By Logan Langlois
NASHVILLE, TN — Nashville Justice League has just welcomed another group endorsing Freddie O’Connell in the coming runoff election taking place September 14th. Music City Musicians, an assembly of local Nashville musicians, publicly endorsed the progressive candidate and his approach to supporting the creative working class. Lisa Sherman Luna, Executive Director of TIRRC Votes of Nashville Justice League said that O’Connell was the obvious choice for the organization and anyone else concerned for the living conditions of the every-person.
“We need to create the conditions so that folks who are trying to make it in our city, and are contributing to our arts and culture, are able to live a good life,” said Sherman.
Sherman further detailed that most of the musicians in Nashville were members of the creative working class, whose lives O’Connell has extensively promised to improve. Such improvements include the great betterment of transit to help allow working people to transport themselves easier across Nashville to or in between their jobs. She also pointed out how O’Connell has promised to help bridge the gap between the top and bottom earners of wages produced by the ever-booming success of Music City, as well as working to resolve rising rent rates in Nashville.
Sherman said that these issues are especially prevalent for Nashville, as they are part of what is making Music City an increasingly difficult place to live for the people who created the culture that made the city so iconic. In these increasing difficulties, working-class Nashville musicians are often members of nearly half of all Nashvillians who are renting near their work in Nashville. Many more travel into the city, as rent inside what their culture used to call home has become too expensive for them. Though, traveling has its own problems, and most working-class musicians would largely welcome the addition of public transit accessible throughout and around the city.
“We know that a lot of musicians … they’re working-class folks, they’re trying to make ends meet and provide for their families,” said Sherman. “They need things like affordable after-school care, which is one of the things Freddie wants to work on.”
Sherman said that the conservative opponent to O’Connell for Nashville mayor, Alice Rolli, supports policies that could spell trouble for many in the Nashville music scene. One such criticism is Rolli’s plan to divert much public funding to increase police presence in and around Nashville. Sherman said that Rolli is also not nearly as interested as O’Connell in keeping the culture that made Nashville an iconic image within the grasp of working-class musicians. Instead, Rolli has greater plans of expanding Nashville availability to more out-of-state corporations, continuing the trend of giving Nashvillian music properties to interests with little investment in the historical upkeep. She also said that with outside money comes the worry of said money choosing to rely on bigger and corporate artists rather than local talent.
“Alice is running a campaign based on fear and division, and trying to create division between communities rather than a vision of hope for our city and she doesn’t reflect our values,” said Sherman. “Even some of the ads we’ve seen are focused on tourism, bachelorette parties, rather than on the real needs of the everyday Nashvillians that are just trying to pay the bills, raise their children, and thrive in our city.”
