In yet one more unilateral decision to activate National Guard forces in the name of public safety to majority Black cities led by Black mayors, the administration last week announced that the next destination would be Memphis. It appears that the well-choreographed and visible anticipatory planning for resistance by Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has delayed that city’s day of reckoning.

Memphis is a Kresge “focus city,” one in which we have made decade-long far-reaching and deep investments: in the South Memphis and Soulsville neighborhoods . . . in the Memphis Medical District . . . in the civic commons of Cossitt Library, Tom Lee Park, the Brooks Museum, and Memphis River Parks . . . in strengthened networks among human service providers . . . in the creative placemaking activities of the Broad Avenue Arts District . . . and in other aspects of the community’s stability and revitalization.

It is a city in which we enjoy strong relationships with local philanthropy, including the Hyde Family Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis, the Kemmons Wilson Family Foundation, the Assisi Foundation, and others.

It is a city in which we have had mutually supportive relationships with city hall, starting with Mayor A.C. Wharton, who first invited us to Memphis, building over eight years with Mayor Jim Strickland, and now solidified with Mayor Paul Young, with whom we’ve worked over the many years he has served the community in multiple roles.

It is a city powerfully situated in the arc of the civil rights movement, reflected by the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated . . . the Clayborn Temple (recently ravaged by fire), a hub of the 1968 Sanitation Workers Strike . . . . and, in a different vein, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.

These forms of engagement with Memphis have made unambiguously clear that the community safety of its citizens is inextricably tied to the fundamental elements of social and economic opportunity: safe and affordable housing, small business development, workforce training, living-wage employment, access to healthful environments, embrace of artistic and cultural traditions. We have invested in all these elements, as well as in “Heal 901,” which operates a number of programs to increase community cohesion and reduce gun violence.

We accordingly welcome Mayor Young’s deeply measured and constructive response. He notes that although he did not request federal troops, a decision has been made, and the city’s role is now to ensure that the additional support (FBI, DEA, ATF, State Highway Patrol, and others) will truly benefit and strengthen the city’s neighborhoods. He also wants the situation to be an opportunity to “tell the true story of a city that is already moving in the right direction.”

Mayor Young has noted that in addition to law enforcement, the federal action will be focused on beautification (cleaning neighborhoods, tackling blight, strengthening a sense of place) and homelessness (particularly expanding the connection of services, housing, and care). He has also requested that most of the Guard members come from Tennessee and that the city have meaningful input into how they are engaged.

Mayor Young observed that although the city has serious work to do in bringing down violent crime, its crime statistics are trending down (including double-digit reductions in both overall crime and violent crime over the last two years). And he called attention to a new partnership with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which has produced nearly 250 arrests, more than 50 gang members removed from the streets, and almost 100 federal indictments. In the Mayor’s words: “This shows that our local strategies are working. The outside resources can amplify success, but they cannot replace Memphis-led progress.”

The Mayor’s message stands in contrast to others who have been less diplomatic – there has been criticism that the federal administration’s decisions represent a further assault on the nation’s democratic norms and traditions . . . that they are simply a performative act that will provide photo opportunities of federal agents patrolling downtown, when the difficult issues of crime prevention in the neighborhoods go unattended.

Those are not the views of Mayor Young, nor the views from Memphis City Hall. And although the federal administration’s announcement needs no amplification, Mayor Young’s statements and actions underscore the degree to which community safety is a profoundly difficult, multi-dimensional, nuanced challenge. It requires hard, long-term, community-based effort, not theater.

We applaud the unremitting commitment by Memphians of all walks of life and from all sectors to ensure the city is safe and vibrant. We remain committed to working with them to ensure that it is.