Amid the struggles we are going through, the gist of William Sloane Coffin’s saying is on point. Except for the most disciplined of us all, who is not exhausted by the strain and uncertainty?

We told anyone who would listen that to help drive down violent crime in our city, we needed to recruit 2,300 officers to the Memphis Police Department by the end of this year. A new study shows MPD needs more than 2,800 police officers to patrol the streets of Memphis. 

Rather than argue about reopening schools, we should be defining levels of risk and setting metrics for stages of reopening. When will it be safe for pre-K and early elementary to resume in-person learning? When will it be safe for middle and high schools to begin hybrid learning?

I respect the views of the kneelers. They have the right to kneel in protest before Old Glory. Millions of American military personnel have bled and died so that they would have those rights. If the kneelers would find another way to protest, I might join them.

Leaving undocumented people out of the census mirrors a more subtle indifference to the Latinx community here in Memphis. Recent reporting shows Hispanics are contracting 28% of all COVID-19 cases in Shelby County, while comprising only 10% of residents. 

Masks don’t conceal identities – they reveal them, identifying the wearers during this pandemic as caring, compassionate, intelligent folk.

Before this is all over there will be plenty of other songs like Yo Gotti’s "Recession Proof" that comment specifically on the pandemic. Even the tracks that don’t feature bridges about Zoom meetings will still reflect the mood and feelings of this moment.

Normally, in-person visits allow for firsthand observation of possible signs of abuse and neglect at nursing homes or assisted living facilities. This new normal of reduced social contact impairs the ability to ensure residents are living in a safe environment.

C.T. Vivian said that while his generation didn’t get everything accomplished, they did their work so well that our generation could not believe what life was like before they went to work.

We are now attempting to place responsibility for children on over-worked, over-stressed teachers. Rather than supporting families as we should be doing, we are throwing the children at teachers in overcrowded classrooms.

Not long ago, the COVID-19 reports were encouraging. Now, I look at the numbers with a feeling of dread.

One suggestion: The NBA could help to repair the breach between communities of color and their police departments by hosting a national forum that features NBA players and diverse leaders of national law enforcement.

'My heart is heavy at the passing of this great foot soldier of the movement and congressman for the people,' says the president of the National Civil Rights Museum. 'In his honor, we’ll vote like our lives depend on it, because they do. '

Bree Newsome is the African American woman who scaled the flagpole at the South Carolina capital to bring down the Confederate flag after Dylann Roof killed nine people in Charleston, South Carolina. It is my hope that her name is not relegated to the dustbins of trivial history. Bree Newsome. Hardly trivial.

Everything about the coronavirus has become politicized, so why not a return to school? The answer is simple: The losers will be our children, and that is not an acceptable price to pay for political points.

Tennessee passed legislation to allow legal sports betting in an online-only format in May of 2019, but has yet to roll out platforms to make sports betting available to the public. This is a head-scratcher considering the state has an easy slam dunk opportunity to recoup some of the year’s lost revenue with very little effort.

Sometimes it seems our memory is as selective as our outrage. Black men are taken into custody every day without incident. Two young Black men accused of killing Memphis police officers – Tremaine Wilbourn and Justin Welch – were arrested without incident.

Four years ago, James Meredith, others from Mississippi and I were invited to take part in a series of college speaking engagements about progress our state had made in the area of civil rights. Most in the audience were amazed that Meredith, the civil rights legend, was still alive. I can attest that my friend is very much alive, spirited and has something to say.

I will argue that state Rep. John DeBerry has more influence than the entire Tennessee Democratic Party combined. The completely absurd effort to remove him from the ballot is the equivalent of taking Peyton Manning off the field during the Super Bowl.

Memphis is not in a weak position regarding our electricity choices, and $450M for Memphis believes that a city should never sign a $20 billion contract without at least one competitive bid that addresses all costs, terms and options.

The district will provide devices for families who need them, but families are responsible for supervising and troubleshooting online learning. Parents must work together to weather this disruption in education, writes SCS mom Heidi Kupke.

The ranking in the clerkship category places Memphis Law ahead of law schools such as Washington and Lee, Ole Miss, Georgetown, Emory, Tennessee and Columbia.

The Community Foundation of Greater Memphis' $40 million gift to LeMoyne-Owen College is one of the largest received by any HBCU nationally. It's designed to propel the college to the next level in higher education.

While we see days with alarmingly high numbers of cases, we must focus on the overall trends – trends that demonstrate the acceleration of this disease is rapid, but it is not as precipitous as might be suggested by viewing a single data point.

In “Bleeding Out,” a senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, writes that "nothing works as well to reduce urban violence as focused deterrence.”