Robert Winslow
There are times when cities choose their future. Chattanooga defines itself by having seized that opportunity in its darkest moment and gained a new life, transformed into the place we live today.
Right now is such a time, when both the fruits of the last generation's work and our own potential can be seen more clearly. This may not be our darkest moment, but the stakes are just as high and the opportunity is just as big.
When I came back after growing up here and leaving, I was blown away by how quickly and enthusiastically Chattanooga was changing. At the time I was bootstrapping a documentary webseries about civics and reaching across the deep divisions in American society. I was a 24-year-old looking for answers about the future coming into shape, and I saw in my hometown all of the most dramatic aspects of change in the American city.
For a year and a half I was able to follow a few major stories about local initiatives for innovation, industry, education, and interviewing those leaders and others all around the city about how they saw the change over the last generation and the next. Throughout I asked one main question: Chattanooga's success in urban revitalization and economic diversification came at the same time as persistently increasing poverty and racial disparity. How did that happen?
At about the same time, the Chattanooga Times Free Press had undertaken The Poverty Puzzle, a long-term investigation into extreme poverty and inequality in our city. And at about the same time, some community leaders began to take a hard look at how our public school system creates economic opportunity or the lack thereof, presented as Chattanooga 2.0. These joined other local advocates to paint a broader picture, which some politely call the Tale of Two Chattanoogas.
To me, however, there is only One Chattanooga. One story with many sides. One in which nine out of 10 children are growing up in District 5 below the poverty line in a city still famous around the world as the Best Town Ever.
Forty years ago, before what we call the Renaissance, we were one city: remembered as a dirty post-industrial ruin. It took continuous sustained effort over 50 years, tied together by a few institutions and a basic strategy focused on the downtown riverfront. Today the city is half the beneficiary of revitalization, reinvestment and new industry, and half still struggling against the same downward spiral the other half prides itself on having overcome.
It's the reason many of us leave after childhood, especially if we have options, myself included. For years Chattanooga has underdeveloped native talent or sent it away, over-relying on private education and recruitment. I always wondered about a brain drain from Chattanooga. This was confirmed to me by how from technology innovation to industry, our recent economic growth has been marked by workforce shortages.
And yet with that growth, our natural beauty and relative cost of living have made us a community of choice. For the many newcomers to Chattanooga and the many more people who will continue to move here, they are eager to call this place their own and join the community. I'm not sure how many people like me who were raised here and left have come back. This might be the better measure.
These questions of the character of our community will be answered by how we change from here. One way or another this will be a transformed city 20 years from now just as dramatically or more as from 20 years ago. The truly scary prospect is not that an increasingly unequal city would spell failure, but that it would continue to pass for success. Do we learn from our experience and hold ourselves to account, or do we default to a divided future?
My documentaries are only offered as a resource to this necessary conversation. I came to listen and to learn and to ask what you think is most important for the future. My hope is that in watching them you feel better able to work through the difficult questions, better able to pursue your own best way to make the difference, to reach through to the other side.
If you're asking "What is your solution?" my own answer is that there are a million solutions, many of which you before reading this have already been thinking about with your own family, neighborhood, faith community, circle of friends. Please don't be discouraged or wait for anyone else. I encourage you to continue to listen, to learn, to make way for others as well. And, of course, vote your best judgment on March 7 in Chattanooga city elections.
There's more to it, but that's the question.
Robert Winslow is an independent documentary producer. Learn more at SouthernDialogues.com.