“Today, black Louisville is a community with many leaders in many walks of life, with discordant voices that make noise more often than music, without a shared sense of itself and without a unifying economic, political and social agenda, not unlike black America in general.

However, this is not the first time that black Louisvillians have faced difficulties or suffered setbacks. In this respect, the challenge facing black Louisville today is eerily similar to that facing Washington Spradling and Shelton Morris nearly two centuries ago --how to create, or in this case re--create community.”

J. Blaine Hudson with Mervin Aubespin and Kenneth Clay, Two Centuries of Black Louisville- A Photographic History, Butler Books Louisville, KY (2011).

LET THEM RIDE BUSES

Racist policy once overt, but now cloaked in facially neutral programs

has prevented the formation of unified black leadership in the segregated

West End of Louisville. Recognition of the policy is the first step to ending

the cycle of oppression.

Decades of policy intervention to disempower black people

The story of the struggle for fair representation of black minorities in transportation public policy making in Louisville is one of a still born delivery.

Although KIPDA gives lip service to Title VI compliance, and the FHWA certifies Title VI compliance by the planning organization, its a sham.

Since 1997 the local public officials appointed to create regional transportation planning have served capitalist enterprise concentrating in the east county over fair and equitable regional planning. A cross-river coalition of politicians decided to cancel TARC’s T2 light rail project that would have connected the west end with suburban jobs.

In this there are echos of the past.

The publication of,  Two Centuries of Black Louisville- A Photographic History, by Butler Books presents a readable history well illustrated with photos.

Beginning on page 185 of the Photographic History, the authors give a brief history of the Civil Rights Era in Louisville from 1960-1985.

This era is particularly relevant to the Bridges Project because the civil unrest in Louisville in 1968, with widespread violence, the deaths of two African Americans and arrest of 472 people, was followed by a general exodus of much of the white population remaining in the West End and caused a major drain of business activity from the area.

It began on May 27th, 1968, at 28th and Greenwood with speeches by young black orators  against police brutality, but rapidly morphed into a violent suppression by white police wielding batons  that created lasting animosities.

In the aftermath of the hot summer of ‘68  the Courier-Journal commissioned the ROPER Research agency to plumb the causes through local interviews.  The speakers in the study sound like they walked off the street today--little has changed and in some quarters the community is much worse off today.

Forty five years later the legacy of the ’68 riot has not been healed, and though many of the same complaints existing in 1897 and 1968 are still lingering in the West End today, the angry black voice has been effectively neutralized and turned in upon itself in factional conflict. Literally, a significant number of alienated black youth after decades of being thrown onto the streets in poverty, have turned to violent crime in a no-holds barred struggle for survival.

The racial unrest and destruction of1968 has left economic holes not yet filled. A benevolent leadership coalition intent on making the West End the asset to Louisville it could be is divided between charismatic religious personalities and self serving apparatchiks. Instead of seeing the potential for New Orleans style tourist enterprise based on riverboat heritage, art and music, Metro leaders spend development dollars to build auto industry related suburban industrial parks and sprawl communities.   

LOUISVILLE METRO HEALTH EQUITY REPORT: The Social Determinants of Health in Louisville Metro Neighborhoods

Patrick Smith, AICP  Margaret Pennington, MSSW Lisa Crabtree, MA Robert Illback, PsyD  REACH of Louisville, Inc. (Available on the web)    page 4:

Structural racism examines racial and ethnic impacts that stem from a history

of disenfranchisement and policies that favored those in power. Consequently, the origins of urban inequality for communities of color cannot be separated from structural racism. An example is the history of

federal housing policies that not only denied homeownership to urban African- Americans but physically destroyed many black neighborhoods under the policies of urban renewal.

Hudson, Clay and Aubespin in the Photographic History,  page 196 also describe how “Urban Renewal” utilized as a racist policy by city leaders destroyed the old Walnut Street District that was the hub of the African American Community.

Louisville city leaders moved great masses of black people, uprooting them from community associations under one false premise or another in the 60’s. This malevolent public policy led to the uprising of ’68.

What is chronic and cyclical in Louisville is the uprooting of black communities over and again using building demolition, inefficient transit, and job relocation, as a tool to disrupt community cohesion and prevent economic advancement.

The two bridges plan of the LSIORBP commits $ 10 billion to move economic development away from the west end, deepening the crisis.

On January 7th, 2013 the Coalition for the Advancement of Regional Transportation, a Louisville non-profit, citizen group filed a Motion for trial de novo on its claim the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is pushing a racist policy in the Louisville Bridges lawsuit. Indiana Department of Transportation INDOT, is also accused.

CART’s Claim is filed in the Western District Federal Court at Louisville, Kentucky. Case number   3:10-CV-00007-JGH in front of Judge John Heyburn. The author of this article is the attorney for CART.

CART’s Complaint

The Complaint language says:

The Complaint makes out more than “bare bones” legal recitals.

¶ 133 summarizes the claim of intentional discrimination that [state] defendants actions approving the SFEIS and RROD was done to intentionally deny CART protected class members and Title VI residents equal participation and benefits in federal funded transportation projects. (Title VI area includes low income African American West End)

¶ 133(a) makes the factual allegation that Defendants purposely formulated a narrow purpose and need statement and used it to eliminate public transit from the alternatives under consideration.

The transportation agencies considered expanding light rail but rejected the option.

¶ 133(b) alleges that after being given a Title VI complaint, the Defendants acted with deliberate indifference to the discriminatory impact of the LSIORBP and formulated a mega project that drained available federal funding from the T2 project, causing a loss of $ 9 million already expended for the EIS and killing the affordable light rail transit project that had particular benefits for the protected class. 

¶ 133(c) alleges that Defendants obscured the socio-economic conditions of the Title VI area to avoid addressing transportation needs so as to maintain the disadvantages imposed on the minority population because the crime ridden area is a useful pool of minority disproportionate arrestees to churn through the criminal justice system.

¶ 133(d) alleges the Defendants intentionally discriminated on the basis of race by adopting an unreasonable tolling plan that would disproportionately burden poor minorities for 46 years or more.

¶ 133(e) alleges that the purported mitigations of rehabilitating the Trolley Barn wasted $ 20 million of Transportation Enhancement funds on a project that did not improve personal mobility for the Title VI residents. (West End) The Trolley Barn usefulness for a revived trolley system was destroyed by the rehabilitation and no African American Heritage museum as first proposed was ever installed.

All the above decisions were deliberated at the command level of KYTC and INDOT where Michael Hancock(Secretary KYTC) and Michael Cline (Commissioner INDOT) considered and approved the actions. The same decisions were reviewed and approved by FHWA Defendants. 

The legal barriers to succeeding on a claim of intentional race discrimination are significant and many such cases end up wrecked on the rocks of legal procedure and “failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.” 

Often there is little or no direct evidence of racist acts by the state officials. Instead, the case has to be built on the history of circumstances.

The history of the West End shows a horrible record of neglect and lack of investment by public officials and private capital.  But instead of providing a remedy, the Bridges Project promises 46 years or more of tolls disproportionately burdening poor minorities to build infrastructure with “no significant effect” on employment and the economy of the West End.

In terms of dollars. the main beneficiaries of tolls imposed on all drivers, east end and downtown, will be the economic giants in the east end with a new freight cross river connection to serve their surging automobile manufacturing economy. The greatest amount of traffic will be across the Downtown Crossing whose drivers will pay the lion’s share of tolls.

Southern Indiana local government groups estimate a $ 7 billion dollar loss due to traffic diversion and toll avoidance on their I-65 corridor businesses.

And, the  Bridges Environmental Impact Statement admitted:

“In summary, most EJ areas, (environmental justice) including the urban core and West Louisville, are not expected to experience any significant change in employment or household growth rates under any of the "build" alternatives, as compared to the No Action Alternative.”

AR2 _00093658   Environmental Justice Technical Report Addendum  Louisville-Southern Indiana Ohio Rivers Bridges Project  INDOT DES. No. 9803640    KYTC State Item No. 5-118.00

The Bridges Project by design, leaves West Louisville in economic chaos.

Enough is enough.

During the development of the Bridges Project there were incursions by Republican operatives to buy off dissent and quiet unrest with “faith based” federal grants. $20 million of federal “Transportation Enhancement “ funds was channeled through Metro Government to quiet the complaint of disparate impact in 2002. See story HERE

During the Bush presidency federal grant funds were deployed by Republican operatives like Anne Northrup to fund West End black churches to divide and separate politically active church factions in the West End  from the Democratic base. 

The longterm effect has been to divide the activist community from its traditional church base and achieve the collapse of grassroots black civil rights organizations militant enough to push effectively for change. See related page Religious Leadership Click HERE

An examination of Louisville’s civil unrest history demonstrates that cycles of outrage are met by repressive political force. However, with the rise of public relations science, political operatives have discovered how to alienate activist groups from mainstream black support and neutralize them.

Dr. Hudson’s quote above gives a true yet depressing observation,

“Today, black Louisville is a community with many leaders in many walks of life, with discordant voices that make noise more often than music, without a shared sense of itself and without a unifying economic, political and social agenda, not unlike black America in general. “

Let it be clearly said, this state of affairs did not happen by accident but by consistent application of a malevolent racist policy operated by top political leaders to suppress self determined activism in the west end,

The white business class acted methodically to buy up, sell out, arrest the poor, undercut and misdirect grass roots black activism for the purpose of ridding public policy decision making of black activism for change.  The result, after decades of methodical application of political intervention couched as “faith based” programs, is a West End in ruins, without a powerful unified voice, no independent political representation in the Metro legislative bodies, and no coherent sense of community.

The muscular intervention is demonstrated in the history of the bridges project,  particularly in the actions that followed the February 2002 claim filed against FHWA that the project would have disparate impact against minorities, filed by Paul Bather and Jim Wayne.  HERE

But, the history of malevolent policy has older roots.

CAUGHT IN THE STAMPEDE, THE $ 450 MILLION DOLLARS NEEDED TO BUILD THE T2 LIGHT RAIL WAS SNUFFED OUT BY THE BRIDGES PROJECT

¶ 48 alleges that the Defendants gave Notice March 7, 1998, they would prepare an EIS including the ORMIS two bridge recommendation. 

But see, AR2 00124426, 1998 Letter on T2 funding. AR2 00098201 Sept 30, 2002, Letter to KIPDA from Barry Barker requesting $ 20,000 in funds to help prepare the T2 EIS. AR2_00093754.

May 2003 Letter to Barry Barker from Anne Northrup stating she has worked to get federal funds for the two bridges project and the community must speak with one voice.  

¶ 43 alleges the fact that on May 13, 2004 then Mayor, Jerry Abramson stated, “the funds are simply not there to build two bridges and light rail.” 

Bridges Timeline begins another cycle of black disempowerment

The timeline on the story dating back to 1996 reveals a lot of information.

  

TARC initiated its T2 light rail planning efforts,dubbed Transportation Tomorrow (T2) in 1996.    Nina Walfoort reporting for TARC wrote about the outstanding public consultation process for T2 involving poor communities in 2002--

“Since 1997, the TARC T2 team has held 282 community meetings,

132 meetings with public agencies, and 162 interviews with key leaders

and stakeholders. Input from these meetings has shaped the project

in significant ways:

◆ TARC signed a partnership agreement with two minority neighborhoods

in the study area—Smoketown and Shelby Park—to ensure

that a detailed neighborhood plan, increased neighborhood employment,

and an economic development strategy would result from the

project. TARC also agreed to work with the neighborhoods to

address such issues as parking, property value increases, and taxes.

This open and proactive approach has made the T2 community

involvement process a model for the region. The local newspaper, The

Courier-Journal, commended TARC for its outreach in a September

1999 editorial, and the weekly publication, Business First, headlined an

October 1999 editorial,“Light-Rail Plan Shows Way To Seek Input.”

But in 1996 other political forces were stirring in KIPDA

KIPDA formed a broad-based (mostly Caucasian) advisory committee, the ORMIS Committee, (Ohio River Major Investment Study ) to guide the study and make a recommendation to KIPDA’s Transportation Policy Committee (TPC), the official decision-making body for ORMIS. ORMIS also incorporated an extensive public involvement program, including four sets of public workshops between December 1995 and November 1996.

In December 1996, the KIPDA TPC unanimously endorsed the recommendation of the ORMIS Committee for a preferred investment strategy incorporating four elements: a “two-bridge solution;” bus-oriented transit improvements; short-term traffic operational improvements; and a regional financial summit to deal with funding needs.

Thus, the ORMIS product attacked the T2 process and killed it.

At the same time ORMIS was proceeding, KIPDA was preparing the LMA’s fourth long-range transportation plan. This plan, completed in 1996 and  periodically updated since, is entitled Horizon Year 2020 RMP (Horizon 2020).

1998

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) issued a Notice of Intent in the Federal Register on March 27, 1998 indicating that FHWA, in cooperation with INDOT and KYTC, would prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to evaluate alternatives for improving cross-river mobility between Jefferson and Clark Counties, including the ORMIS recommendation.

In December 1998, the FTA sent a letter to KIPDA saying federal funds were  not reasonably available for T2.

2000

In the midst of development of the LSIORBP and the challenge against T2 

Republican operatives began to hand out federal grant money to West End churches. The Louisville Neighborhood Initiative was formed by Anne Northup in the spring of 2000 and was initially awarded nearly $5 million in federal funds by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other corporate contributors. Kelly Downard was an LNI Board member.

“Under the criteria that a faith-based organization be the primary recipient or a major benefactor of an award, the funds were slated for distribution to community churches and other faith-based agencies to provide needed services in poor urban Louisville neighborhoods in the third district. Northup, an LNI board member, said LNI would decide which projects to fund and distribute the monies accordingly.”

The LNI was sued by the ACLU, calling the program a Flim Flam

2002

On February 25, 2002, members of the General Assembly, Jim Wayne and Paul  Bather, filed a Title VI Complaint to KIPDA alleging that  the two bridges project would cause disproportionately high and adverse impacts to low income African Americans in the urban core, by shifting more economic growth to far eastern Jefferson County and southern Indiana where the population is 85-95% white, higher income residents.

They cited, Savitch and Vogel Consultants, Report 3: Ohio River Bridges Project: Sprawl and Urban Disinvestment, February 2002.

“The wealthiest areas in the Louisville Metropolitan area are growing richer, while poorer areas fall behind.”

Further discussion involved the lack of consultation of urban minorities in the plan preparation, the inability of transit dependent people to access new economic benefits in the east end and the loss of inner city housing and property values from 1970 to 1990 caused by ring development which this project continues.

2003

September 2003--FHWA approves the Louisville Bridges Project coming in a cost of $ 4.1 billion. The high price subsequently required adding tolling as a source of revenue along with bond financing.

2004

Defendants response to the 17 page Title VI Complaint, was not to add a public transit project to the LSIORBP, but to quiet the dissent by providing a $ 20 million in state and federal funds under 23 U.S.C. §  133(d)(2), funneled through Metro Government, to a group of non-profit entities including the  African American Heritage Foundation. As set forth in Section 4.3.3 and 4.3.4 page 44 of the 2003 ROD, the funds were used to ‘restore’ the old Trolley Barn at 17th and Muhammad Ali as a Kentucky Center for African American Heritage.

2005-2008

After T2 was abandoned because there were not enough federal funds to build it, the Project sponsors found new funding for the Bridges at a reduced cost of $ 2.6 billion. They would toll the bridges and finance the cost.

June 2012

Project sponsors KYTC, INDOT and FHWA wrapped up the final environmental impact study and approved the tolled project. In December 2012 the Walsh construction consortiums announced they would build both bridges by 2016 for   $ 1.6 billion. This reduced price would not have required collecting $ 10 billion over 35 years from drivers and the East End Bridge could have been paid for with available funds without tolling.

2013

Today, CART alleges that transportation officials were motivated by racial animus when they adopted the ORMIS Plan for two bridges and made it the LSIORBP.

To prevail in the lawsuit, CART has to show that the LSIORBP is yet another cycle in the black disempowerment agenda, the chronic dislocation and separation by public policy of blacks from economic means.

Its one more round of the same cycle visited upon the West End populations before by Urban Renewal programs, police riot, disproportionate arrest, vacant property programs and now induced economic development in the far edge of the region out of reach to impoverished blacks in the urban core.

CART was assisted in the lawsuit, without promise or payment by economist, Dr. Peter Meyer formerly of UofL.

The Affidavit of Peter Meyer, Ph.D.   ¶ 39 page 24, states:

“FHWA’s SFEIS as it stands recommends that billions of dollars be spent to support those with access to cars while no additional spending serves those without such access despite evidence of poor transportation access for that population. Statistically, the latter are predominantly low income and minority group members. Thus the entire project is inherently discriminatory against those groups.”

Indeed the transportation agency defendants admit there is no economic benefit to the West End in this, the costliest project ever undertaken by KIPDA and the transportation agencies:

“The assessment of potential long-term economic effects was based on a detailed and comprehensive analysis which is available for inspection as part of the Socioeconomic Baseline Report at the local project office. The results of that analysis demonstrated that

construction of any of the "build" alternatives—whether a downtown bridge, an eastern bridge, or both--would not have a substantial effect on the economic vitality of the urban core or West Louisville, which contains the largest concentration of minority and low income individuals in the LMA.”

AR2_00093664

The modern populations digitally connected today and reaching across color barriers to create joint actions to change the policy of black disempowerment waged against the West End need only emerge in self-aware grass roots action groups and begin to raise their voice in the public forum.

The present constellation of politicians, many of them in office for decades, have crafted by intent and misdirection a major infrastructure project that is predatory on low income minorities especially.  See it HERE

Change will only come through a coordinated movement,  a strongly secular movement recognizing that many powerful church based voices have been deliberately targeted and favored with federal grant programs and especially courted to deny their power to those opposing cycles of suppression through facially neutral government programs.

Dr. J. Blaine Hudson would have been a powerful asset in the  coming struggle.

INDOT and KYTC officials answer Metro Council Transportation Committee questions   Story HERE

Poverty in Louisville as a desirable condition for Metro Government expansion

HERE

Page from Metro Health Equity Report

Download it HERE

Letter from Anne Northrup to Barry Barker