The Jackson Free Press recently published a series of proposals on improving the city. I was impressed by the imagination and thought that had gone into these proposals and recommend them to readers.

On the other hand, I have been contemplating publishing my own list of proposals for some time, and while the suggestions by the JFP are practical and probably more doable than the lines along which I had been thinking, I believe that my proposals strike at the root of urban malaise which Jackson shares with most other U. S. cities, and thus, while they are more ambitious, they will be more difficult to implement. Many will require action at the state or federal level before the city can change its own policies.

But they must be addressed because we are stuck as long as these policies remain unchanged.

There is simply no getting around the truth that many of Jackson’s problems are not of its own making. Our city did not invent the drug war, the suburbs, or urban blight, but followed the rest of the nation into the abyss. It is up to the citizens of the cities to point the way for the rest of the nation.

I will be posting these proposals over the next couple of months, one at a time. The first proposal involves taxation. I have not been able to restore commenting but am still working on it. For now, send comments to editor@jacksonprogressive.com. Put the word “comment” as the first word in the subject line (lower case without the quotes). I will manually post thoughtful comments under each article.

Tom Lowe