Support Local Business

But for the late (great) Lindy Boggs’s slight of hand - secretly adding sex and marital status - to the draft bill and pretending as if it was simply an unintentional oversight, women’s rights would not have been enshrined in the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. As someone who appreciates a sweet-as-pie method, I am in awe of Lindy Boggs’s deftness. More importantly, I am eternally grateful for Lindy Boggs’s contribution to history. 

We sometimes forget, but almost one-third of Nashvillians were born during a time when it was acceptable to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, sex, and marital status. It was not until the 1960s that women gained the right to open their own checking accounts, and it was not until 1974 that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, outlawing discrimination in credit decisions on the basis of race, religion, sex, and marital status. 

We know, however, that people of color and women continue to experience credit-related discrimination. There are many systematic reforms that alleviate the historic and current effects of discrimination, including our one-time allocation for access to credit for small businesses. Today I want to talk about a really simple yet critical reform: Consistently funding our local, small, minority-owned and women-owned business grants. 

We used to have a Metro employee who administered these important grants, and we awarded them every year. The program costed us less than ⅓ of 1% of our budget. However, despite record levels of large corporate economic benefits, Council is unable to find the relatively tiny amount of funds for it. As a member of the Industrial Development Board, which oversaw portions of this program, I have consistently asked council members to fund these grants and employee positions. Year after year, my requests are denied.

We must bridge the gaps in our economy that historic racism and sexism have created if we want to have a resilient economy with diverse, emerging, and sustainable local, small, minority-owned and women-owned businesses. We have to do this year in and year out. Our local, small, minority-owned and women-owned businesses need us, and they need to know the government will be there for them when they’re ready to grow. We must re-fund these grants, and we must create, by law, a true office of economic development that is focused on economic development for all.

I believe supporting our local, small, minority-owned and women-owned businesses is critical to the Nashville we want to see. I believe we can consistently support these businesses, and, in the spirit of Lindy Boggs, I believe that when we are honest about who we are inadvertently leaving behind, we can enshrine these changes in our budget and in our laws.