Chattanooga area black elected officials are calling for community members to vote, engage and follow through with political demands amid days of unrest, despite a lack of tangible movement toward addressing demands.
After four days of hundreds of people protesting police brutality in Chattanooga, Hamilton County Commissioners Warren Mackey and Katherlyn Geter, City Council members Demetrus Coonrod, Erskine Oglesby, Anthony Byrd and Russell Gilbert and Hamilton County Board of Education member Karitsa Mosley called for activists to continue the conversations beyond protests.
According to Oglesby, each of the officials has been to one or more of the protests spurred by the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by police in Minnesota, which have taken place across the country in the last two weeks, because of the implications for each official, their families and their constituents as concerned black citizens.
“The color of our skin is present. You guys see that, right?” Geter asked. “It affected us as black men. It affected us as black women. The three of us [women] up here, we’re mothers. I’m raising two African American men. So when that news took place, the title of commissioner went out the window. I had to stop and think about what this meant for me as a black woman.”
Despite high tensions surrounding the death, Oglesby said the officials are listening to constituents to make the right decisions in order to promote justice and equity in their communities.