Roy Exum
The city of Chicago, where year-to-date 3,945 of God’s children have been shot and 739 of those are dead, has had five murders so far this week. Chattanooga, having just joined Chicago in the Top Ten of “The Most Dangerous Cities in the United States,” has had four homicides in the same time. As far as I can tell, there has been no outcry, no call to action, and nothing to counter a blasé attitude of “that’s just blacks killing blacks.” That’s the most obscene and repulsive answer that I have ever heard.
Each is some mother’s child. What are they going to say when I catch a bullet? “It’s just Roy … good riddance!” Who have we become? Who dares possess such a warped mindset?
A police department spokesperson is right when it is revealed this is a nation-wide trend; there is a 25 percent uptick in murders among America’s biggest cities. While that is a scathing reflection on what has been clearly proven as cities governed by Democrats' and the liberals’ soft handling of riots and the like, I don’t believe murder or wanton shootings have a party affiliation. Instead, I see families being destroyed, fatherless kids, generational poverty, a growing pandemic of hard-drug abuse and record overdoses, and I cannot understand why blacks – the very victims – are satisfied to blame the police for it. It is glaringly obvious the police have instead been trying to stop black-on-black murders. Our black brothers and sisters solidly refuse to accept any accountability. It makes me want to cry.
Right now, our nation is excited, grateful, and relieved the COVID vaccine is now just days from being delivered. Additional labs are ready to manufacture their own vaccines and, as production begins to ramp up in earnest, we’ve finally got a way to rope up this beast forever. With society’s evils it isn’t that easy. Earlier this week I was talking to mayoral candidate Kim White who believes, after touring one neighborhood after another and spending hours talking to a marvelous cross-section of Chattanoogans, she may have an idea of a “vaccine” for our city – we need hope.
In the past eight years that Andy Berke has been the mayor of Chattanooga, he has been a horrible disappointment to the vast majority of both rich and poor … black, white, and Hispanic … industry big and small. His legacy will be the hated bike lanes and instead of wishing him well after the March election, most people will simply wish ‘The 11th Street Hermit’ gone. Andy’s biggest shortcoming is that he has not offered Chattanooga as much as a single glimmer of hope. There is no togetherness, no parades, no “Santa trains,” no symphonies in Coolidge Park, or any better reason to live here instead of Knoxville, of all places.
Term limits will prevent him from “serving” his fellow citizens after the March election but nobody, none of us, can yet grasp what has really happened to us in the last eight years as our citywide neighborhoods have developed to be modular yet disconnected small entities. Listen to what Kim White told me: “I am worried Chattanooga has become a field of silos, each without a path to the others. We’ve got our great communities, but each is like an island. I am determined to bring people together,” she said, after doing that marvelously for RiverCity and the downtown district.
“The fact we are in the 'Top Ten' most dangerous cities has got to change, and you know the one thing I heard from each of our 'islands?' Every single one of them wants a greater police presence. The police chief in Chattanooga is hired by the mayor, not elected like the sheriff. I have already told Chief Roddy that if I am elected, he’s stayin’! I am crazy about him and rather than ‘defund the police’ we need to embrace our force. They are underpaid for what they do, and I want them to be so motivated that soon we’ll have the best police department anywhere. They need money, and if I am elected, we’ll get it for them. Everywhere in Chattanooga I am asked for a greater police presence.
“Until I went to UTC, I thought of my neighborhood and my high school (Hixson) as, very honestly, a happy little island. UTC was a great experience in meeting people from other areas I didn’t know and making many new friends from other areas of the county and from the state. I was invited to join a sorority that was more great people I would have never known. I was president in my senior year and there is where I learned my greatest lesson – if you’ll form groups you can get anything done,” Kim told me.
“I learned that this is how it happens … At first you meet, then you discover your newest friend, and another … and then…" she nodded her head with a smile, “that group of new friends has more fun in accomplishing a goal than any of us ever dreamed possible. Nothing is as wonderful as a ‘team’ winning together. That creates ‘hope’ in any situation,” she said, “and hope is very infectious …"
Kim is sold on the idea that if she can lure some wonderful people out of their silos, off their little islands, and bring them together that Chattanooga will flourish again, that strong bridges will be built between industry, commerce, education, racial relations, and other areas of our city’s woven fabric.
“Here is something else that some see as a barrier when just the opposite is true. A lot of people who work in our city live in the areas outside the city limits. But they are still Chattanoogans. They want any invisible fences torn down. We have many best friends, for example, who live in different communities. I know for a fact people in Hixson, East Ridge, on Lookout Mountain and other municipalities all are united in their love for Chattanooga. Our County Commission is a great example of what people who live in different areas all over Hamilton County do each week that is best for all of us.”
Kim was asked to talk about four murders this week: “It is far more than somebody shooting somebody else. We must take a strong look at poverty, the children who go to bed hungry, the unemployed, the county jail so full it is about to burst. We also must identify and stop these foolish so-called social services and these meddlers who use negative energy that takes away from our true purpose.”
“We must look at these shootings from every angle. We need to stress non-violence in our schools. We must improve our police department relations in our different communities. We’ve got to take a much more active role in nurturing our children, particularly in our poverty areas where a single parent sometime works two jobs each day to makes ends meet … and here’s one … do you know our city-run neighborhood family centers are closed on nights and weekends? What’s with that! On nights and weekends is when we need them most!”
I mentioned the Community Control Now Coalition – a gaggle of racist pretenders -- who just submitted a ballot request that would pay nine ‘appointed’ members a total of $250,000 each year, illegally give the group the right to issue subpoenas, and would not be answerable to the mayor or the City Council. “No,” Kim shook her head at what would be a senseless legal morass, “No.”
Like many city leaders, Kim said she was “quite surprised” by the audacity of the CCN Coalition but added, if elected, she would love to see how her team might look at any positives from splinter groups if it meant furthering education, racial relations, inner-city poverty, and any other thing “that would make Chattanooga a better place.”
Kim White acknowledges it will be a struggle … there is a huge amount of ground ahead … but reasons that if the United States can come up with a COVID vaccine in just nine months from when it first appeared, a skilled team in a new and vibrant mayor’s office just may pull off a similar miracle as Chattanooga surges ahead once again.
royexum@aol.com