Editor's Note: This interview was conducted by Tafui Owusu to help uplift the voices and stories of community members who have been instrumental in developing the More for Memphis plan.
Justin Merrick is the Executive Director of the
Center for Transforming Communities (CTC). These areas include South Memphis, Soulsville (SouthCity), Orange Mound, Hollywood, Smokey City and Klondike, Douglas, Frayser, and Binghamton.
The non-profit stands apart from others across the city of Memphis because the people who reside in these neighborhoods are the driving force behind the impactful change taking place.
During my interview with Merrick, I asked what some of the common issues he and his team witnessed among the families and residents living there as it relates to health and wellness.
“You can put a health center in the middle of a neighborhood, but it doesn’t shift like the behaviors, and it doesn’t mean that folks would necessarily know about it” he shared. “There needed to be more engagement of folks to be able to identify what their needs were.”
Out of the engagement with residents, the CTC identified that many of the issues were food deserts, leaving residents with little to no access to healthy food like fruits and vegetables.
Safety was another issue that was consistent across each neighborhood which is directly linked to gun violence that is present in these communities. This is also tied to the over-policing of these areas which aids in the distrust of law enforcement among the folks who live there.
“The quality of life is about having choices; it is the opposite of oppression,” said Merrick. “The CTC focuses on how to engage the community in a way that allows them to have decision-making authority over the things that are happening in their community. “We consider this to be a root challenge or barrier around quality of life.”
Some of the solutions Merrick suggested included infrastructure around organizing or engagement, not just outreach or advocacy. “I think a lot of times, advocacy happens but it happens without the people,” he said.
Merrick believes that Memphis presently has a unique opportunity to invest in how it builds out a community infrastructure.
“We have lots of schools, but who is helping to develop the ecosystem that allows for authentic voices to emerge so that the policy decisions are informed by the authentic voices of the community?” He feels that this is the fundamental piece that is missing, and people confuse it with advocacy.
The vision of the CTC is to create neighborhood hubs, community meetings at community centers, and even schools which is a force galvanizing how folks come together. What Merrick broke down is the actual work that the CTC does and he hopes that the efforts of the More for Memphis plan will support this level of engagement from an entity that is external.
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