03/10/2019
“Organizers said the next step will be adding the support of more local organizations to the coalition and canvassing East Chattanooga with surveys to see what residents who didn't attend the meeting might want in a community benefits agreement tied to the sale of the Tubman site.
“This type of broad-based community organizing has, for the most part, been absent from the city since Chattanooga Venture — the foundation-backed nonprofit that sparked the renaissance with its community-wide visioning process — lost its funding in the 1990s, just as it was beginning to train neighborhood leaders how to organize and represent their interests at City Hall.
“Several city staff members and council members were present, mingling, looking on. The energy in the room was palpable.”
Nearly a hundred people gathered in East Chattanooga on Saturday — despite rain and fog — to launch a grassroots coalition set on pressuring Chattanooga City Council members to refuse support for the sale of the city-owned former Tubman public housing site unless the buyer signs a community bene...
