncle Is A Terrorist” – Detective Fritts’ Niece

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Cherish Hope Newman, niece of Knox County Sheriff’s Detective/Pastor Grayson Fritts – who has called for the mass execution of LGBT people – speaks out.

She says that side of her family is “mostly full of racist bigots”, she won’t stand by silently as her uncle tries to turn Christianity into ISIS, and that God is a “merciful and loving God” who does not “hate” anyone.

Comment on her YouTube video HERE.

First spotted on WVLT.