Q&A: Democrat Shameka Parrish-Wright |

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Shameka Parrish-Wright is a Democrat running for Louisville mayor. Her website is shamekaparrishwright.com.

She issued this statement in response to the WDRB questionnaire:

Dear Residents, Neighbors, and Friends of Louisville,

My name is Shameka Latonya Parrish-Wright and I am running to be your next Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky. For years, I’ve used my lived experiences, education and a variety of skills to bring the will and missing voices of the people in all that I do. While I can never erase my humble beginnings, my adverse childhood experiences made me knowledgeable and relatable to diverse groups of people, while allowing me to successfully navigate conflict resolution. It has been those experiences that shaped my leadership style and gave me the solutions-based skills that those in academia, city & state government, and social service agencies have come to rely on. I’ve had to show up, assess, listen, support, delegate and negotiate until we create what is needed- in every situation. I’m old enough to know your words and actions matter, but I’m still young enough to know that real change means we all have our role in society and, no matter what we do, we must keep human rights first.

Some of you may have come to know me from this past summer, fighting for justice for Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, and others lost to police violence. But injustice doesn’t just exist within our police department. We need more equitable solutions across the board. My lens extends from social services to the justice movement and onward to economic growth, public health and safety. I’ve worked within the faith community, assisted with immigration and criminal justice reform, and initiated business development support within our city. My hands have intentionally and continuously touched just about every crevice and industry. And because of that, I’m able to translate the macro and micro view of issues and concerns, make equitable decisions that positively impact different groups of people, and appropriately distribute resources to those doing the work or in need. My combined years of service on community boards and advocacy groups in Louisville has prepared me for this opportunity to lead our city on a larger scale. During the past ten months alone, I’ve developed coalitions and bridges within our community and local government and I will work to ensure those relationships are strengthened once I become Mayor.

The truth is, our city is hurting, our infrastructure is severely damaged, and our youth and seniors have too little to look forward to. Too many of our community members are struggling with job insecurity, houselessness, inadequate health care and coverage, access to education & training, low wages, and a lack of social services to help them make it through the obstacles that exist in a post-COVID world. The long-term impact from COVID-19 will present us with tough choices and the next administration must be prepared to work hard to recover, which will require a certain grit and resourcefulness that cannot be taught.

These are some of the reasons I’ve accepted the call to run for Mayor, fully understanding this will be the biggest race of my life for my family and every supporter of my campaign. I say, “We get there together,” because it will take all of us to reimagine our community beyond the racial uprising and pandemic our City continues to live through. Local politics have never been more important and, right now, we need one another to foster the change required to keep going. Which is why Louisville deserves someone who will fight for the best interest of everyone who lives, works, grows and plays in our city.

That includes the over six thousand Louisville Metro employees who work within LMPD/LMDC, manage our parks, provide health & human services, benefits, sanitation, youth services and development, and a host of other essential services. In my first year, I’ll work to align our expenditures and use money wisely to improve our parks, roads, human services, public transportation and, most of all, our public health so we can reimagine public safety. Our current and previous elected officials surrounded themselves with some of the best and brightest, yet failed to lead from behind. Many of those employed by Louisville Metro have great ideas on how to get things done, but they have not been heard. My work has always been purposeful, educational and engaging. Real solutions, inclusive leadership and more opportunities for all Louisvillians is the goal. As Mayor, I’ll be intentional in listening to our employees, advisors, and staff to ensure that we won’t just get to the Mayor’s office together, we’ll make this City the best it can be. It is in that same vein that I respectfully ask for your support and vote. Let’s see what we can do TOGETHER…the WRIGHT WAY.

What is the No. 1 policy you would change or implement to combat gun violence in Louisville?

Everyone trying to reduce violence in Louisville recognizes that a lack of collaboration is the biggest barrier and I have a plan to SOLVE that problem and to DRAMATICALLY reduce violence. The only way I would keep Chief Shields is if she could show me her real measurable plan to reduce violence and how her department has done so.

I can say something that nobody else running for Louisville Mayor can say; I work in the field of crime and violence and I have other crime and violence experts on my staff, including people who’ve spent years researching these issues and people who’ve lived their entire lives dealing with these issues firsthand.

My administration is going to invest in things that are PROVEN to actually reduce violent crime. Even before I take office we’re gonna work with city-wide community organizations like CLOUT to bring the National Network for Safe Communities to Louisville to implement their Group Violence Intervention, or GVI. By replacing enforcement with deterrence and fostering relationships between law enforcement and the people they serve, GVI has dramatically reduced violence in cities like Boston, Oakland, Chicago, Detroit, and New Orleans. The traditional approaches favored by some candidates have over-policed communities of color while failing to protect them from violence. This increases mistrust and leads to more violence. My administration will use GVI to dramatically reduce violence bringing community members together with law enforcement and service providers to help people transition out of a life of violence.

Violence just became very real to some people in this race but it’s been real for me since I was a little girl. I live and work among the people who get shot AND KILLED. I’ve consoled mothers as they cry over their dead kids. I’ve stood by families as they release balloons to remember their children killed by guns. When one of my opponents got shot at, the feds swooped in and took over the case but Breonna Taylor gets murdered while sleeping in her own bed AND NO ONE EVEN GETS CHARGED. No one is asking for revenge but demanding accountability.

Make no mistake, the rest of the nation is watching this election. We have to decide what kind of city we want to be. Do we want to be a city that’s ok with innocent people like Breonna Taylor getting murdered by police while they’re asleep in their own beds? What kind of message are we sending to the rest of the country if we elect someone who doubles down on the very things that led to the death of Breonna Taylor, David McAtee and too many more? Instead, we can make history THREE times in this election. First, we can elect Louisville’s first woman mayor. It’s 2022 and that's justice in many forms. Second, we can elect Louisville’s first African American mayor. Not just any black woman. One that comes from poverty and who almost became a police officer to be the change she sought. Third, we can elect the first mayor OF the people because I’m one of the people.

Don’t you think it’s time that ALL people in Louisville felt included in this city, and not targeted by it. Third, we can elect the first grassroots community organizer as the first mayor of the people. I want more arrest-less interactions, mobile trauma response units for every community that wants them, reallocation of funding from the police budget to non profits that help alleviate and dismantle the impacts of root causes. I want to incentivize offices doing better community engagement, living in the communities they serve, resolving conflicts without violence and pairing up with faith and community leaders beyond ride alongs and school visits. We get there together includes our Louisville Metro Police and Corrections but they work for our community and have to be held accountable when they violate our human rights. Until we change Frankfort and come up with better solutions to police reform is our tool.

You cannot be for racial justice and want a bigger police budget. The police budget is already 28% of the city budget. And some want to make it bigger. We can have the community protection we deserve and support the police to do their jobs by making sure they have ongoing training, resources, adequate pay and benefits. Some of them tell me they deal with trauma too. Let's work together to make sure those that are sworn to protect and serve are more connected to us as a whole and not just the elite.

When I knock on doors, voters tell me they want fair, unbiased accountable policing that treats them with dignity and respect. My administration will be the most talented, diverse and corruption free, just as my campaign team is. I believe in partnerships and team work. My work continues to save our city a great deal of money. I have real plans to bring more equality in funding, economic empowerment, better public health and safety and we will tackle climate change now and not in 2040. I am who the current and past administration and community leaders call to get things done. I am the only candidate that has a proven track record of bringing people together from all walks of life while listening and taking action for positive change. I bring a wealth of knowledge, patience, boldness and respect for the process. No other candidate has been Mayor of Louisville before and I represent the cleanest slate and path forward as a whole. The three priorities that will stay at the top of our agenda are: public health & wellness, government accountability with transparency and community safety with a focus on dismantling the root causes.

There are thousands of people all over this city, but especially in West Louisville and other low-income neighborhoods, who need good jobs and are ready to go to work at good jobs. At the same time, climate change is leading to more intense heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and flooding.

We have to upgrade every building in the city to be more energy-efficient and overhaul the nation’s transportation system by investing in light-rail and, eventually, high-speed rail. These infrastructure projects will create or support thousands of jobs, and we need to make sure they are high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hire local workers, offer training and advancement opportunities, and guarantee wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition to a green economy.

This will also help Louisville become an innovation hub for science and technology. It’s well-documented that innovation jobs in the knowledge sector lead to significant economic growth by creating jobs in many other sectors of the economy that support technology entrepreneurs, firms, and workers.

Bridges were a colossal waste of taxpayer money and set our city back decades in shifting to the future of transportation, which we know is based on rail travel. TARC has long had plans for a light-rail system and we will prioritize making those plans a priority. We will also look to highly-desirable European cities for best practices to make urban waterways and bike paths a viable form of transportation as opposed to mere window dressing on roads that continue to over-value automobiles and under-value pedestrians and bikers.

Metro government is not doing nearly enough to support our kids and teachers in JCPS. My administration will change that. Let’s start by recognizing that our schools are under attack by Republicans in Frankfort; they’re under attack by the wealthy elite; they’re under attack by the Walton family, who wants to steal our tax money for private schools for wealthy families. Make no mistake, the future of our schools is at stake in this election. One of my opponents took TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS from the Walton family, the very same people responsible for attacks on our teachers; the very same people trying to take over our schools, to Wal-Mart our schools. Took TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS straight from Bentonville, Arkansas. When people take that much money you have to wonder who’s pulling the strings. I’m listening to the person who lives on Garland Ave not people who live in Bentonville, Arkansas. I’m listening to the person that lives in Shively, in Crescent Hills, in J-Town, in the Highlands, and every other neighborhood in this city.

And here’s what I know because I listen to regular people in Louisville. I know there are 5,000 homeless kids in JCPS; that’s more than one in every 20 students. I know that two of every three kids in JCPS grow up in poverty. How are kids supposed to learn if they don’t know where they’re going to sleep at night? How are kids supposed to learn when they don’t know if they’re gonna have anything to eat for dinner? How are teachers supposed to teach when their students are hungry and tired? JCPS already feeds tens of thousands of kids every day, which is often the only thing keeping them from going hungry. JCPS already provides healthcare to thousands of kids. JCPS already offers after-school services to thousands of kids.

As mayor, I’ll make sure the city starts doing our part. We’ll fund after-school activities for kids. We’ll increase funding for jobs programs for youth to make sure they learn skills they’ll need to succeed. We’ll fund kindergarten readiness programs so all our kids are ready for school. We’ll improve public transit so schools and families don’t have to shoulder the burden for transportation. We’ll crush the digital divide with municipal broadband. We’ll work to expand translation services for our immigrant brothers and sisters. We’ll work with our partners in organized labor to create more apprenticeships. And we’ll support the push for universal pre-k.

People know I’ll fight for JCPS. That’s why a current member of JCPS board of education VOLUNTEERED to be my campaign manager. He’s confident my administration will help our schools. He’s at a school board meeting right now or I’d invite him to tell you himself.

Increase funding to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Louisville has a shortage of 31,000 affordable housing units..

“Let me say this clearly: The ONLY reason to create a TIF is to hide where taxpayer money is going. Everything you do in a TIF you can do through the regular budgeting process, which is done in full view of the public. A TIF often hides the most important elements of this budgeting process behind closed doors where real estate developers, corporations, business elites, and their chosen few in city hall decide the fate of the neighborhoods where I live and where ALL of our tax dollars are spent. You simply cannot be FOR a TIF and transparency. TIFs are inherently untransparent. This lack of transparency is what makes them so attractive to people that want to profit by moving residents out of their own communities. Anyone who says otherwise is either extremely naïve or intentionally misleading you.

We’re not gonna buy our way into city hall; we’re gonna do this thing the old fashioned way, through grassroots support. I’ve been around polling places a long time. I’ve never seen money vote. I’ve seen people vote, and that’s who we’ve got.

We there together means we will use tax money the way it was meant to be used. We will incentivize neighborhoods to have affordable housing and beautification, take care of ALL our Metro Government employees, increase employee assistance programs to offer more diverse high quality mental health benefits, reimagine public health and safety working together, improve downtown and tourism across Jefferson county with climate change actions, free fare months for Tarc and lifting every 120 park in Louisville to the Olmsted standard. Community protection we deserve will come from our seniors and youth working together. More personalized services with less red tape. Our transition team and accountability will host public monthly meetings and quarterly check in on progress of all initiatives. Everyone will have the opportunity to be as engaged as they want to be. We will work with Louisville Metro Council, business, educators and more to increase transparency and make Louisville Metro Government strong and reliable.