State Rep. Paul Sherrell and state Sen. Frank Niceley have introduced a bill that would rename a portion of Rep. John Lewis Way — a stretch that runs from James Robertson Parkway to Dr. Martin L. King Jr. Boulevard — to President Donald Trump Boulevard. It would also remove streets from the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act.
Here we have a street named after a man who attended college in Nashville, put his life on the line for justice here, and was a part of the greatest freedom movement in this country, and state Republicans want to rename it for a guy who literally could not find Nashville on a map. I swear, these dumbasses will suck up to that con man for the rest of their lives, and I will find it hilarious and cringe-inducing every time. Donald Trump is never going to love you back, guys.
Is this racist as hell? Yes, comically so. Writing a whole law to strip away an honor from a genuinely accomplished Black man who got his start in Nashville to instead honor the head of the birther movement who took out an ad in The New York Times demanding the death penalty for the Central Park Five? Hard to be more racist than that. But, dear readers, Paul Sherrell represents White County. If I made up a detail like that in a piece of fiction about racist dunderheads, every editor would strike it as being too over-the-top. But the universe can just put stuff like that in real life and we’re supposed to deal with it.
Does this bill far overstep the state’s role in how Nashville conducts itself? Yes. The state can’t just remake Nashville how it wants us to be, overriding decisions made by our duly elected city council. Well, I mean, it shouldn’t be able to do that, but that seems to be the whole goal of their legislative session at the moment. I stand by my belief that conservatives don’t know how to build a city they actually like, so they’re trying the next-best thing — leeching off more progressive spaces and enjoying our amenities, and making cosmetic changes so they don’t have to have that moment of self-realization that progressive policies make better living conditions than conservative ones.
People are already lining up to fight this bill, but there’s truly an easy enough solution. Let them pass the law. The second the state legislature goes home, we revert the name of the street back to Rep. John Lewis Way. There’s nothing in the law that says we have to keep the name they give it. And in fact, the law specifically removes protections from street names. So we’ll just switch it back.
Sure, we could end up in some Demeter/Hades situation where our Persephone of a street lives with a good name half the year and a bad name the other half, but I think history is on our side here. The length of time people in Nashville will be willing to insist on honoring John Lewis is going to be decades, if not centuries, longer than the length of time Republicans are going to be willing to vote once a year every year to honor President "Grab ‘Em by the Pussy."
But you know, I get it. It must be tough coming to work every day for the few months you’re in town and being reminded that some people put their lives on the lines in these very streets to make Nashville better and you don’t even like us.
So I would further propose that we change some street names downtown to honor Republicans who stood up to tyranny. Let’s change Gay Street to Abraham Lincoln Street (how you doing, Josh Speed?) and Fourth Avenue to Ulysses S. Grant Avenue. Or if Republican legislators need their guiding lights to be living Republicans, maybe we could go for Mitt Romney Way and Liz Cheney Avenue? Let it never be said that we aren’t accommodating.
