Over the last couple of weeks, the Daily Journal published a series of articles ("The Automotive Era") about the forthcoming font of economic development to be delivered by Toyota's new auto plant being built just northwest of Tupelo in the Blue Springs area. When Toyota first announced its investment in Tupelo two years ago, the plan was to build the Highlander SUV...not a good bet with Peak Oil on the horizon. Not until oil actually crossed the $100 mark did they make the hybrid switch, opting to build the Prius instead. Unfortunately, the first wave of post-Peak economic dislocation, amplified by the housing bubble and the costs of the oil wars in the Mideast, arrived shortly thereafter. And so, Toyota came to its senses and announced that, despite the public and corporate investment to date of over $300 million, assembly lines will not roll in Blue Springs until the economy improves. After a day’s shocked pause, the Journal reported quotes by local and state politicians, all of whom emphasized the word “until.”
One of the Journal's articles explained how we must meet the Toyota challenge of 1 million gallons of water a day to run their car factory. Reading the first bit of that piece (I had to go tend my garden and didn't have time to read the rest.), I couldn't help but think of how plentiful water once was in these parts. As the early settlers would have said, this was a well-watered land. My family includes those early pioneers who came west when the Carolinas started getting crowded in the early 1800s, as well as the Chickasaw people who had lived here for centuries before that time. I'm of hybrid ancestry, sort of like the Prius. A century of growth-with-no-concern-for-tomorrow drew down the water table so that to rehabilitate my own well would require it to go down about 600 ft. at a cost of over $6,000 in 2002 dollars. That's a long way to dig, and a cistern is much cheaper and can be prettier too, if adorned with a suitable mural.
The significance of the Blue Springs location may be lost on non-locals. "Springs" is a common part of place names in Mississippi. My mother grew up close to Bull Mountain Creek and the Tombigbee River in Itawamba County. She tells about the sulfur springs along the river, most or all of which were destroyed with nary a peep when the Tenn-Tom Waterway was built. People came from far and wide to relax and recuperate or "take the waters," as was the term at the time. We even have a town called Artesia, and there is a restaurant in Fulton called The Artesian. Artesian springs feature water under pressure, as it escapes a confining, non-permeable layer. Artesian springs once were common throughout this area, where the Appalachian foothills fade into the creek bottoms, before their terminal lengthening in the Delta.
One of the Journal's articles explained how we must meet the Toyota challenge of 1 million gallons of water a day to run their car factory. Reading the first bit of that piece (I had to go tend my garden and didn't have time to read the rest.), I couldn't help but think of how plentiful water once was in these parts. As the early settlers would have said, this was a well-watered land. My family includes those early pioneers who came west when the Carolinas started getting crowded in the early 1800s, as well as the Chickasaw people who had lived here for centuries before that time. I'm of hybrid ancestry, sort of like the Prius. A century of growth-with-no-concern-for-tomorrow drew down the water table so that to rehabilitate my own well would require it to go down about 600 ft. at a cost of over $6,000 in 2002 dollars. That's a long way to dig, and a cistern is much cheaper and can be prettier too, if adorned with a suitable mural.
The significance of the Blue Springs location may be lost on non-locals. "Springs" is a common part of place names in Mississippi. My mother grew up close to Bull Mountain Creek and the Tombigbee River in Itawamba County. She tells about the sulfur springs along the river, most or all of which were destroyed with nary a peep when the Tenn-Tom Waterway was built. People came from far and wide to relax and recuperate or "take the waters," as was the term at the time. We even have a town called Artesia, and there is a restaurant in Fulton called The Artesian. Artesian springs feature water under pressure, as it escapes a confining, non-permeable layer. Artesian springs once were common throughout this area, where the Appalachian foothills fade into the creek bottoms, before their terminal lengthening in the Delta.
In order to survive and prosper (because abundance, not mere subsistance, should be our goal), our community needs more honesty, transparency, and introspection (i.e., self-examination). Tupelo currently suffers from a lack of transparency, and a climate in which the first response to a challenge is defensiveness, rather than asking the hard questions that may require a change in thinking or possibly a change in living. A case in point: last week, the city's Chief Financial Officer Daphne Holcomb was fired, according to the Daily Journal, because the mayor allegedly said she "can't keep her mouth shut," and was always "stirring things up." Matters came to a head when Ms. Holcomb brought a questionable invoice to the attention of the City Council. To keep this matter in perspective, Tupelo is the same place where the city commissioned an ethics investigation into hiring practices after allegations of discrimination against minorities. After the report uncovered so much evidence of systematic discrimination that it couldn't even be delivered on time or within budget, an outcry ensued. But the cries of outrage were not directed at the system that wasn't working for the people, but rather at the messenger who had besmirched the name of Tupelo. As Gwen says, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Hardly a week goes by in Tupelo without a similar manifestation of the old-boys' oligarchy at work to keep the city in line: all the news positive, Tupelo the center of the universe, and the money in the right pockets, much like the plantation kings of old.
The political power of the cotton kingdom was firmly lodged in the hands of successful businessmen....Laws were made by the owners of plantations; the higher courts were established by their decrees; governors of the states were of their choosing; the members of Congress were selected and maintained in office in accordance with their wishes....They were the ruling members of all the churches. Truly, nothing of importance could happen in the lower South without their consent.
William E. Dodd. The Days of the Cotton Kingdom: A Chronicle of the Old South, 1919
The second requirement for economic prosperity in North Mississippi is a permanent and ongoing investment in the local economy. As a first step, we must stop destroying the place we live: the sulfur springs, artesian wells, and the water table itself are cases in point. An economist would say these things are assets. An environmentalist would say they improve our quality of life. Both viewpoints dance around the truth: we cannot live without them. The time to speak of conservation is long past. This is a time for restoration. We must replenish the water table so that the old artesian wells and springs work again. Then, there’ll be no need to buy plastic bottles of water from far away.
During my campaign for Congress, I talked a lot about bringing the renewable power industry to Mississippi and how we could build solar water heaters and wind turbines as well as we could build the Prius. Perhaps there's still time to do some of that, but it's far more important at this stage to reinvigorate the local economy. By local economy, I mean small businesses and home-grown businesses that won’t leave for the Land of Cheaper Labor south of the border. And, I mean small farms that raise poultry and grow vegetables for people to eat right here, rather than commodities like corn and soybeans to be sold to the highest bidder in the international markets. Policy must make it easier for people to start companies and for these local businesses to prosper. The Downtown Farmers' Market is an important step in the right direction, but we must do much more. Just as federal policy from Alexander Hamilton up until Ronald Reagan protected American industry and agriculture from unfair foreign competition, so too must an enlightened economic policy for the 21st Century protect the local economy from unfair competition from giant retailers like Wal-Mart. How much of this can we do at the local level, in the absence of leadership in Jackson and Washington?
Tupelo has a well-deserved national reputation as a model of successful economic development. In the 1930s, George McLean (publisher of the Daily Journal) helped bring the area's merchants and dairy farmers together in a cooperative arrangement that benefited everyone. Among other things, they sent a delegation straight to the Isle of Jersey to bring back high-production Jersey heifers to improve the breeding stock of the area's dairymen. Contrast this first strategy: a bold, strategic investment to catalyze the local economy, with the second wave: enticing furniture manufacturing and other light industry from across the higher-paid, unionized North to move to greener Southern pastures where the "right to work" takes precedence over the right to be paid. Then to Toyota – the idea that our success depends on a foreign corporation agreeing first to locate in our area, then to stay here, has left a sour taste in my mouth these past two years It's the acrid taste of any lie, but this one was big enough that even the people telling it believed it. The truth of the matter is that we and we alone will have to save ourselves and design a local and regional economy that makes sense for us and that uses our resources in a regenerative, not extractive, way to leave the next generation richer, not poorer.
What if, instead of giving millions of dollars to entice Toyota, we had invested those millions in local businesses and the few struggling farms with a real ability to feed us when Wal-Mart goes away? Perhaps that's the specter we should be concerned with: the disappearance not of Toyota, but of Wal-Mart. The original project, to make Tupelo a center for dairying, may be an idea whose time has come...again.
In fact, this is what George McLean himself often said, according to Dr. Vaughan Grisham in Tupelo: The Evolution of a Community, “there is no Santa Claus at the State Capitol, State College, or Washington. If you want the job done, you will have to do it yourself." In the post-globalization world, we should add that our salvation won't come from the corporations either. The future of Tupelo – and North Mississippi in general – doesn't depend on Toyota, but it does depend on us. ☼
During my campaign for Congress, I talked a lot about bringing the renewable power industry to Mississippi and how we could build solar water heaters and wind turbines as well as we could build the Prius. Perhaps there's still time to do some of that, but it's far more important at this stage to reinvigorate the local economy. By local economy, I mean small businesses and home-grown businesses that won’t leave for the Land of Cheaper Labor south of the border. And, I mean small farms that raise poultry and grow vegetables for people to eat right here, rather than commodities like corn and soybeans to be sold to the highest bidder in the international markets. Policy must make it easier for people to start companies and for these local businesses to prosper. The Downtown Farmers' Market is an important step in the right direction, but we must do much more. Just as federal policy from Alexander Hamilton up until Ronald Reagan protected American industry and agriculture from unfair foreign competition, so too must an enlightened economic policy for the 21st Century protect the local economy from unfair competition from giant retailers like Wal-Mart. How much of this can we do at the local level, in the absence of leadership in Jackson and Washington?
Tupelo has a well-deserved national reputation as a model of successful economic development. In the 1930s, George McLean (publisher of the Daily Journal) helped bring the area's merchants and dairy farmers together in a cooperative arrangement that benefited everyone. Among other things, they sent a delegation straight to the Isle of Jersey to bring back high-production Jersey heifers to improve the breeding stock of the area's dairymen. Contrast this first strategy: a bold, strategic investment to catalyze the local economy, with the second wave: enticing furniture manufacturing and other light industry from across the higher-paid, unionized North to move to greener Southern pastures where the "right to work" takes precedence over the right to be paid. Then to Toyota – the idea that our success depends on a foreign corporation agreeing first to locate in our area, then to stay here, has left a sour taste in my mouth these past two years It's the acrid taste of any lie, but this one was big enough that even the people telling it believed it. The truth of the matter is that we and we alone will have to save ourselves and design a local and regional economy that makes sense for us and that uses our resources in a regenerative, not extractive, way to leave the next generation richer, not poorer.
What if, instead of giving millions of dollars to entice Toyota, we had invested those millions in local businesses and the few struggling farms with a real ability to feed us when Wal-Mart goes away? Perhaps that's the specter we should be concerned with: the disappearance not of Toyota, but of Wal-Mart. The original project, to make Tupelo a center for dairying, may be an idea whose time has come...again.
In fact, this is what George McLean himself often said, according to Dr. Vaughan Grisham in Tupelo: The Evolution of a Community, “there is no Santa Claus at the State Capitol, State College, or Washington. If you want the job done, you will have to do it yourself." In the post-globalization world, we should add that our salvation won't come from the corporations either. The future of Tupelo – and North Mississippi in general – doesn't depend on Toyota, but it does depend on us. ☼
