Moms Demand Action meets to discuss ways to stop gun violence
Chattanooga’s chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America on Tuesday held a follow-up to its May meeting to discuss ideas to reduce gun violence in the city, and some residents questioned whether the efforts will be fruitful.
The group convened in Mayor Andy Berke’s office with about 30 people in attendance.
The meeting came on the heels of a weekend shooting that left a 16-year-old dead and a 19-year-old injured.
Two teens — 14- and 15-year-old boys — were arrested and charged with the shooting. They arrived in a stolen vehicle and opened fire on a house that had five occupants.
So far this year, there have been 51 shootings, excluding those deemed accidental, that claimed 62 victims in Chattanooga. Eleven of them died.
In May, the organization met at the Chattanooga Public Library with the goal of identifying existing resources in the community and learning more about city gun violence.
Members said they would brainstorm ways to fill gaps in services in the community and eventually create “working groups” around some of the solutions posed.
On Tuesday, the goal was to identify “priority areas” — such as better education, more afterschool programs, etc. — and then create those smaller working groups.
“The hope is that … [we] bring those [priorities] together and see, ‘Do we have a lot of weight toward a particular area?’ And if we do, then we need to bring some of us back together to start some smaller groups that can take these priorities and translate those into strategies we can start implementing,” said Erin Goddard, a member of Chattanooga’s Moms Demand Action.
But some attendees questioned whether the city would back any strategies.
Goddard said she thinks it depends on what ideas the organization generates.
“I certainly hope we would have the support of the city for anything we would need,” she said, “but we also have a lot of organizations and individuals in the community who will be joining us.”
Others asked whether there was a plan to take any proposed solutions before politicians and whether those politicians would be willing to work
with activists.
“We can have the best idea in the world, but city government is already in place,” Terry Battle said. “We’re working with a system that’s already in place. And unless we can get to those people, we’re spending a lot of energy and may not get a lot of results.”
Goddard reiterated that organizers need to know the community’s priorities before knowing how to go about pitching proposed strategies to politicians.
“I think first, we need to figure out where we’re headed and then we can figure out how to do it,” she said.
Everlena Holmes, an East Chattanooga neighborhood leader, said having a plan is important.
“You hear that concern throughout the neighborhoods,” she said. “We’re tired of meeting and talking and having discussions, and nothing is ever done. That’s a waste of our energy, our time, and our resources.”
“So, I think to say, ‘We don’t know who is going to do this,’ that already shuts a lot of people down,” Holmes said. “There should be a plan.”
Holmes suggested having the city commit to implementing proposed strategies.
Candy Johnson, Berke’s senior adviser, chimed in, saying she thinks the smaller working groups are a great idea “with a little education on what is going on” within communities and what the city is already doing to address the problem.
“This is a community problem,” she said. “We can look for strategies to solve the problems, we can propose legislation, but it takes all of us working together.”
Organizers and attendees agreed, and continued brainstorming more ways to add to or improve already existing programs to help at-risk youth. Some of the same ideas from previous meetings were echoed in Tuesday’s session, but one that stood out and got the attention of some city organizers was a basketball game between police and children who wouldn’t normally interact with officers.
Some children grow up being afraid of police officers, said Deedee Manghane, who lost two cousins and a nephew to gun violence. That’s because of historically strained tensions between law enforcement and people of color.
A basketball game, she said, would bring the community together as a family.
“That’ll let our kids know, ‘You can go to an officer,’” Manghane said.
Tuesday’s meeting comes three months after the Times Free Press hosted a community forum at the Carver Youth and Family Development Center following its series “Cost of the Crossfire.”
That event inspired activists with Chattanooga Moms Demand Action to continue this discussion, organizers said in an announcement for the event. The group has been meeting to discuss ways to curb gun violence for several months.
In February 2018, the group was involved in discussions after the deadly Parkland, Florida, school shooting.