Memphis Mayor Paul Young Sits Down with Ben on the Owen Army Podcast: Hope and Human Connection

We sat in the middle of an abandoned hospital in South Memphis - me and Mayor Paul Young. Two men from very different paths, shoulder to shoulder, talking about how to make our city better.

I don’t back candidates or politicians - but I will back a good man any day of the week. I don’t care about parties. I honestly can’t stand the two-party system.

What I do care about is standing with good men and women who are serving our communities—whether they’re in office now or running against each other.

If they’re good, I’ll tell you they’re good.

Mayor Young is a good man.

We probably don’t agree on everything - I don’t even know if we disagree on anything, because it really doesn’t matter as long as we agree on THE BIG THING.

And here’s the big thing: we both want Memphis to thrive again.

We both see the pain in our city, but we also see the hope. We see the future. We see the potential that is just waiting to come alive.

He caught heat for saying he’d sit down with gang leaders. I think that’s a brilliant move. Special Forces have done it around the world for decades.

You can’t solve major problems without bringing all the key players to the table. You’re not going to fix trafficking without confronting the traffickers. You’re not going to end the drug epidemic without engaging both addicts and dealers.

That’s reality.

And the other reality is this: Mayor Young is a man of action. He’s about housing first. He’s about introducing economic opportunity. He’s about UNITY. And those are exactly the things Memphis needs most.

I’ve never walked into the hood and had somebody tell me I couldn’t help because I was white. Never once. Out here, people don’t care about division - they care about survival. They care about change. They care about a future for their kids.

That’s what me and Mayor Young talked about.

Not politics. Not parties.

Hope. Future. Unity.

Memphis can be a beacon again.

But only if we come together and do the hard work to make it happen.

~Ben Owen, Owen Army, We Fight Monsters