Democrats Try to Quash Scene Story About Rep. Mike Turner
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| State Rep. Mike Turner |
At the meeting, Turner described his reasons for supporting the rezoning plan in stark racial terms, according to a Scene source.
The source tells the Scene that Turner informed the assembled leaders they were "causing trouble." "You need to get on board with this," Turner supposedly said. "Everybody's for this. Look, this is the way to have neighborhood schools, which everybody wants including the blacks in town. This rezoning plan will put the whites in their neighborhood schools and the blacks in their neighborhood schools, and everybody will be better off. We've got a few blacks in my district, and they just love this idea.'"And then literally," the source says, "literally, he said, 'I talk to blacks in my district, and they're some of my best friends.' "
Turner hotly disputes this account as "a lie," and at least two others at the meeting don't remember him saying that, either. Regardless, the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the NAACP lawsuit, Larry Woods, says he'll try to use it as evidence of the city's racial motivation in drawing up the rezoning plan.
(Oh to have been a fly on the wall in that meeting. Also, Schulz supposedly got all hot and bothered and went on a rant, denying he's a "red-necked segregationist." )
Now here's a little tidbit that's not in the Scene article. In an attempt to protect Turner, Democrats tried to talk me out of writing about this meeting, and even the usually loquacious Woods wouldn't cough up Turner's name. Won Choi, co-chairman of the Nashville NAACP's education committee and also a big local Democrat, went so far as to offer to tip me to developments in the lawsuit if I wouldn't write about Turner and the meeting.
The moral of this story? The NAACP is determined to bring racial equality to Nashville, um, except when it might make a prominent Democrat look bad.
* Note to Won Choi: It'll take more than a few lame news tips to stop the mighty Pith in the Wind's relentless pursuit of the truth. How about drinks at Morton's?
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