You can measure the disconnect between angry internet commentariat and real life Memphis residents by the length of the wait for a table at Tamboli’s Pasta & Pizza.
In early July, Miles Tamboli, the owner of the midtown pizza spot, made a decision: he would not serve the national guard deployed to the city by the Trump administration, which the US president claimed would reduce the city’s crime rate. Tamboli’s video announcement came days after troops killed two city residents, bringing the total to four since the initiative started in September.
After a post by local activist Hunter Demster highlighted Tamboli’s post , with links to a wider “buy-cott” of businesses refusing service to the taskforce, the radioactive rightwing accounts Libs of TikTok and Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes called for a boycott.
But a few days later , the Italian “junt” (in Memphis parlance) opened with a full house and had a line waiting by 5.30pm. Waitstaff said the shop was never that crowded that early; extra crew was brought in to help.
Business is up “a great amount”, Tamboli said. The packed house on Friday was evidence.
“While I do not blame the national guard for being in Memphis since it was not their choice, I stand by businesses refusing service as a form of resistance and protest,” said Sarah Jones, with a plate full of pizza in front of her, along with her husband, Christian Dejarnette, and their five-year-old daughter.
She said police overreaction and a general sense of exhaustion limit public protests, pointing out that police fired teargas at demonstrators at a No Kings march.
Other patrons agreed. “If you have a business – a small family-owned business – that says, ‘You know what, I’m sorry, I can’t serve you, I just don’t believe you should be here,’ it really should be OK,” said Carol Bigam, a Memphian retired from FedEx, as she ate cannoli with a friend. “Is he not allowed free speech? He was very professional about it. Give me a break, man.”
After Donald Trump announced the federal taskforce in Memphis last year, Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, amplified the initiative by activating the national guard, which engages in high-visibility patrols on Beale Street and elsewhere downtown.
Questions about the value of sending more than a thousand FBI, DEA, HSI and other agents into a city with a declining rate of violent crime emerged immediately. But unlike the massive resistance of Chicago or Los Angeles, the governments of Memphis and Shelby county have largely acquiesced to the presence of convoys of federal agents running traffic stops on I-40 and armed troops on the sidewalk next to BB King’s Blues Club on Beale Street.
This summer, however, the string of fatal shootings by federal law enforcement agents in Memphis has begun to erode detente between the Memphis public and the federal taskforce.
On 13 May, Memphis Safe Task Force agents shot and killed 41-year-old Darrin Pigram while serving an arrest warrant at a Burger King located in Memphis’s Frayser neighborhood.
On 21 May, taskforce officers responded to a report of an armed man threatening to harm himself at a home. Police said they found Jonah Neal, 25, with several weapons inside the home. A homeland security special agent killed him, according to the police.
Around 4am on 5 July, national guard soldiers fatally shot 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson as he was being pursued by the Memphis police department after reports of shots fired near Ida B Wells and Gayoso avenues downtown.
Three days later, federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration operating with the Memphis Safe Task Force killed Alphonso Ivy, 47, at a Memphis motel on Poplar Avenue.
People may not be willing to brave the armed forces on the streets, but buying a pizza is easy.
“People are going to participate in a much less public endeavor,” Jones said. “So they’ll do the 901 boycott, or they’ll do the 901 ‘buy-cott’, but they’re not going to put their lives on the line.”
Meanwhile, Tamboli has had to contend with brigades of rightwing review bombing on Google, as well as threats of violence against him, his wife and child, who are now staying somewhere other than his home. Detractors are unhinged, he said.
He said he engaged with one, briefly, to thank them for the attention. The person responded, attaching a screenshot of his conversation with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok.
“He had asked Grok if it was possible that Tamboli’s was doing well this week, and Grok said no. And he took a screenshot of that and sent it back to me, calling me a liar,” Tamboli said. “I feel like that tells you everything you need to know about this group of people and their hold on reality.”
