A string of shootings in Chattanooga in the last two months prompted a group of women to call publicly for parents to do their jobs and be good role models for their children.
“I want accountability,” Carla Eliott said Friday in front of City Hall on East 11th Street. “I’m challenging all women to put your right foot down. Put your left foot down and take back the children that belong to us.”
The streets don’t take young people, someone gives them away, she said.
Elliott was among about a dozen women who met at City Hall to challenge women to take authority in their homes and help put a stop to violence in the community.
“I’m 4 feet 11, seventy-eight pounds of thunder in my house,” Elliott said. “God gave my daughter to me and her father to oversee, but I can’t be your mother if I’m [racing you to get] inside the same nightclub. I don’t want to party with you. I want to raise you. I want to set an example for you.”