Austin (A.T.) Harrison

Mayor Young Tells Hispanic Leaders MPD Is Working With ICE - Institute for Public Service Reporting - Memphis % % %

The Memphis Safe Task Force's goal was always to round up as many people as quickly as possible. Like a citywide ICE raid. It's fantastical for the Mayor to think he's going to convince 1,500 federal agents to solve homicides and do actual police work.

www.psrmemphis.org/mayor-young-...

When Good Georgians Get Together, Great Things Happen How I’d Fix Atlanta started as a free newsletter sent on a Thursday of most months in 2022. We’ve published 37 essays (and counting) since, put out a couple print zines, done some readings around the ...

It's bleak out there. But we're gonna do some good this week.

How I'd Fix Atlanta has partnered with Undue Medical Debt to help a bunch of ATLiens this week, and we need your help.

Give what you can. Tell everyone you know.

unduemedicaldebt.org/campaign/whe...

JUST NOW — With Senators @MarshaBlackburn & @SenatorHagerty obediently by his side Trump establishes a “task force” to send the National Guard into MEMPHIS

That part

So much for the Blue-State-Only theory....I'm sure this decision has nothing to do with Memphis being the largest majority Black city in America.

Screenshot of title/subtitle of GirlsUnited/Essence article. Copy: “Poisoned For Progress: How Al Is Quietly Draining Black Communities” | “As Al demands skyrocket, so does water and energy use. In Black neighborhoods, the environmental cost is real-and rooted in a legacy of systemic neglect.”. Photo: Construction vehicles stand on the building site of a future chip factory

“Elon Musk's xAl is constructing one of the world's largest Al supercenters in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. This mirrors a long history of environmental racism where polluting industries and hazardous developments are placed in communities with the least
political and financial power.” 🧵

Media Matters: "Benny Johnson on Washington, DC: Entire neighborhoods, probably, need to be emptied, need to be bulldozed"

I see that the MAGA movement is reaffirming the values of the urban renewal program, straight out of the Housing Act of 1949

[the urban renewal program cleared millions of people from their homes, destroyed countless US center cities, uprooted communities of color, other than that it was great]

Heritage Prez Tells Right-Wing State Legislators to De-charter, Take Over Blue Capital Cities No democracy for you, urban voters! Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts says the "second American Revolution" is renewing self-governance in same speech he tells right-wing legislators to de-c...

I’m sure my fellow urban southerners are as concerned by this as I am….

@thetnholler.bsky.social @mlk50.com

A lot of the "he's a uniquely gifted candidate" and "New York City isn't replicable elsewhere" takes—both of which have merit—neglect the extent to which Mamdani is uniquely suited TO THIS HISTORICAL MOMENT. And the lessons of that ARE replicable elsewhere.

Trump Administration Prepares to Drop Seven Major Housing Discrimination Cases Federal housing officials spent years investigating cities from Chicago to Memphis to Corpus Christi for putting industrial plants and unwanted facilities in poor, nonwhite neighborhoods. Now, under T...

New: the Trump administration is preparing to shut down seven major housing discrimination and segregation cases — including high-profile investigations in Chicago, Houston and Flint — despite findings in some that civil rights violations occurred. www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Read my new piece with @jasonhackworth.bsky.social in the #JournalofBlackStudies. We have some thoughts about this…and it’s open access!

City of Cameras Atlanta is the most surveilled city in the United States. With 124.14 surveillance cameras per 1,000 people, we not only lead the country, we have more than twice as many cameras per capita as 2nd …

Atlanta is the most surveilled city in the United States.

But because the Atlanta Police Department claims that releasing the locations of these 60,000+ cameras will lead to terrorism, we’ve not been able to map their locations...

Until now. Read more 👇👇

US Housing Agency Vulnerable to Fraud After DOGE Cuts, Documents Warn Departures of hundreds of lawyers put mortgage insurance claims, apartment building sales and other critical agency functions at risk, according to an internal memo.

The federal government has lost so many lawyers at HUD that the housing agency is at risk of fraud, abuse and litigation, according to an internal report.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Tip for PhD applicants reaching out to prospective advisors: Don’t use an LLM to write these emails. It’s not a great first impression to express your admiration for a recent paper the faculty member published if that paper does not exist.

Organizing >> wonkism, right now

We need more Saul Alinskys, Ella Bakers, and Gale Cincottas, and fewer of these guys tbh

🔥WATCH: “This environmental racism has led to the slow lynching of our community for too long. We are standing up.”

Rep. @justinjpearson.bsky.social goes in on @memphischamber CEO Ted Townsend’s comments about XAI and their gas turbines. #MemphisVsMusk

Full: www.instagram.com/reel/DJIU7z3...

Can confirm: Just spoke to him, and Barber and two others were, in fact, arrested.

Story coming.

MEMPHIS VS. MUSK: “XAI’s reps have avoided the public, leaving city officials & @MemphisChamber to explain how it will benefit the city. For residents it feels like a familiar pattern of environmental racism that has targeted the community for decades.” mlk50.com/2025/04/25/s...

🔥WATCH: “Elon Musk is hurting Tennesseans. He does not care about Tennessee.”

As Faison pushed a resolution to honor Musk & SpaceX for bringing back the astronauts, @justinjpearson.bsky.social pointed out XAI is polluting MEMPHIS - without permits or community input. #MemphisVsMusk

Communities of resistance and resilience in the post-industrial city: A transnational perspective from Lyon and Pittsburgh, by Daniel Holland Published in Journal of Urban Affairs (Ahead of Print, 2025)

Got to review a recent contemporary history comparing community organizing in Pittsburgh and Lyon from the 70s up to the subprime crisis. First book review. Had fun.

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing

The great John Lithgow reading @timothysnyder.bsky.social ‘s 20 Lessons.

Apparently the mayor of Atlanta is proposing to extend the @atlantabeltline.org TIF/TAD district beyond its 25 years (ends in 2030). This would mean keeping schools and basic citywide services from benefiting from (all/most of) tax revenue growth spurred by the original TIF.

#MemphisToo

We had a terrific turnout today of congregation members representing our church at the MICAH issues convention! Kudos to the organizers who helped sign them up and coordinated the carpool, and to the volunteers who gave their Sunday afternoon to this important work. Blessings to all!

WATCH: “This will affect all of MEMPHIS… Musk feels like he can get away with it because poor-ass Black folks live there and nobody gives a damn.”

@memphiscap_org shares voices pushing back against XAI as they buy another 1 MILLION square feet there

Full: www.instagram.com/reel/DHI7o6v...

Meet me in St. Louis. The view from my window this morning.

Now, more than ever, we call upon the courage and commitment of all faculty, staff, students, and academic workers to join us in defying the assault on education. Read our full statement here: bit.ly/4hc8UVE

I swear, the centrists at The Atlantic bear significant blame in the fall of the Democratic Party and its failure to recognize that long-term organizing and turnout —-versus winning over mostly nonexistent “undecided centrists” —is the way to win elections.

Can you spare a minute to help this campaign? Block Senate Bill 1074 in Tennessee: Stand Against Worker Injustices

State of TN is trying to financially punish companies like Ford who enter Community Benefits Agreements around big development projects like Blue Oval City. My class is campaigning against the bill, sign this petition.

chng.it/hPm7jMzYNt

Tax breaks drain millions from Shelby County coffers, robbing critical services of the support they need Photo illustration by Andrea Morales for MLK50 Every year since 2014, Shelby County has given up nearly $41 million in tax revenue that could have been used to fund the county’s crumbling schools o…

One silver lining amid this constitutional crisis is that it's a real mask-off moment for the way corporate interests have remained the dominant recipients of public money in recent decades, especially at the local level in cities like Memphis