Remember? Or is everyone suppose to have selective memory loss? Many of the same Chattanoogans demanding the county major reject refugees from resettling in Chattanooga are the same ones who once wanted all homeless and Chattanooga's poor rounded up and dumped across state lines. They were very vocal, open and weren't shy about their disdain for the homeless, poor and marginalized citizens of the city.
Remember the infamous "weed 'n seed" that displaced so many families living in poor neighborhoods and especially public housing? The same "weed 'n seed" and other demands that actually played a vital role in the creating the homeless epidemic in the first place all in Chattanooga and elsewhere across the nation? The gentrification of primarily poor communities where poor homeowners, unable to qualify for home improvement loans, were forced from their homes over minor, manufactured and exaggerated code violations?
So now suddenly we're suppose to actually believe these very same individuals who held so much disdain for Chattanooga's poor and homeless, now want the county mayor to turn away refugees and take care of the homeless epidemic first? An epidemic inspired by their demands and they helped to create, all of a sudden actually care about Chattanooga's homeless and poor? Get real. Such hypocrisy.
By the way, has there been any efforts to determine what actually became of all those families, many with children, who were kicked out of public housing, forced from their homes via manufactured code violations such as the family who had their home condemned a few years back as the family sat down to enjoy their, of all things, Easter Sunday meal when some 'anonymous' neighbor called police to their home on likely yet another manufactured issue that just as well never existed? Where, if memory serves right, their home was padlocked over and it took a court order to allow them just seven days to re-enter their home to retrieve a few items? Including possible family heirlooms?
As my 13-year-old grandson often had a habit of saying when he was no older five or six years of age, "Granny, some people are such phonies."
Brenda Washington