Jackson Free Press

Who ARE you, and why would you do such a thing, Rep. Nunnelee, considering you come from state where domestic abuse is such an epidemic?

The Jackson Free Press and the Center for Violence Prevention are proud to announce the 10th Annual JFP Chick Ball on Saturday, July 19, 2014, at the Arts Center of Mississippi in downtown Jackson at 201 E. Pascagoula St. This year's special JFP Chick Ball is moving to the Arts Center for this year's special gala, which will celebrate a decade of preventing domestic abuse, protecting families, and empowering women to lift themselves and their families up after experiencing abuse.

This year, at 8 p.m. the JFP Chick Ball will honor three heroes who embody the event's motto of "prevent, protect, empower": Abuse survivor Sarah Reynolds, state Sen. Sally Doty, who helped create the state Office Against Interpersonal Violence, and the Mississippi Law Enforcement Officers Training Academy, for their work against sex trafficking in the state. The JFP is also honoring a decade of Chicks We Love at the event.

Past JFP Chick Ball events, all at Hal & Mal's in Jackson, have resulted in the purchase of a new mini-van for client transportation, the launch of the Batterer's Intervention Program, and legal assistance for victims. Proceeds from the 2013 Chick Ball were used in addressing an emerging issue in our area—human trafficking, which is also known as modern-day slavery.

This year's JFP Chick Ball is honoring and supporting all the work of the Center for Violence Prevention and its efforts to save and improve lives of families in central Mississippi. "Domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking occurrences continue to rise in the Central Mississippi area, as we are hearing almost daily about another woman or child whose life has been negatively impacted by it," Sandy Middleton, executive director of the Center for Violence Prevention in Pearl, says. "These interpersonal crimes cross all social-economic, racial and cultural boundaries, meaning they can affect any of us or our children."

JFP Editor-in-Chief Donna Ladd launched the event a decade as a way to give Jackson-area adults of all ages and income brackets a way to help fight the abuse epidemic, which strikes all communities. She also wanted it to be fun, creative and a celebration of female performers.

"The Chick Ball has always cost $5 to get in. I purposefully designed it to welcome all who want to come. And chicks must be prominent in all performances! That, of course, means it's a very popular event for our arm candy as well; men are some of our best donors, supporters and dancers!"

The JFP Chick Ball has become a fashion fete as well, with all kinds of dress welcome—from jeans to bling. The Diva of Bling (her) and Best Arm Candy (him) take home prizes from local businesses every year.

The event's silent auction is one of a kind, with hundreds of gifts, pieces of art and gift certificates from local businesses and artists donated each year. The JFP is accepting auction donations through Thursday, July 17 (at 125 S. Congress St., #1324), during normal business hours.

"One of …

The Jackson Free Press and the Center for Violence Prevention are proud to announce the 10th Annual JFP Chick Ball, which will celebrate a decade of preventing domestic abuse, protecting families and empowering women to lift themselves and their families up after experiencing abuse.

Past JFP Chick Ball events have resulted in the purchase of a new mini-van for client transportation, the launch of the Batterer's Intervention Program, and legal assistance for victims. Proceeds from the 2013 Chick Ball were used in addressing an emerging issue in our area-Human Trafficking, which is also known as modern-day slavery.

This year's JFP Chick Ball is honoring and supporting all the work of the Center for Violence Prevention and its efforts to save and improve lives of families in central Mississippi. "Domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking occurrences continue to rise in the Central Mississippi area, as we are hearing almost daily about another woman or child whose life has been negatively impacted by it," Sandy Middleton, executive director of the Center for Violence Prevention in Pearl, says. " These interpersonal crimes cross all social-economic, racial and cultural boundaries, meaning they can affect any of us or our children."

JFP Editor-in-Chief Donna Ladd conceived the event a decade as a way to give Jackson-area adults of all ages and income brackets a way to help fight the abuse epidemic, which strikes all communities. She also wanted it to be fun, creative and a celebration of female performers. "The Chick Ball has always cost $5 to get in. I purposefully designed it to welcome all who want to come. And chicks must be prominent in all performances! That, of course, means it's a very popular event for our arm candy as well; men are some of our best donors, supporters and dancers!"

A performance line-up will be released July 11, as well as a list of restaurants providing food and a full sponsor list.

The JFP Chick Ball has become a fashion fete as well, with all kinds of dress welcome—from jeans to bling. The Diva of Bling (her) and Best Arm Candy (him) take home prizes from local businesses every year.

The event's silent auction is one of a kind, as well, with hundreds of gifts, pieces of art and gift certificates from local businesses and artists donated each year. The JFP will accept auction donations through Friday, July 18, but can only guarantee inclusion in the big Chick Issue Gift Guide if received by Friday, July 11, to 125 S. Congress St., Suite 1324, during normal business hours.

"One of the best parts of the Chick Ball is watching people of all ages step up to donate money, time or auction gifts in the months leading up to the JFP Chick Ball. You never know what's going to walk through the door!" Ladd says. This year, the items so far include a guitar, artwork by HC Porter and a barbecue grill.

At the event on July 19 at the …

It is JFP Chick Ball season in Jackson, and we need your help to fight domestic abuse—this year to start a rape crisis center and raise awareness about sexual assault in our city and state! Here are 10 easy ways you can help.

Yesterday was a very good day for the JFP staff, and especially our writers and designers.

The 8th Annual JFP Chick Ball is raising money to help the Center for Violence Prevention start a rape crisis center.

The JFP got more great news Friday night when we learned that we are winning two first-place and one second-place award from the Society of Professional Journalists' southeastern division. Valerie Wells takes first place for feature writing, the Personhood team (this time, including R.L. Nave and Adam Lynch) takes second place for public service, and I won first place for serious commentary. Here is the full press release. Cheers to the team, congratulations to all the winners. We're honored to be in your company:

Good news! The Southern Poverty Law Center just emailed this statement, pasted in its entirety:

If you grew up in the South, and especially if you're white, you've likely been told repeatedly (maybe even in a classroom) that "the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery." (They might have even called it the "War Between the States" or even the "War of Northern Aggression.") "It was about economics," they might say. Or, almost always, "It was over state's rights," as if that somehow means that it wasn't actually over a state's right to allow its white citizens to own and abuse black human beings. It's remarkable how many white southerners, and others around the country, actually believe this myth. And it is regularly used as an excuse to justify keeping the Confederate battle flag and other symbols of the Confederacy and the "lost cause" of slavery imbedded into government, public and private schools, and some state universities in every way possible—especially in the taxpayer-funded state flags that still adorn several state capitols, including Mississippi's.

But the problem is: The Confederate leaders themselves had no reason then to hide what they were fighting the Civil War over. They were forthright about both why they were seceding into the Confederacy and their beliefs about the white supremacy (and its spoils of wealth) that they were willing to fighting to keep in place. Ever since I first read Mississippi's Declaration of Secession, I've used it as a response to someone who decides to spread these myths in my presence.

Now, in the wake of the Charleston massacre by an apparent white supremacist, and as the country is engaging in a welcome conversation about the Confederate flag, I've compiled a list of primary sources from the mouths and pens of the Confederate leaders themselves that could prove useful as you deal with the myths that continue to be used to justify racism and racist symbols. (Hat tip to Kristy Wittman Howell who had posted several of the more obscure links on Facebook.) Please suggest others in the comments.

Mississippi's Declaration of Secession: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization."

All the Declarations of Secession by southern states that did them: From Texas' Declaration: "In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of …

In its Sunday edition, The New York Times is reporting that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating several private equity firms, including Bain Capital for possibly abusing a tax strategy "in order to slice hundreds of millions of dollars from their tax bills."

The attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, has in recent weeks subpoenaed more than a dozen firms seeking documents that would reveal whether they converted certain management fees collected from their investors into fund investments, which are taxed at a far lower rate than ordinary income.

Among the firms to receive subpoenas are Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, TPG Capital, Sun Capital Partners, Apollo Global Management, Silver Lake Partners and Bain Capital, which was founded by Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president. Representatives for the firms declined to comment on the inquiry.

Mr. Schneiderman’s investigation will intensify scrutiny of an industry already bruised by the campaign season, as President Obama and the Democrats have sought to depict Mr. Romney through his long career in private equity as a businessman who dismantled companies and laid off workers while amassing a personal fortune estimated at $250 million.

The subpoenas, by a Democrat, went out before a huge document leak recently that raised questions about Bain Capital's practices:

The tax strategy — which is viewed as perfectly legal by some tax experts, aggressive by others and potentially illegal by some — came to light last month when hundreds of pages of Bain’s internal financial documents were made available online. The financial statements show that at least $1 billion in accumulated fees that otherwise would have been taxed as ordinary income for Bain executives had been converted into investments producing capital gains, which are subject to a federal tax of 15 percent, versus a top rate of 35 percent for ordinary income. That means the Bain partners saved more than $200 million in federal income taxes and more than $20 million in Medicare taxes.

The subpoenas, which executives said were issued in July, predated the leak of the Bain documents by several weeks and do not appear to be connected with them. Mr. Schneiderman, who is also co-chairman of a mortgage fraud task force appointed by Mr. Obama, has made cracking down on large-scale tax evasion a priority of his first term.

As a retired partner, Mr. Romney continues to receive profits from Bain Capital and has had investments in some of the funds that documents show used the tax strategy.

Be sure to read the entire article for a succinct explanation about the fees/interest practices of many financial firms. This ends the piece:

The leaked documents show that Bain has in recent years waived management fees in at least eight private equity and other funds, including one formed as early as January 2002. The documents stated that Bain executives had the right to decide either annually or each quarter whether to waive some or all of their management fees; they also had …

I received this stunning letter a couple days ago from a (white, I think) man in Pearl, presumably in response to my recent column about the abominable Mississippi state flag. I post it now without comment but will be back along with some thoughts later. Here it is, verbatim:

Please permit me to submit the following letter to Jackson Free Press:

Some of us have heard the question "What happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object?" The puzzle might seem a bit superficial until one notices we have a similar problem concerning our state flag.

I think the JFP has well demonstrated that the Confederate emblem on the Mississippi flag continues to cause hurtful memories to blacks who have endured the horrors of segregation and the Civil Rights era.

So why would so many Mississippians continue to resist changing such a hated symbol of our state's dark past? Ignorance? Bigotry? Could there still be some unspoken reason why many white southerners insist on keeping our flag in its current form?

Hey. We want progress. So let's just go ahead and bring it out in the open.

Just as the current Confederate emblem causes hurtful memories to our state's blacks, the absence of the symbol would cause hurtful memories to many white southerners. And I do not mean just segregationists.

To many whites, the erasure of the Confederate emblem would be an unreciprocated nod to the kind of blacks who attempted, and in some cases, DID seize control of Jackson's schools by force, who pulled knives on white students and threatened them with violence, who stole my brother's school books and urged him to steal from my parents to get money to get his books back.

The erasure would be seen as a nod to "gangsta rap" stars who record songs saturated with sexualized slang and glorify abusing women. It would be seen as a nod to people who have petitioned the NBA to declassify the use of the "MF" word as a technical foul because it is part of "black culture."

To be blunt, there are some facets of "black culture" many of us do not want in Mississippi culture. THAT is what some Mississippi southerners are afraid of.

Though voters decided by referendum to keep our current flag, one can argue that we must have a system in place to protect people from a tyranny of the majority. But there is a bit of a corollary to that here.

If Mississippi blacks are a minority, there is a tiny minority to THAT minority. There are some blacks who want to keep our current flag. Some support groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans because they are proud to be the descendants of black soldiers who fought for the CSA. Should not their rights be considered too?

But my position is not based entirely on fairness. Perhaps we should lose the current flag.

But that is not going to happen until we have answered the …

This falls in the can't-make-it-up column.

Most of you know that Mitchell Moore of Campbell's Bakery, who is straight, and Eddie Outlaw of William Wallace Salon, who is gay, and others started the amazing "If You're Buying, We're Selling" campaign. They want Mississippi business owners to put stickers in their windows to indicate that they don't discriminate, in response to SB 2681, Mississippi's version of the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act." (See lots of business owners with the icon in their ads in this week's JFP, too.)

So, the religious right is apparently not happy with the international media coverage the campaign is getting -- and from Mississippi, which is supposed to be their wheelhouse, you know. They really didn't like it when Emily Pettus of the AP (the JFP's next-door neighbors) did a story about this that was picked up by many outlets.

In response, they went on a PR tear to take back the messaging. Greg Scott, who tweets at @adfmedia, led the way, tweeting this week in response to the AP story: "Sticker folks protest imaginary law .@AP bows false narrative, RFRA not "vaguely written," no threat to "=treatment" http://bit.ly/QEU2El

Curious, I did some research. Turns out, Scott is the VP for media communications for Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly Alliance Defense Fund), a nonprofit group founded in 1994 by extreme-right and vocally anti-gay leaders including James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. (Interestingly, Mississippi's Judge Charles Pickering is also on the board.)

Not to be outdone, the American Family Association, an alliance co-founder, also blasted the sticker campaign on a Christian "news" site, which is part of the American Family News Network, which is part of the ... American Family Association. "It's not really a buying campaign, but it's a bully campaign," said Buddy Smith, executive vice president of Tupelo-based American Family Association, "and it's being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture."

The Southern Poverty Law Center includes the alliance (and AFA) on its list of a dozen groups that drive the "religious right's anti-gay crusade." On its website, it brags that its "attorneys have successfully defended marriage as the union between one man and one woman in over 40 cases nationwide."

SPLC indicates that the alliance was established in the early 1990s in response to gay-rights battles in the courts—which it clearly believes is the "principal" threat to religious freedom. ADF President Alan Sears and Vice President Craig Osten wrote " The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom," which ties homosexuality to pedophilia and other "disordered sexual behavior."

SPLC states: "The ADF has also mounted legal challenges to gay military service, marriage, adoption and foster-parenting, as well as to domestic partner benefits around the nation. It trains other attorneys 'to battle the radical homosexual …

OK, Snark King, it's your turn.

I've had it in the back of my head to blog about a really offensive post by The Clarion-Ledger's city reporter Brian Eason for weeks now, but it had fallen to the side in the need to report actual news. But while cleaning up my desk today, I started noticing a pattern—first from a clipping of another snarky thing he wrote calling a whole city office stupid, and then I saw a blog post belittling an enterprise story by our staff this week, but without actually saying what was in it or linking to it. So here's my Friday afternoon round-up of what I've been noticing about Mr. Eason's snark, which I assume is meant to be humor, except none of it is funny.

No. 1. Don't dare compare crime to terrorism, dumb little council candidate. After 20-year-old minister Corinthian Sanders decided to get involved enough to run for City Council, he made the mistake of saying that the "terrorism" of crime was one of his top priorities (as if he's the first to ever say that here). Sanders told the Jackson Free Press: "Let’s talk about getting our lawbreakers, criminals—I call them terrorists….(If) you can’t go anywhere without killing someone or robbing someone or terrorizing someone, that’s terror, (and) you’re a terrorist; you’re a domestic terrorist.” The mention of the word terrorism tickled Eason's funny bone. He snarked:

"To my knowledge, no major terrorist attacks have occurred or been planned on our streets, and the Jackson Police Department reported no terrorist incidents in 2012, according to its published crime stats. But maybe that’s what the terrorists want us to think.

"Lest anyone think Sanders is trying to politicize the Boston Marathon bombing, rest assured, his commitment to fighting terrorism on the streets of Jackson predated the explosions at the marathon.

"But while Sanders listed counter-terrorism as his No. 2 priority, right behind “protect, improve and increase affordable housing,” none of his competitors — or, indeed, any other candidates in the entire metro area — mentioned local terrorism as a problem worthy of their consideration.

Eason's blog post shows he later clarified what Sanders meant, and quoted Sanders' above words from the JFP in an addendum to the snark-post, but that nasty horse was out of Eason's barn by then. That's what you get for running for office in Jackson, Corinthian. The ire of a native Dallasonian. And I really don't know what all his references to monkey videos on your Facebook page were about, and don't care.

No. 2. In a post called "Common sense? Not at clerk's office," Eason showed the entire staff of the Jackson city clerk's office not to mess with him, no sir. He was irked that he couldn't get election results from the clerk's office at 11 a.m. the day after the primary. They didn't have certified results available, yet, and gave him a bit of a runaround. OK, it's fair to …