By Eleanor Boudreau
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkno/local-wkno-925231.mp3
Memphis, TN – The Metro Charter voters will decide on on November 2nd is a rather dry document, but it inspires the kind rapture--and ire--usually reserved for experimental cuisine.
Brian Stephens is in the rapture camp. He's the Executive Director of Rebuild Government which advocates for the charter, "It's more than the words," Stephens said. "It's about making sure that we're all rowing in the same direction."
Democrat Shep Wilbun is in the ire camp. He thinks it's unfair to Memphians that Memphis is the only city giving up its current charter under consolidation and, even more specifically, he thinks it's unfair to black people. Wilbun points to the demographics--Memphis is almost 63 percent black, while the county outside of Memphis is only 22 percent black.
"What you have, in essence, taking place is the 63 percent black population giving up its right to self-rule," Wilbun said as he flipped through the pages he disdains, "and allowing the 60 percent suburban community to tell you what to do."
And lest you think charter support breaks simply on racial lines, the mayors of Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Lakeland, and Millington--cities which are all more than 70 percent white--have all spoken out against consolidation, too, because they feel consolidation will hurt their cities, too.
To try and explain how people can responds so differently--and vehemently--to the same document, I'm going to turn to the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The people who wrote our Constitution sourced Rousseau heavily. The United States is, quite literally, built on a few things Rousseau thought.
And Rousseau thought that democracy could only work if every man voted--not for what was in his own, personal best interest--but what he thought was in the best interest of the community as a whole. That's basically why Stephens says you should vote for the charter, "Right now, this community is completely divided. It is split," Stephens said, "I think we have to have a common vision."
But as much as Rousseau believed in democracy he also thought that democracy could only work with communities up to a certain size--what is that size? Rousseau wrote it was a community "in which every member may be known by every other."
We're way past that in Shelby County, let alone the United States. Our modern technologies have enabled us to stretch democracy across populations that Rousseau never dreamed possible--let alone advisable.
Once your democracy is too big for everybody to know everybody else, exactly who constitutes the community as a whole becomes a subject of much debate; and it gets harder to picture. For example, when you go to the polls are you really thinking about what is best for your country as a whole, or are you thinking about what is best for the people you know--your friends, family, and neighbors?
Maybe you're somewhere in between those two. Maybe you vote for what you think is best for your city--like Wilbun and some of the suburban mayors.
The larger question--could what is best for Shelby County as a whole really be any different than what is best for the City of Memphis and the county outside of Memphis separately?--is a question I'll tackle next week.