The state has played divide-and-conquer for many years, pitting rural against urban communities, Memphis against Nashville, East TN against West TN, etc.
Conversations about The Med earlier this week between all of us here at Speak to Power brought up a conversation about the Western Division and how we are perceived in the state’s capital as well as how sometimes we pit northwest Tennessee against the urban giant of Memphis. I’ve had this conversation before. I was recently told when I visited Memphis from a person, a stranger actually, that he didn’t care what happened past Bartlett when I brought up West Tennessee leadership for the entire division, or the lack of it. It was a fight I would not win.There was no changing that young man’s mind.
At times, this division is shown in stereotypes, which is unfortunate. I am assuming that this happens in east Tennessee as well, but there are three large cities balancing that political area out with Chattanooga, Knoxville and the Tri-cities.
A statement was made that only Memphis always gets the short stick while looking at The Med’s current financial crisis. I disagreed. I felt that all of west Tennessee would be impacted, as The Med is a hospital that this area uses quite a bit. Nestled in the front page of the newspapers all across this area, rarely do you not see the hidden line sitting in a news story where someone has been flown to the Memphis-based hospital for trauma care. Lack of funding to The Med not only impacts Memphis, but it impacts countless communities across the area.
I think we forget that sometimes.
I took to the streets of Martin, Tn, a small college town where agriculture is big business but the largest employer is the University of 
Tennessee at Martin. The manufacturing boom to the area stopped roughly 45 years ago, and the factories that once were on every street corner are now all but abandoned. We have seen people leave, not because they wanted to, but because they had to just to find work. In some ways, these are dark times.
I asked local citizens not only about The Med, but about politics as a whole. The main consensus was that they didn’t feel that they had a voice.
“I have a lot to say,” said a local farmer who asked to remain anonymous. “But no one listens to us anyway. I think the folks in Nashville and Memphis would be just as glad to see us shipped off to Arkansas or Kentucky.”
“My son was at The Med,” a woman said. He had an accident and was flown there several years ago via Air Evac. “Those people there saved his life.”
Many of the responses were the same. There was a feeling from their responses that we were marginalized to a large degree, geographically challenged is a word I use often, and that was the sentiment.
I contacted Rep. Mark Maddox and asked him to comment on the situation with The Med.
“The MED has provided Weakley Countians with trauma care for years. Several of us are alive and leading quality lives today because the MED was there. We need a well-run, well-managed trauma care center close by for those times in our lives when things go horribly wrong. I don’t want these cuts to lower the quality of trauma care in our region,” he responded.
The situation runs deeper however. The one thing that we can do in the Western Division is not marginalize smaller communities and this goes for the rest of the state as well. Smaller communities, however, need to also use their voice and not marginalize themselves.
Bonnyman hit it on the head.
The Med only spotlights this example of the division that occurs between urban and rural areas, created most likely for political strategy over the years where now it is just habit. It is up to us, however, to start breaking away at that assumption to make real change where there is an understanding that we are all in this together.
We are one-third of a bigger picture here in the state of Tennessee. The first thing we have to do here is recognize that a unified front here, rural and urban, will make a larger dent statewide when situations like this arise.
[...] I’ve been in Hoots for a few days but I’m heading back to Memphis. Big doings down there and to be honest, it’s kind of weird having one foot in Hoots and one foot there. I’m adjusting to it but it’s kind of weird. The S.A.D has kind of broken with actual blue skies breaking through the gray we’ve all been seeing recently. Am I sick of snow? Yes I am. It’s rather sad that I’ve become my grandfather and I’m talking about the weather here on Newscoma. Thursday was Arthur Guinness’ first birthday so if you have one of the puppies, it was a year ago that day. Buy your puppy a milk bone. As you know, I’ve been doing a bit of writing over at Speak To Power. Spoke about the Western Division here in the state yesterday if you are so inclined. [...]