The man in a Dallas Cowboys baseball hat would rather be home sleeping, but instead he was sitting in a car in the parking lot of the plasma donation center, eating Cheetos and waiting on his brother and friend inside.
His family members regularly give their plasma – the liquid component of blood used in a variety of medical applications – for extra cash, but he said he never will.
“That’s not too much my style,” he said just before 10 a.m. Tuesday, wiping the sweat from his face with a gray washcloth. “I just like to go to work and go back home.”
The 37-year-old man said he’s happy with his job at a car wash, which he’s held for most of his adult life after dropping out of school in the ninth grade. He wished not to give his name, but described the freedom offered through his occupation as “music to me.”
“I can just work the way I want to work,” he said.
Many of the others who visited the Jackson ImmunoTek Plasma Donation Center on a recent weekday morning haven’t struck the same when it comes to earning a living in this part of the city.
The plasma donation center, located at the intersection of McDowell and Raymond roads on the cusp of west and south Jackson, is one of the few signs of life in an otherwise neglected zone. Family members and friends pick up and drop off their loved ones; people walk to the center from nearby neighborhoods.
It’s almost as busy as the Cash Savers, a discount grocery store catty-cornered from the biotech center, where people often take the pre-paid debit cards they receive in exchange for their blood to buy groceries. The intersection also includes a gas station, a Rally’s fast food restaurant, an empty store that locals say used to sell car parts and an AutoZone.
“They put it in the right spot of town,” said the man waiting for his brother outside the center. The hours are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
He was describing the plasma center’s convenient location on two main thoroughfares, but he’s right for another reason: This area of Jackson has a high concentration of poverty, few economic opportunities and is rapidly depopulating.
The dire economic situation is top of mind for the city’s new leadership, as incoming Mayor John Horhn has pledged to reverse these trends, telling attendees at the South Jackson Parade and Festival earlier this year that it would be the first thing on his to-do list.
Similar promises came with the center’s opening in 2022 inside a former pharmacy that closed during the Great Recession. That year, ImmunoTek boasted that it could bring an estimated economic boost of $5 million a year for a “part of Jackson that is undergoing revitalization,” according to the Mississippi Free Press.
The company did not respond to inquiries from Mississippi Today, so the center’s exact economic impact in the years since is unknown. For now, ImmunoTek remains one of the newest establishments operating in this part of Jackson and was likely drawn by the same data points that make other investors look elsewhere.
“It’s amazing how the blood of a group of people was used as a commodity at the beginning of this country and how the blood of this same group of people is still being a commodity today by them having to sell it in order to survive,” said Fredrick Womack, founder of Operation Good, a violence prevention organization.
Womack said when his group has encountered people walking to ImmunoTek from the surrounding neighborhoods, he’s attempted to intercept them and help them find stable, long term employment.
Studies have shown that plasma donation centers are more likely to be located in areas with higher rates of poverty. In Jackson, the ImmunoTek center is located in a census tract where the median household income was $29,500 in 2020, according to data compiled by the city of Jackson. And CSL Plasma, another plasma donation company, has facilities in south and northwest Jackson.
“Regardless of how you feel about the community, businesses – for lack of a better word – match with the outputs of the demographic,” said Jhai Keeton, the director of Jackson’s planning and development department.
Keeton has been working to bring more development to west and south Jackson, but he said recruiting businesses to the area has proven difficult due in part to the concentration of poverty, by which he means lower median household incomes, less spending power and declining property values.
“What I would love for the greater community to understand is that economics is all about data,” he said. “Every individual needs to look at themselves as a dataset, and when you have 100 individuals in one neighborhood, they need to look at themselves as a collective dataset.”
When it opened, the center offered a larger payout for a plasma donation than it does now, said Darian Little, a cook at Buffalo Wild Wings who had donated blood Tuesday to get money for groceries. He said he used to get $100 per session, but that now the center offers him $40 for the first and $70 for the second.
Nonetheless, the facility remained consistently busy throughout the morning. In the 45 or so minutes it takes, and even with the lower going rate, a donor can still earn 10 times the state’s minimum wage of $7.25-an-hour.
Several people had stopped in to ImmunoTek on their way to work. One woman wore a blue Waffle House shirt. Another left the facility wearing nursing scrubs and a blue bandage on her arm.
Others came because it was their only source of income. As the morning wore on, the center’s parking lot started to fill up with people.
Anderson Wallace was sitting on the curb, waiting for his pulse to fall below 100 so he could make a donation. He has visited ImmunoTek four times a month since he arrived in Jackson from Brooklyn, New York, earlier this year to visit his mom.
If Wallace had been able to find employment, he wouldn’t be here, he said. But he’s applied everywhere – Amazon, UPS, and various jobs through Indeed.com – with no luck.
“It’s too tough down here,” he said. “I gotta go back to New York.”
Two sisters whose electricity had gone out this morning after they were late paying the bill had also tried to donate, but their iron was too low, so the center turned them away. One of them shrugged when asked what they were going to do instead.
Deonte Woodson’s iron was also too low, so while his partner was inside giving a donation, he sat on the hood of his car and soothed their baby. The 30-year-old said he has a couple of businesses, though he didn’t give specifics, and his partner aspires to be a TV reporter. But for now, they need to donate plasma to make ends meet.
“She ain’t doing nothing now, just being a housewife,” he said. “For right now, I try to handle all the bills and take care of the kids.”
Ella Moore, a former Dillard’s employee, was waiting in her father’s car to pick up her 32-year-old son who was inside. Moore said her son is in between construction jobs. A few years ago, the young man tried to gain steady employment by starting his own mobile car wash, but he got into an accident, Moore said, leaving him without a car.
Moore grew up in Jackson and has raised her kids here, but she can’t make sense of the city. She said she used to shop at a corner store by her house, but a few months ago, a man came in holding a rifle, and the shopkeeper did nothing. She doesn’t shop there anymore.
“I think people just don’t care no more, because ain’t nobody really listening to them,” she said. “It’s like they ask you a question and they say they’re gonna do this, they’re gonna do that, but in reality, they really don’t do it. You’re voicing your opinions on things, and there’s nothing happening.”
When was the last time she felt Jackson’s leaders were listening? Moore pursed her lips.
“Probably in the early 90s,” she said, citing an example of a skating rink on Terry Road that closed, then reopened after community uproar.
But a few years later, Moore went by the rink, and it was closed again. Now she feels like there’s nothing for her grandkids to do in south Jackson, she said, except for a small park up Raymond Road from the plasma donation center.
She voted for Horhn, because she wanted to see change in Jackson, but she is skeptical that any will come. When she heard on the news that part of the Metrocenter Mall had a new owner, it just made her think about the last time people promised to redevelop the shopping center.
“We shall see, we shall see, we shall see,” she said. “Cause that would’ve been a nice thing to have a skating rink right there, a water park for the kids. Another era.”
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