Two more reasons not to swim in the Cumberland

1. Because if you want to bring attention to the waterfront, it should include attention to the human beings who call it home.

2. Because even if you don't want to call attention to the human beings who live there (even if you'd rather hide them under a bridge), you should at least not swim through their stuff. It seems inhumane to me and even my mother would call it tacky.

We've got serious issues to address at our riverfront, some ecological, some humanitarian. Both deserve more serious attention and less smart ass commentary.  How many of the 1,616 housing units that our Council promised to fund last year have been built? How many will be protected in this year's budget by the same Councilmembers who are coordinating this swim? Candidate Dean promised 200 new units a year during last year's campaign. (The Homeless Commission reports that 34 have been built) How about a walk by the river to highlight how many of those units the Council will fund this year?

I don't doubt that the river swim is going to be fun for the swimmers. By all accounts, it started as a joke and it will surely be something to joke around with each other over drinks on Tuesday nights and I don't doubt they'll be really clever jokes. But, so far, it's also misguided and callous and unbecoming. If the Councilmembers involved still insist on this, at the very least they need to come up with some way that doing so does good. So far, I haven't heard how it's going to do any more than give them something else to laugh about and frankly, it's just not all that funny.

Here are some ideas:

1. Ask everyone who's participating to contribute $1 for each foot they swim to the development of affordable housing in our city
2. Ask everyone who's participating to contribute 1 hour for each foot they swim to volunteer services with the homeless
3. Using it to draw attention to the wonderful water source we have doesn't seem all that rational in a year when we're also talking about the crisis in our water infrastructure. How about instead you begin the river swim with a riverbank walk-through, when Councilmembers can go and introduce themselves and look in the eyes of the Nashvillians who call that riverbank home and ask those constituents what they need, then use the media attention to advocate for that instead.

At the very least, take a moment before you dive off the Fire Boat Platform to say a prayer for Tara Cole, whose body was recovered from the barge you'll see when you look to the left. Metro's OEM, by the way, attributed the extraordinary delay in finding her body in part to the currents in the Cumberland. Unfortunately, Tara didn't have the same access to that Army Corps spigot as Councillady Evans appears to. That access comes with responsibility to do the right thing for the right reasons. I'm unconvinced that this is the right thing to do... but at the very least, we might improve the reasons.