A Fire for Change

Joyce Jackson will face off against LaRita Cooper-Stokes in the runoff election for the Ward 3 City Council seat Feb. 28.

by Jacob Fuller
Feb. 22, 2012

Spend just a couple of minutes with Joyce Jackson at Collins Funeral Home, where she works, and you will see why many members of her community asked her to run for City Council.

A former school teacher who spent 33 years teaching mostly second grade in the Jackson Public Schools system, Jackson knows many of the neighborhood faces by name, and greets the ones she doesn't with the same familiar smile and gentle voice.

It's that loving approach coupled with her fire for activism and change that helped Jackson, 72, earn honors such as the Outstanding Elementary Teacher of America and of Jackson in 1972 and the Rosa Parks Award, which then-Councilman Kenneth Stokes presented to her in 2008. Jackson was given the Rosa Parks Award for her leadership in preventing the planned destruction of the former Hood Furniture factory on Livingston Road, a demolition that had not received approval from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The divorced mother of two and native of De Kalb, in Kemper County, earned her Bachelor of Science from Rust College and her master's and specialist degrees in elementary education from Jackson State University. She has served on the Jackson Planning Board since 1999 and the Murrah High School Site Council since 2010.

Jackson is running for the seat that Stokes vacated when he was elected to the Hinds County Board of Supervisors last November. LaRita Cooper-Stokes, Kenneth Stokes' wife and Jackson's opponent in the race, did not respond to multiple calls for an interview.

The runoff election for the Ward 3 City Council seat, between Jackson and Cooper-Stokes, will be held Tuesday, Feb. 28. The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

A map of Ward 3 is available online at jacksonms.gov/government/ward3, and a list of Ward 3 poll locations is at jfp.ms/ward3polls.

In any community, senior citizens face threats that younger adults don't. How do you plan to address those threats if elected?
One of my strong points ... is that I would support the law enforcement officers. I would meet with the commander, and I would meet with the sheriff and see if we could get more visibility into the community. And I think this would help a lot to get the police cruisers in there. And, for the people that live in that particular area, that they know who their patrol person is and, really, to know who their commander is, also--to be able to give them the information that they need where they can just dial the number right up.

A lot people can't find the numbers they need in the telephone book. I think if there's a way that we can get these numbers to them, (we should), even if they're just passed on a little magnetic card so they can put them on their refrigerator.

One of the most pressing issues for the City Council is abandoned properties throughout the city. What can we do about that?
I've thought about it a lot. I thought about it several ways. I thought about the houses. We should have something in place that has a really, really strong timeline. If the people that own that property don't do anything about it, there should be some kind of way that the city can take this property, because they are not taking care of it. And then they will have the opportunity of getting rid of those dilapidated homes. Then they could use that property, since it would be city-owned, to offer it as a lot to the neighborhood, and let them plant gardens, which would be a beautiful thing.

It could be whatever kind of gardens they want it to be, whether it's vegetable gardens or a flower garden. That way, your vegetation would be taken care of.

If you are elected, what is the first thing on your agenda?
First thing on my agenda is to look and see what do we have left in the budget, because the budget has already been set. How much money do we have left for this year and what was it allotted for? Then I would see what we have and what our needs are.

I don't know how many streets they've already decided that we need to fix. I know which streets need to be fixed, I just don't know if these are already on the list or not. Then, meet with the people in the business sector to see what their needs are. One is protection and to feel comfortable when people come into their business without people being threatened.

There is a bill before the state Senate right now, Bill 2110, that would return maintenance of highways in Jackson to the Mississippi Department of Transportation. What are your thoughts on that?
That would be a blessing, a real blessing. The funds that are allotted for the city, those funds could be going for the other streets that so badly need repair.

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