Thurday’s issue of The Clarion-Ledger discussed new funding bills that are making their way through our state legislature. In our state, we need to have a sense of thrift with our fiscal expenditures. In my view, some of the things coming through our legislature have the smell of pork. House Bill 790 would provide that a $50 million Civil Rights museum would be built in either Jackson or the Mississippi Delta, since both were veritable hot beds of activity during the struggle for civil rights. I feel that a museum for the Civil Rights movement in our state is very appropriate, but $50 million of our state budget being spent on a museum?
Meanwhile, the Mississippi Adequate Education Funding Act is still (almost a decade after its creation) underfunded. We just aren’t making any sense here. Tougaloo College, Metro Jackson and the Delta were all very important areas during the Civil Rights era in Mississippi. I’m not trying to discount any strides made during this time, but in a time when our school systems so desperately need money, do we really need another museum in our state?
This was a supposed “hot-button” issue on the Hill in Jackson. Need any further discussion ensue before we decide that educating our children now is perhaps a little more important than a museum? An issue of minor consequence was a teacher pay raise of 3 percent. Three percent! This from a state that already ranks among the lowest in the nation in education. Our teachers need a bigger raise than 3 percent. If we are to attract businesses like Rolls-Royce, who supposedly wants to build a factory in our state, then we need to have a competent, well-rounded workforce. To have that, you must have well-educated employees, which are a product of good schools.
Although some of the legislation coming to the forefront was not all trivial, Senate Bill 2369, if voted into law, will require elementary school students’ body mass indexes to be tracked and reported to their parents or guardians. Our state is rated among the most obese in the nation, and a program like this could send us well on our way to possibly preventing morbid obesity from claiming the lives of thousands of Mississippians. What really confuses me is how museums grab our attention but actual proactive programs to better our citizens are overlooked for topics that strike more of a nerve.
Mississippi has a past scarred by racism and bigotry. We have realized our mistakes and, in a very short time historically, moved on. A monument to civil rights is not a huge piece of brick and mortar filled with artifacts, but rather, a playground filled with children of all races and ethnicities.
Our state needs a lot more right now than a building commemorating a dark time in our past. We have only begun to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, and we have only begun to show what Mississippians have to offer the rest of the nation.
Let’s show them what we can do, not what we have done. Our state’s history is one full of contradictions, shades of gray and outright unfairness. Let us seek to better ourselves from this generation forward and give them a promise of a better tomorrow with an eye to the horizon and not an eye to a path we have just traversed.
As our president and many others have echoed, children are our future. If we ever expect to be taken seriously by outsiders, we need to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and get to work on an opportunity not many are blessed with. We have an opportunity in Mississippi to redesign ourselves and make our state into something we have never had before. We take our bumps and bruises along the way, but that happens to everyone.
In addition to this, it’s important to remember the some 1,200 fellow Mississippians right down the road from our fair university who have lost their jobs. Bryan Foods of West Point, which is owned by Sara Lee Corporation, is closing its doors, and our governor has promised the employees transition assistance and other vocational training. Let’s all hope and pray for these folks in their plight. Unfortunately, we have lost a major business not only to Mississippi but to the Golden Triangle, and we all should hope for a speedy return to work for these employees.
As for employers in this area, it’s my hope that you will see fit to help out your fellow statesmen in their time of need. A company closing its doors is not the fault of the employees. You as employers have access to a hardy, well-trained and loyal workforce, and may you take advantage of it and add the variable that made Bryan Foods into a success to your company.