Ask any longtime activist in Nashville how they feel about the city’s growth, and you’re bound to get a complicated answer. Odessa Kelly, who was recently named executive director of the coalition Stand Up Nashville, is a harsh critic of her hometown because she believes she has the vision to transform it.
“We hear that Nashville’s a friendly town,” says Kelly. “That Nashville is a diverse town. Well, that goes past racial barriers and good Southern charm. Those things are tied in with Nashville being welcoming to working-class people.”
Stand Up Nashville is a coalition of community organizations and labor unions that Kelly helped found in 2016, and its partnering groups include the Central Labor Council, the Partnership for Working Families, and Nashville Organizing for Action and Hope, among others. The organization is still young, but its influence has already been extensive. Among other things, SUN has influenced Metro legislation, and has also crafted the city’s first community benefits agreement with the ownership group that plans to build a soccer stadium at The Fairgrounds Nashville. Kelly and SUN will hold a public meeting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 29, at Watson Grove Baptist Church, at which they plan to update community members on the progress of the agreement.
That’s in part due to Kelly. She’s out to save Nashville’s soul.
“When I say we’re losing the soul of this city,” says Kelly, “[I mean that] we’re becoming so corporate-driven — such a playground for the rich — that we’re forgetting about the reason why people are attracted to this city in the first place.”
Kelly grew up in a working-class neighborhood in East Nashville, graduated from Stratford High School, and earned her master’s degree at Cumberland University. She worked at Metro Parks and Recreation for several years as she cut her teeth as an activist. As director of Napier Recreation Center, Kelly mentored scores of children who live in the J.C. Napier Homes and Sudekum Apartments.
Prior to her recent appointment as executive director, Kelly acted as co-chair of SUN and helped spearhead the coalition’s victories. SUN members helped draft the so-called Do Better Bill, which passed into law in early 2018. The law requires companies to give detailed reports to Metro Council before the body approves tax-incentive financing. These reports include, for instance, details on how many jobs the company will provide, what kind of jobs, who will be hired, and what they will be paid. Companies must also report any safety, health or wage violations lodged against them in the past 10 years, and they’re required to provide quarterly updates to the Department of Economic and Community Development to make sure they’re staying on track with their promises. Kelly says that moving forward, SUN will continue to make sure the council and the ECD are following up on that process.
Likewise, Kelly is determined to see the community benefits agreement enacted. The agreement SUN reached with Nashville Soccer Holdings, the ownership group of the stadium and adjacent 10-acre development, promises job creation and worker safety, affordable housing, and cultural spaces and amenities on site. Currently, Mayor John Cooper — who was vocal in his opposition to the stadium during his time as a council member — is sitting on demolition permits for The Fairgrounds, making SUN members uneasy.
“When they start to build the stadium and they build this 10-acre development, we want them to put union companies on these jobs to really show what unions can do, [which is] build pathways for younger people to learn skills,” says Kelly. “That’s how you build a village. That’s what the CBA means here.”
At the heart of Kelly’s activism is her understanding of intersectionality — that the burdens on marginalized people are interconnected, creating interdependent systems of discrimination. “The economic growth of this city is the foundation of affordable housing in the city. It has a direct link, if you ask me, to the criminal justice system in this city. If we really want to start looking at better ways to build a good city, we’re going to have to have honest conversations about how that happens. And that’s what Stand Up Nashville wants to be. It wants to be a voice that builds a platform.”
Kelly became active in organizing in 2015 after attending a NOAH panel that spoke to everything she was experiencing. “Here I am, a public employee with a master’s degree,” she says. “I’m a manager, and I’m living check to check … feeling like there’s no upside to my career because of how jobs are looking in the city. As you spread out and look around at other jobs, everyone’s in the same boat. That spoke to me. Going through that, I think what I learned at first was that, ‘Oh, it takes a special person to try to do this work,’ and you really have to have a calling to do this.”
Last year, Kelly campaigned in support of a property tax increase that Councilmember Bob Mendes, who proposed the change, said would balance the city’s budget and provide raises to teachers and other city employees. The proposed increase ultimately didn’t pass.
When asked how Kelly responds to Nashvillians who feel hopeless about the city’s growth, she has a simple message: Embrace that.
“The feelings and issues that you have as a young white female are the exact same feelings and issues that are going on with the 10- or 11-year-old that’s sitting over in Napier,” she says. “It may be for some different reasons, but the feeling of hopelessness is the same. I would tell people the same thing I tell those kids: Understand the situation and deal with whatever feelings they should have, and then make a plan to fight back.”
