Jackson resident who received free food and water during one of the crises thanks Mayor Lumumba Source: Michael M. Santiago / Getty
“I want to say this most directly. Mayor Chokwe Lumumba is an innocent man. All he’s ever been guilty of is fighting successfully for us, for the people of Jackson.”
It is in this way, with these words, that Nsombi Lambright-Haynes, whose family roots in Jackson go so far back she doesn’t know how to date it beyond saying, “Since slavery,” began an exclusive, wide-ranging conversation with me about the stunning federal indictment on alleged bribery charges that were filed against Jackson, Mississippi’s, mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, two weeks ago today, on Thursday, Nov. 7.
“Mayor Lumumba is innocent of the charges—which even the indictment doesn’t do much to dispute.”
“The allegations are lies,” asserted Lambright-Haynes, who is also the executive director of Mississippi OneVoice, a human rights organization founded in 2005 in the wake of the Category 5 storm Hurricane Katrina.
“Mayor Lumumba is innocent of the charges—which even the indictment doesn’t do much to dispute,” she maintained, adding that they’re meant to turn the people of Jackson against a mayor whose “courage and persistence have challenged the State’s decades-long withholding of funds rightfully due to [Jackson].”
She’s not alone in holding that opinion. Jackson residents, including local, non-governmental leaders like Nsombi Lambright-Haynes, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity as I prepared this report, agree. They contend that the prosecution—as the mayor has—is completely political.
One Jackson resident I spoke with during one of several conversations I had the week after the indictment was handed down talked about the white, Republican state leaders who have been trying to wrest all control of the mostly Black city completely from the hands of the city’s residents and their elected officials, “They don’t care whose lives they destroy and they don’t care about the truth.”
The Indictment: Make It Make Sense
Source: Found Image Holdings Inc / Getty
Lambright-Haynes was also not alone in her belief that the real goal of the indictment was to ruin the mayor’s reputation, given his aggressive pushback against the state taking over Jackson, its capital city.
“They’re trying to divert attention from their own generations-long and racist neglect of our city,” one resident shared, referring to the water crisis the state created and drove–along with the appropriation of close to a billion in federal dollars to address the crisis.
“None of this is about any illegal or corrupt action by the Mayor,” Lambright-Haynes said emphatically. “It’s about ruining the Mayor’s reputation so the state can get someone in office who will follow behind them–and against the Black people of this city.”
At the heart of the indictment was the mayor’s push to build a functional and attractive convention center and hotel that would bring capital into the city. But that’s not what the state apparently wanted, according to residents, because the income generated from conventions in the city would not fall under the control of the state legislature–as so much of the state’s funding does. Lambright-Haynes added, “It’s about what it’s always about for them–taking control of Jackson and our taxpayer money. This time it’s to transform the city they’ve neglected into a playground for people who have money.
The state, she shared, has plans to turn Jackson into a resort destination, complete with the creation of a man-made lake. Condos are already populating the downtown area. “Black residents are about to be priced out.”
Like Lambright-Haynes, community members who have read the indictment said nothing it contains shows the mayor having done something remotely close to immoral, let alone illegal.
- Lumumba himself did not take money.
- The undercover federal agents posing as contractors who wanted to bid on a city project made a campaign contribution.
- But there was no quid pro quo. At no point did the mayor accept a campaign contribution promising to give the undercover agents the contract.
- In fact, according to the indictment, Lumumba never said much at all.
- There are pictures of the mayor on a yacht that was a fundraiser for him. But so what? He hadn’t asked for or made some deal in exchange for the campaign event. He was, according to records, pushed to attend.
- Finally, to the extent that the mayor moved the deadline for the undercovers, not only is that legally allowed under state law, but the mayor had done it for others before.
- At the time of his indictment, the bidding process was still open. No one, contribution or not, had been promised the contract for the project.
Residents want to know the answer to this: What evidence?
So did I.
The Honorable Chokwe Antar Lumumba, mayor of the City of Jackson, Mississippi
Chokwe Antar Lumumba, now 41, is the father of two little girls he shares with his wife–and kindergarten sweetheart, Dr. Ebony Lumumba, an associate professor and chair of the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Speech Communication at Jackson State University. He was first elected mayor in 2017, and at 34, was the youngest person ever to hold the office–and he began his first term by promising to make Jackson the most radical city on the planet.
In 2021, Mayor Lumumba was elected to serve a second term. In both mayoral contests, he was overwhelmingly elected by voters. The indictment comes down as he is poised to run for a third term (there are no term limits on the mayoral office in Jackson, Mississippi.)
Despite his twice-given mandate to govern by the people of Jackson–or perhaps because of it–the attacks against him in the primarily red state led by a MAGA governor, Tate Reese, and a state known for its historically brutal brand of white supremacist terrorism, have been unrelenting–and false, residents assert.
“Since the indictment was handed down, everyone I’ve spoken with has uttered the same thing: they feel personally assaulted by the legal assault on our mayor,” Lambright-Haynes shared.
Logic dictates that if the mayor was indeed the sort of greedy, self-serving man the feds want Jackson’s residents to believe he is as they head to the polls in April to select the next mayor, he certainly wasn’t very good at it. Why couldn’t they find a real company and real evidence of a bribe? Surely as he was well into his second term, if the mayor were corrupt, there would have been a trail.
Where was it?
Something in the water
Jackson, Mississippi, was 60% white in 1970 and home to the most thriving businesses and school system in the state. Then came the close of the Civil Rights Movement and school desegregation in 1969.
“That started white flight,” Lambright-Haynes said. By 1980, disinvestment in the city was hitting its peak. “I still remember Jackson,” Lambright-Haynes offers almost wistfully, “as being the place people came to for entertainment and shopping.”
Her son, Julian, now 27, knows that same hometown as one that people leave in order to see a movie, enjoy a day at the mall, and listen to live music. But it wasn’t only the business district that the state withheld support from. It was the school system, and notably, by 2022, the world learned that it was even the water system.
Source: Brad Vest / Getty
In May 2019, Jackson residents were warned to stay away from the Pearl River and its waterways. Waste from the decades-long neglect of Jackson’s water infrastructure burst through the pipes, and 3 billion gallons of sewage flowed freely into the river.
In the first quarter of 2020, as a pandemic gripped the world, Jackson experienced record-breaking rainfall. It caused the sewage system to fail again and almost a half-billion gallons of completely raw sewage–and almost 6 billion gallons of barely treated sewage poured into the Pearl River again.
As Black mayors preceding Lumumba had done–although the white state elected repeatedly lied about this—help was desperately sought from the state, which controlled the funds needed to overhaul the city’s failed and failing infrastructure. And as the city had experienced for at least the last 35 years, none was offered.
Indeed, in June, the MAGA governor, Tate Reeves vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have paved the way for Jackson to fund the repair of its water system itself. Rejecting support for the people of Jackson was the governor’s usual choice–as it had been by the white governors going back before Tate’s tenure.
That 2020 legislation would have allowed Jackson to create a payment plan to recoup the billions of dollars in losses it suffered in non-collection of water bill monies caused by faulty water meter and billing system installed by German technology company Siemens as part of a $91 million contract signed in 2012, before either Lumumba was mayor.
In 2022, Esquire.com reported that:
“In 2010, Siemens began pitching Jackson officials to hire the company to install all-new automated water meters and a new billing system. Siemens would also ‘make repairs to the City’s water treatment plants and sewer lines.’ Where would cash-strapped Jackson get the money for such a project? Siemens assured Jackson that the project would more than pay for itself.
“Jackson would have to pay Siemens $90 million — the largest contract in city history — but Siemens promised the new system would generate “$120 million in guaranteed savings” in the first 15 years, according to a lawsuit later filed by the city…
“In 2013, Siemens inked a $94.5 million deal with the city. That included the $90 million cost of the meter and billing upgrades, plus $4.5 million for Siemens to measure the savings the new project generated. The city issued a bond to cover the upfront cost of the contract. The bond issue will ultimately cost Jackson more than $200 million to repay the principal plus interest. Jackson is obligated to pay $7 million a year through 2041.”
But, as Esquire.com further reported:
“Its fancy new automatic water meters failed utterly; they resulted in some preposterously high water bills that residents refused to pay and some bills that were not sent out at all. The meters couldn’t mesh with the billing system.
“Siemens’ promise to the city that 58 percent of the work on the new system would be done by minority-owned subcontractors turned out to be an empty one. A system of ‘pass-through’ contracts rendered it little more than a paper guarantee.
“In 2019, under Lumumba’s administration, Jackson sued Siemens. A year later, the city settled with the German-based company for $90 million, the price of their original contract. Once divvied up between lawyers and bond payments, the city wound up with $10 million that it had to use to repair the damage done by the Siemens billing system.
Which did not fix a single pipe.”
In 2021, when another storm hit Jackson in February, and residents had no drinking water for a month, Mayor Lumumba wrote to the governor, demonstrating the city’s critical need for $47 million to make immediate repairs and upgrades. By May, the state was awarded half of a nearly $2 billion grant from the American Rescue Plan Act for pandemic-related expenses and for water, sewer, and broadband.
There was a problem, though.
A new Mississippi law required federal assistance funds to be appropriated by the state’s legislature, but Reeves’ administration declined to call a special session to disburse the funds to Jackson. The money sat with the state until the regular session began again in 2022.
Of course, by then, it was too late.
On Aug. 29, 2022, the city’s water system–as the Mayor had warned–failed completely.
Who Failed Jackson, Mississippi?
Source: Michael M. Santiago / Getty
“For a month, we didn’t even have water to flush our toilets with,” remembers Lambright-Haynes. “But it never had to happen–and it wouldn’t have if the leaders we elected had been allowed to do their job.”
Lambright-Haynes shared an opinion held by every resident I spoke to in reporting this story.
Blame for the crises they faced was the result of decades of neglect by white leadership. And Chokwe Antar Lumumba was calling that white leadership to account. He was fierce in bringing attention and resources to the city in order to address the issue.
The white state leaders passed one law or another to ensure even the city’s ability to collect water bills and allow a pathway toward self-sufficiency was wrested from them. But Lumumba persisted, making the water system central to his mayorship.
Mayor Lumumba Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Because of his work over the last two terms, several residents offered, light was finally being shone on the white corruption and mismanagement that left the 85% Black population of Jackson, Mississippi, literally in the eye of a s***storm.
That white corruption and mismanagement included what was documented as having been done by this guy…
Source: Tom Williams / Getty
….whose name is Phil Bryant, and who was governor of Mississippi from 2012 to 2020, and this guy…
Source: Kevin Dietsch / Getty
….whose name is Brett Favre, who was born in Mississippi and played 20 seasons in the National Football League.
One of the areas exposed during the Lumumba’s administration in 2022 was the $70 million stolen from federal Temporary Aid to Needy Families grants.
It was money set aside to help impoverished parents to help feed, clothe, and house their children.
Phil Bryant oversaw the TANF misdirection of monies away from poor families and instead sent to endeavors for the white and wealthy. The misdirection of funds included sending $8.1 million to causes supported by hometown boy, Brett Favre.
One of the causes Favre supported was the building of a volleyball arena at the University of Southern Mississippi. His daughter was on the team. At this writing, neither Bryant nor Favre have been indicted on charges related to the misappropriation of federal dollars.
But the mayor who has worked “tirelessly,” said Lambright-Haynes, to expose corruption and move funds to serve the people, has. Residents of Jackson, Mississippi, have questions. Lots of them.
As do I. And those questions will continue to be pursued as this case continues its journey through the courts–and as Black Jackson, Mississippi, residents continue to suffer at the hands of the state’s white legislators.
Mississippi Goddam.
SEE MORE:
Jackson Water Crisis: Organizers See Collective Effort As Critical To Community Sustainability
Jackson Water Crisis: Activists Blast Judge After Claims He Is ‘Pitting Black Against White’
4 photos