Moral Budget Archives

The Fight for Freedom Has Never Been Linear: Juneteenth 2026

Statements on Current Events | 06/19/2026

Cardell Orrin Executive Director

Juneteenth reminds us that the fight for freedom has never been linear. Every generation has faced attempts to roll back progress, silence communities, and concentrate power in the hands of a few. Every generation has also produced people willing to organize, resist, and build something better.

I was talking with a younger leader last night about the need for younger leadership to move our community forward. Having traveled the road from younger to older myself, what I’ve learned is that it’s not one or the other. Real progress comes when generations work together and learn from one another’s experiences, visions for the future, and lessons learned. Whether old or young, we’ve seen too many poor choices get us to where we are today, and it will take a commitment to change to move us closer to true liberation.

This need for intergenerational collaboration is especially apparent as we enter the final stages of this year’s local budget process. We have one of the widest ranges of generations represented on our City Council and County Commission that we’ve ever had, yet leaders are still wrestling with whether to maintain the status quo or make real investments in our people and communities, as recommended by the Moral Budget Coalition.

Are people in our community free to live in humane and affordable conditions, travel freely around the city, access opportunities to support themselves and their families, build mentally healthy lives, see their children receive a quality education in modern facilities, and engage with a justice system committed to prevention and rehabilitation?

These are questions of freedom. But if we look honestly at our city and county, too many shackles from decisions of the past still hold us back today.

On Juneteenth, we celebrate the day the news of freedom finally reached Black people in Galveston, Texas. But it took federal troops to convince those who had profited from slavery that emancipation was real. This history reminds us that progress rarely comes because those in power willingly give it away. It comes when ordinary people organize, build power, and demand something better for themselves and their communities.

Memphis knows that story well: we’ve always been at the center of the fight for civil rights, voting rights, and racial justice. And no matter how hard those in power try to divide our communities or silence our voices, that legacy will continue.

There is plenty of uncertainty about what comes next at the federal, state, and local levels. But Memphis has never waited for permission to lead. We’ll be here, organizing, building power, and fighting for a more just future – not just in the South, but across the country.

We still have our work cut out for us. But the fight for freedom has always required both resistance and celebration, both struggle and joy.

So this Juneteenth, we hope you find time to rest, celebrate, and be in community. We hope you find inspiration in Black history, Black culture, and Black joy. And when the celebration ends, we hope you’ll join us in continuing the work of building the true liberation our communities deserve.

“Who Do Our Leaders Value?”: A Shelby County Budget Critique

Moral Budget | 06/27/2025

Moral Budget Coalition

The City Council and County Commission had a big opportunity to raise revenue, but our final Shelby County budget critique shows they chose austerity instead, leaving our communities underfunded in the final budgets. By sticking with the state’s insufficient certified tax rate, they left hundreds of millions of dollars on the table, which could have gone toward public transit, affordable housing, mental health care, youth programs, community violence intervention, and more.

The state-certified tax rate is not enough to meet our basic needs, keep up with rising costs, or close the gap between wealthy and working-class neighborhoods in Shelby County. The failure to raise revenue is a political choice that causes lasting harm, especially to communities that have already faced decades of disinvestment and instability.

Almost every suburban government in Shelby County made a different choice, raising their tax rates to invest in services, support workers, and improve quality of life. Memphis and Shelby County should be doing the same–a small adjustment would make a big difference.

The Moral Budget Coalition was founded on the idea that budgets are moral documents that reflect our values. These choices show clearly who is being invested in, and who is being left behind.

At the final County budget meeting, a public commenter uplifted the words of a young man who had spoken during a recent community panel: “Why do young people have to go to jail for you to invest in us?”

Our kids shouldn’t have to ask questions like that. They should see, in every budget decision, that their futures matter. That’s why we‘ll keep fighting, and we won’t let this moment pass us by.

We want to thank our partners and the pastors, volunteers, and advocates who stood up for a Moral Budget. Whether you emailed your elected officials, stood with us at a press conference, offered public comment, wrote an op-ed, or simply helped spread the word, your voice made a difference.

This year, we saw Moral Budget priorities gain more traction than ever before. Commissioners publicly questioned the status quo. Some pushed to raise the property tax rate above the state-certified level. We made important progress toward universal Pre-K so our youngest learners can have a strong start.

We didn’t get everything we fought for, but the movement for a Moral Budget is growing. We’ll keep building power until our budgets reflect our values and truly meet the needs of our people and communities.

The DOJ Validates What Memphis Communities Have Long Known to be True – Now It’s Time to Act on the DOJ Memphis Police Report

Justice & Safety Alliance | 12/18/2024

Cardell Orrin Executive Director

The Department of Justice’s comprehensive investigation and newly released DOJ Memphis Police Report confirms what our community has long known and consistently voiced: MPD engages in a pattern of conduct that violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law. The findings—that MPD uses excessive force, conducts unlawful stops and searches, discriminates against Black people and people with behavioral health disabilities, and mistreats children—are both a damning indictment and a call to action.

We are grateful to the DOJ for thoroughly documenting these systemic violations and validating the lived experiences of so many Memphians. For years, our community has urged local leaders to address these issues, only to be met with denial and delay. Today’s report leaves no room for debate: our city’s approach to policing has been deeply flawed, harmful, and unconstitutional.

This report adds to a growing body of evidence that Memphis has failed to provide justice and safety for all its residents. From the DOJ’s previous findings on the juvenile justice system to today’s revelations about MPD’s conduct, it is clear that change must go deeper than surface-level. Justice demands accountability, a reimagining of public safety, and investment in policies and practices that truly center the dignity and value of every person in our community.

Community Plans Align Closely with DOJ Recommendations

The DOJ’s findings make clear that MPD’s patterns of excessive force, unconstitutional traffic stops, and discriminatory practices require urgent and systemic change. We put several community plans and reports into ChatGPT to compare them with the DOJ’s findings, and we found that the DOJ’s Recommended Remedial Measures echo many of the solutions Memphis communities have long been advocating for.

The Justice & Safety Alliance (JSA): The JSA’s proposals and the Policing Reimagined Report emphasize shifting away from over-policing and investing in community-based solutions. Their calls to reinvest city and county resources into public health and community development aligns with the DOJ’s critique of MPD’s saturation policing strategies. The DOJ report also validates their calls to use data-driven approaches to reduce racial disparities, enhance the external oversight of policing practices, and prioritize restorative and developmentally appropriate interventions for young people.
Decarcerate Memphis: This coalition has consistently highlighted the harms of pretextual traffic stops (documented in the People’s Report: Driving While BIPOC), which the DOJ report confirms disproportionately target Black drivers. Their demands for transparency, public accountability through accessible data dashboards, and an end to pretextual stops align directly with the DOJ’s findings on MPD’s unconstitutional practices.
The Moral Budget Coalition: Advocates for reallocating funds from punitive systems to essential public resources such as housing, mental health, and education. The Moral Budget funding priorities align closely with DOJ recommendations to address systemic inequities through community-based investments, supporting alternatives to policing and promoting public safety rooted in equity and justice.
Memphis Policing Ordinances (2023): Following the preventable police killing of Tyre Nichols, the City of Memphis passed ordinances limiting traffic stops for secondary violations, enhancing civilian oversight authority (CLERB), and requiring data transparency, due in large part from advocacy led by Official Black Lives Matter and Decarcerate Memphis. These reforms reflect some of the exact changes the DOJ highlights as necessary to curb unconstitutional practices.

The egregious patterns of MPD’s mistreatment of children, including Black children and those with behavioral health disabilities, are particularly disturbing. The documented instances of officers threatening, handcuffing, and needlessly escalating situations with children as young as 8 years old are horrifying and unacceptable. These actions not only violate the constitutional rights of children but also inflict lasting harm on their well-being. Officers sworn to serve and protect should never resort to the kind of intimidation, threats, abuse, and excessive force outlined in the DOJ’s findings, especially against our kids. Memphis must commit to evidence-based, trauma-informed practices to ensure that interactions with children prioritize de-escalation, safety, and care.

The alignment between community-driven plans and the DOJ’s recommendations is no accident. These recommendations come directly from the real, all too common experiences of those most harmed by MPD’s unconstitutional and abusive practices. For our communities, these solutions are common-sense reforms rooted in the pursuit of equity, justice, and public safety for all.

While the DOJ report validates community demands, we can’t stop at validation alone. Without an external, independent oversight structure, we have serious concerns that MPD will continue its patterns of constitutional violations unchecked. That’s why we’ve joined the calls for Mayor Paul Young to enter into a consent decree with the DOJ.

A consent decree would establish a legally binding agreement between the City of Memphis and the DOJ, overseen by an independent monitor. This structure is essential to ensure that MPD adopts and sustains the reforms outlined in the DOJ’s report. For too long, the debate around safety in Memphis has been reduced to demands for a “magic number” of officers, as though more police alone can solve systemic issues. These findings show that the issue is not quantity, but quality—how officers are trained, supervised, and held accountable, and how we ensure public safety reflects the values of equity, fairness, and respect for our humanity. Community trust cannot be rebuilt without transparency and accountability, and MPD has demonstrated time and again that it cannot self-correct.

While we have real concerns about what could happen with a consent decree under the incoming Trump administration, at the very least this agreement would put a structure in place that contributes to ongoing community efforts to ensure oversight and progress.

The Time for Action Is Now

The DOJ report is not just a critique of MPD; it’s a roadmap for change. But the solutions must be implemented with the urgency and accountability that only independent oversight can provide. Memphis cannot afford to let this moment pass without committing to transformative reform. The communities that have experienced the worst of MPD’s unconstitutional practices deserve nothing less than systemic change and lasting justice for themselves, our young people, and generations to come.

Let’s honor the tireless advocacy of those who have been leading this fight—not just by celebrating the alignment between community plans and DOJ recommendations, but by demanding the structural oversight needed to bring those recommendations to life.

A Moral Budget for a Safer Memphis

Moral Budget | 06/25/2023

Makenzie Graham Marketing and Communications Manager

In light of the persistent need to fund necessary community services in Memphis and Shelby County to improve our safety and wellbeing, the Moral Budget Coalition supports adding sustainable revenue to both the City and County budgets.

Conservative state laws and decades of fiscally conservative local leadership have limited our options for providing the resources we need to invest in under-resourced people and communities, so increasing property tax is one of the only remaining progressive avenues to raise our local revenue. As we have expressed in previous budget cycles, the Moral Budget Coalition supports efforts to raise revenue for both the city and the county to invest in public transit (MATA), affordable housing, school facilities, Regional One, youth programs, and other services that promote our health and well-being.

A budget is a moral document. Currently, our local budgets allot a disproportionate portion of funding to police and the criminal justice system, instead of expanding critical social services. In fact, the conservative revenue-neutral state law, along with a constant local focus on lowering the property tax rate, ensures that we will not keep pace with inflation, much less increase revenue required for expansion of critical services.

Lowering the property tax rate over the last 20 years has notably benefited the people living in areas that have seen the greatest increase in their property values (East Memphis, Downtown, Midtown, Poplar Corridor). Our under-resourced communities (majority Black) are left to suffer from the lack of investments in social services and supports that could drive economic mobility.

During the 2023 budget cycle, we led an email campaign on the City and County levels to urge City Council to vote to increase property taxes to fund healthcare and our public transit system, and to urge the County to increase property taxes to fund new schools and a hospital upgrade. Despite these efforts, both budgets were passed without property tax increases. Our work over the past three budget cycles has laid a solid foundation for more success in the future, and we look forward to continuing to work with Shelby County and the new Memphis administration to find ways to add sustainable revenue sources so we can fully fund the services that will contribute to our health and safety going forward.

Transit Equity Now!

Moral Budget | 02/16/2023

Ron Davis Field Organizer

Stand for Children fellows and volunteers held an action to celebrate Rosa Parks’ birthday and honor her legacy of advocacy and action for transportation equity. Through the work of the Moral Budget Coalition, we created a deep canvass designed to begin having conversations with people about the need for a community centered budgeting process, and how it could benefit public services like our public transportation system.

On Saturday, Feb. 4th, we went out to the Benjamin Hooks Library for our first deep canvass to give out hand warmers, talk to bus riders about their experience with MATA, and share our vision for a better transit system. This was many of our fellows’ first time participating in any type of canvass, and they were able to practice their skills and have deep conversations with riders. We captured some powerful stories about the hardships people face using our current public transit system. One of those stories, told by a local rider named Tim has been included below.

Tim’s Testimony

We look forward to continuing to have these conversations with people about their lived experiences, and we hope that these stories will compel our elected leaders to provide better funding and transparency that will make our vision for a better public transportation system possible.

Community Plans Align Closely with DOJ Recommendations

A Consent Decree: Independent Oversight Is Non-Negotiable

The Time for Action Is Now