Momentum continues to gather against the construction of the proposed Byhalia Connection oil pipeline through several low-income African-American neighborhoods and across the footprint of the Memphis aquifer field.
Former Vice President Al Gore, author of award-winning volumes on climate-change issues and one of the most prominent environmentalists of our time, was the featured speaker of a spirited and well-attended anti-pipeline rally staged in South Memphis Sunday, March 14th, by the ad hoc Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP) group.
Encouraging grassroots opposition to the pipeline, which is pending under the auspices of the Valero Energy Corporation and Plains All American Pipeline, Gore called the proposed construction “reckless, racist, [and a] rip-off.”
He noted that several actions to halt or retard development of the pipeline, which has approval by the Corps of Engineers, is imminent in the Memphis City Council, the Shelby County Commission, and the General Assembly.
One strategy being discussed on the county commission, which at the moment holds in escrow several tax-defaulted properties along the proposed pipeline route, would be to require an independent study on the environmental feasibility of the pipeline before those properties could be released. For the time being, there is a moratorium on sale of the properties, but a vote on their status could occur as early as this week in committee or next week in the commission’s regular public meeting.
• Dilating for a spell on the theme of racism during his remarks on Sunday, Gore noted, “The founder of the Ku Klux Klan [Nathan Bedford Forrest] is still honored to this very day with a bust in the Capitol building in Nashville, Tennessee. They ought to take that down!”
At the moment, Gore’s remark may have seemed a mite anti-climactic, inasmuch as the Tennessee Historical Commission had, earlier in the week, reversed its prior positions and voted overwhelmingly to remove the bust, transporting it to a section on military leaders in the nearby state museum.
But Gore was on target. Though the commission’s action was supported by Governor Bill Lee, among others, and was in the wake of a vote by the Capitol Commission to remove the bust, there are still legal snags to the removal process.
For one thing, state law provides for a 120-day waiting period to allow for potential legal challenges to the action. For another, as noted in the Tennessee Journal, Lt. Governor Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) and Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) are calling the Historical Commission’s vote “unlawful” because, they say, the process omitted a statutory requirement for the state Building Commission to concur with the Capitol Commission’s previous vote for removal.
Moreover, there are other rear-guard actions pending against the Historical Commission’s decision. State Representative John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) and state Senator Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) have drafted a bill to reconstitute the Historical Commission’s membership. An amendment by Ragan would require a commission action such as the removal vote, which was technically a waiver, to be approved by majority votes in both chambers of the Tennessee General Assembly.
Ragan’s amendment would further proclaim that monuments currently ensconced on the second floor of the Capitol (like the Forrest bust) “must be preserved and protected for all time,” with any attempt to remove them becoming an impeachable offense.
