Jackson mayor Chokwe Lumumba said the proposed Jackson independent water district “reminds him of apartheid.”
Say what? Apartheid is a term applied to South Africa’s old system of dividing white people from black people and denying basic rights to black people.
How, pray tell, is an independent Jackson water utility district a denial of black rights? If anything, the Jackson water department’s failure to supply potable water is a denial of rights — to all Jacksonians.
At a city hall press conference, Lumumba said, “They (the state legislators) are looking to colonize Jackson. They are trying to put their military force over Jackson and they are trying to dictate who has province over Jackson, while they simultaneously introduce a bill at how they can remove elected officials in Jackson. It reminds me of colonial power where they dictate who is our leadership. They put military power over us and we are just supposed to pay taxes to the king. That's all we are supposed to do is pay taxes to the king.”
Wow! It’s a challenge to find words in response to such hyperbole. But I will give it a try by scanning my comprehensive list of maxims.
I am a maxim nerd. Any time I hear a maxim, I put it in my list. I have thousands. Maxims are accumulated worldly knowledge encapsulated in short phrases. If you know all the maxims, you know the accumulated wisdom of our English culture.
Several maxims come to mind:
No good deed goes unpunished. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Don’t throw good money after bad. You reap what you sow. There is a sucker born every minute. You can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. You have to lie in the bed you sleep in. He who has the gold rules. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. A leopard can’t change his spots. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. What comes around goes around. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Proper preparation prevents poor performance.
Attitude is everything. Often wrong, never in doubt. The crows always come home to roost. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you play with fire, you’ll get burned. Discretion is the better part of valor. Facts are stubborn things. A still tongue makes a wise head. Don’t overplay your hand. Lead, follow or get out of the way. What a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, then we’d all have a Merry Christmas. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
There are probably a few more maxims that apply to this situation, but I am going to follow “discretion is the better half of valor.”
What a wonderful future Jackson would have if its people could elect a mayor who would work cooperatively and positively with state and federal leaders.
Instead, we have a panderer who wants to blame his own incompetence on state and federal leaders who are trying to rectify his mess. And of course, he pulls out the race card. At some point all the voters of Jackson must say “enough” and refuse to vote for a divisive mayor.
Meanwhile, I don’t believe most Jacksonians care about our mayor’s turf battles. We want safe streets, smooth roads, clean water and timely waste disposal. We don’t care about Lumumba’s shrinking fiefdom.
As one state senator said, and I paraphrase, “Mississippi has only one capital city and it belongs to the whole state, not just those who live in Jackson.” That’s right on.
It would be a crime for our state leaders to sit idly by and watch Jackson go down the tubes. It’s about time the rest of the state started taking an interest in its capital city. For far too long, the rest of the state has been happy just to point their fingers and laugh while Jackson burned.
Our mayor should be welcoming this state and federal aid and doing whatever he can to encourage cooperation and harmony. All hands on deck!
Instead, he spouts this vindictive nonsense. Military force? Colonize? Apartheid? King? Give me a break!
Cities and counties derive their authority from the state legislature. There is nothing in the state constitution that gives cities or counties the right to exist. Cities and counties exist as administrative subdivisions of the state government. If a city or county government fails, it is the responsibility of the state government to rectify the situation.
Similarly, the federal government has ultimate authority over the states, counties and cities under its authority. We are seeing that right now with the appointment of our new federal water czar. The federal government must enforce the Clean Water Act. If a local government proves incompetent to do so, it will be pushed aside. That’s what has happened in Jackson, for the first time in our nation’s history.
I foresee a slow but steady shift from local authority to state authority in the city of Jackson. This will continue until competent leadership is installed in the mayor’s office.
Mayor Lumumba has made a decision to be confrontational when we need cooperation. He’s made that decision because it’s in his political self interest, not because it’s good for the city or state. Portraying himself as being exploited and abused by mean-spirited racist Republicans achieves two things for Lumumba: It gives him cover for his own incompetence. It makes him the darling of the national left-wing elite who have zero comprehension of the real situation in Jackson.
As for the argument that the state starved Jackson of water infrastructure funds because it is majority black, a recent Harvard study titled, “Funding Disparities Among Mississippi Local Water Systems,” debunks that notion, finding that Hinds County received more funding that either Madison or Rankin Counties.
