While the sun set over a packed parking lot at the Ezell Road home of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Tequila Johnson rallied the crowd at Shift Nashville’s formal kickoff event.
“We are engaging in the community," Johnson told the crowd Thursday evening. "We are going to multiple churches every Sunday, because we have churches, but we don’t have sidewalks. If you want to join us, if you want to work with our organizations out in the community, sign up to canvass and volunteer.”
Johnson’s organization the Equity Alliance has joined fellow leading local advocacy groups TIRRC and Stand Up Nashville to form Shift Nashville, a campaign backing Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transit overhaul plan. That plan, titled "Choose How You Move," will appear in front of Davidson County voters as a referendum on the Nov. 5 ballot.
The same groups that are now set on turning out votes for the Nov. 5 referendum have more regularly served as harsh critics of the mayor’s office under Megan Barry, David Briley and John Cooper.
The Thursday evening event also featured remarks from Odessa Kelly, executive director of Stand Up Nashville, and several more members of each organization, who focused on connecting the referendum with broad goals for economic and racial justice in Nashville. Shift leaders repeatedly emphasized the ongoing need for community involvement in major city projects like the transit overhaul.
Exploring the details of Nashville’s forthcoming ‘Choose How You Move’ transit referendum
Toward the end of the meeting, organizers split the room into groups to hear individual concerns and priorities related to transit. Groups consistently brought up bike and pedestrian safety, bus reliability and affordable housing near the urban core. Some suggestions — like bus-only lanes on major corridors, sidewalks and better bus shelters — are existing elements of the current transit proposal. Others — like raising the minimum wage and increasing the supply of affordable housing — speak to a large cost-of-living crisis in Nashville.
“I spoke with TIRRC at the beginning of my term about a broad collection of issues,” Mayor O’Connell tells the Scene Friday morning. “They have raised this issue as something that’s of interest to their members, that better transportation options are meaningful to them. I haven’t had any conversations with Stand Up Nashville or The Equity Alliance.”
In April, O’Connell announced the transit plan in Southeast Nashville, one of the county’s few remaining enclaves for working-class and middle-class residents. High bus ridership numbers on Nolensville Road and Murfreesboro Pike routes, both of which are slated for extensive improvements under O’Connell’s proposed transit plan, indicate that the area relies more heavily on WeGo than other parts of Nashville.
