No one can possibly begin to imagine the stress suffered, our children being assaulted by police, their parents followed throughout the community they'd lived for decades - for old time homeowners and other community dwellers - only to have newcomers and members of the old guard team up and form cliques, create an alliance with the police department and inside city government, then proceed to attempt to harass those long time homeowners and dwellers from the community.
It would later become a sad and base national phenomena that spread across the nation and an ugly meme and blight on a nation that tries to impress the world with its false sense of of being all inclusive and welcoming for everyone - regardless of color, class, ethnicity, religion and national origins. Most everyone's aware of the rhetoric phrase, but saying it and embracing as fact can be polar opposites.
The national meme formed from these tragic encounters was used to describe people who abused their neighbors or anyone they didn't know or like by calling police on innocent people going about their daily activities. Even taking a simple walk often triggered such calls.
Sadly, as history all too often repeats itself, their victims were most always black folks, unless they were a white relative or friend of the black person they were with at any given time; reporting them as suspicious persons in the community who "didn't belong here, there or anywhere," as one cop told the teen son of a neighbor when the cop told the teen "you don't look like you belong here."
Matter of fact, the neighbor's family had lived much longer in the community than the person who called the police to report him. And he and his partner proceeded to harass the young man, nearly strip searching him in broad daylight right outside my door on the sidewalk. I always felt those actions began right here in Chattanooga and in St. Elmo long before the acts became a nationally known meme
Instead of trying to run off the homeowners and others who had long lived in the community off back, and was a part of the clique and wouldn't be allowed in anyway, the clique should have welcomed them and their wisdom and knowledge as the longer dwellers of the community. So now the AirBnBs, VRBOs and Short Term Rentals are here, and the very same people who once were part of the clique that wanted no one but "their" clique as next door neighbors are up in arms.
As for me I don't care. Welcome, AirBnBs, VRBOs, Short Term Rentals. We old dwellers were ostracized and made to be the outsiders a long time ago.
Brenda Washington