Ok But Why Do I Identify With Bilbo Baggins So Much

From Tennessee Lookout:

MASON, Tenn. – The Tennessee Comptroller issued an unusual appeal last week to residents of this small, majority Black town, which occupies fewer than two square miles in rural west Tennessee.

“In my opinion, it’s time for Mason to relinquish its charter,” Comptroller Jason Mumpower wrote in a letter mailed to each one of Mason’s 1,337 property owners.

Mumpower urged local residents to “encourage your local officials to do what’s necessary to allow Mason to thrive. There is no time to waste.”

State comptrollers, responsible for financial oversight of local government, typically communicate directly with elected local leaders and not their constituents. “We have not issued a letter to citizens like this before,” Comptroller spokesman John Dunn said, noting it is “unprecedented for us to publicly call for a town charter to be relinquished.”

But the Comptroller’s unprecedented public callout comes at an unprecedented time not only for Mason, but for the state. Mason, located in the southeastern corner of Tipton County, now finds itself with some of the most coveted real estate in Tennessee.

It’s one of the nearest towns to the massive new site to be built for Blue Oval City, a key component in Ford Motor Co’s multibillion-dollar pivot to electric vehicle manufacturing.

Mumpower’s letter has infuriated Mason’s part-time elected officials, who insist they have no intention of ceding their town’s 153-year-old charter – which would subsume the largely African-American, majority Democratic community under the governance of Tipton County, which is predominantly white and Republican.

“This is our home. We were born and raised here. The majority of the town is homegrown people that live here,” Vice Mayor Virginia Rivers said. “He is trying to conquer and divide us. It’s akin to a hostile take-over and it’s not hard to figure out why here, why now.”

Town leaders are accusing Mumpower and other state officials of big-footing a long-ignored, largely Black community now that major investment is heading its way.

Mason is 60% Black and includes descendants of men, women and children enslaved in the area before Emancipation. For more than a century the town was led by White elected officials.

That changed in 2016, when fraud and mismanagement allegations led to the resignations of nearly all City Hall officials, all of whom were White. Mason’s current mayor, vice mayor and five of its six alderman are Black.

“It’s because of the Black people that are in office,” said Rivers, who first became Vice Mayor in 2021.

“And it’s because of all the places in the world, Blue Oval could have selected, they selected here. There’s no way Mason won’t prosper and grow. And now they want to take it away from us.”

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The Comptroller’s office:

Yet again like in the past. New day, new Jim Crow-esque tactics, perfectly timed takeovers. This Black American town needs to be promptly saved without handing a damn thing over. The town elected mostly Black officials back in 2015. They’ve been trying to pay off the debt from when the town was previously ran by mostly white officials. Literally playing catch-up. 

This ain’t nothing but a glimpse of what it looks like before eventually uprooting and displacing Black people off the land they have resided on since forever and where their ancestors labored said land as property in chattel slavery and the move into Jim Crow.  

There’s a change.org petition to sign and share to get the word out there.

This person suggested to put Ford in the hot seat by sending a letter like this. Others are suggested to call their office. 

This is the CEO of Ford’s twitter.

Something gotta give. 

This shit should be on the news. But as usual, they make it known after the deed is done or not at all and you end up finding out years later. 

You are loved

You are wonderfully made

You are beautiful

You have a purpose

You are a masterpiece

Look I’m gonna be real for a sec I don’t care england lost I don’t care about football but I am worried of what the media will do to Rashford, Sancho, and Saka English media can be relentlessly racist

it bugs me how many lesbians have issues with trans women. like, we're supposed to love women. what's next, you gonna start hating short people too? fuck off.

Mohamed Bzeek, a Libyan-born Muslim, has been fostering terminally ill children for the past two decades. Since then, he has buried 10 children, some of who have died in his arms.

One of his foster children is a six-year-old girl who has a rare brain defect. As a result, she’s deaf, blind, and her arms and legs are paralysed. “I know she can’t hear, can’t see, but I always talk to her,” he said. “She has feelings. She has a soul. She’s a human being.” He took this young girl under his wing when she was just one month old. Mohamed’s biological son, Adam, was born in 1997 with brittle bone disease and dwarfism.

The DCFS said that Mohamed is the man they always call when they need to find a placement for a shock child. “He’s the only one that would take a child who would possibly not make it,” said a DCFS coordinator. In fact, he’s the only foster parent in the country that is known to take terminally ill children.

After being inspired by Mohamed’s story, somebody set up a gofundme. Click here to donate. 

So I’m this kind of a person who writes smut at 3am and accidentally prints it out instead of saving it.

The printer is in the living room

My whole family sat there

I just wanna disappear

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