Chattanooga community gathers to battle guns and hate after LGBT massacre

Colors wave as hundreds gather for a vigil Monday night on the Southside. The huge flag was placed by the Tennessee Valley Pride Board Committee just outside the entrance to Chucks II, an LGBT club on West Main Street.

As the rain began to fall Monday night, the men in the front row cupped their hands around their candles. D'Angelo Davis and Sean Nix formed the front line of a circle that expanded out of the Chuck's II parking lot and toward Main Street. They listened, they huddled, they shielded their flame. And now, they turned their attention to the man under the tent.

"I stand here representing the brave men and women who have made the decision to step into the gap," began Chattanooga police chief Fred Fletcher. He paused as the wind began to ripple the flaps.

"Everybody deserves to be and feel safe from violence and hate and crime," he continued. "We stand in the gap for you. I am here to tell you, and anyone who wants to listen, that I care about you - that our police care about you."

While thoughts drifted to early Sunday morning - when Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old gunman, entered a popular gay club in Orlando and opened fire, leaving 49 dead and 53 wounded - Fletcher shared a popular phrase in the police department.

"I am my brother's keeper," he said, a crowd of 200 strong staring at him, "if everyone could say that."

And everyone did.

The police chief was one of eight speakers who gathered Monday evening to condemn the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, to provide unity and hope in the face of what Mayor Andy Berke called "the twin evils and the toxic mix of guns and hate."

"In Chattanooga we know this pain all too well, and we stand with Orlando," Berke said. "I pray tonight that this is the last vigil I attend."

Orlando authorities announced Sunday morning that an off-duty officer who had been working at Pulse responded to shots fired around 2 a.m. On scene, additional officers jumped into a gun battle with Mateen, who retreated to a bathroom and held four to five hostages. News reports said another 15 to 20 people had huddled in another bathroom.

Since that time, media has bubbled about the purpose behind the carnage. Was it homophobia? Terrorism? A combination of the two?

On Monday, several members of the LGBT community called it a hate crime but couldn't place the source.

"I believe it was hate," said Chuck Kagle, 59, the longtime owner of Chuck's II, one of Chattanooga's popular gay clubs. "But there's several ways to look at it. There had to be a reason for the hate."

For many, this was not the first run-in with fear in the South.

Ardyce Mercier, 38, remembered walking with her partner and their two daughters, then 6 and 10, during a candlelight vigil. Near Main and Market streets, at the time a grassy patch of land, they stopped for a moment of silence. Two men approached with video cameras and singled out the little girls, saying they were going to hell because of their two mothers.

James McKissic, 44, said gay nightclubs served as a sanctuary to young, black gay men in the deep South. On Sunday, he saw the news reports, he saw the brown and black faces of his brothers and sisters, and then he "could not help but see me, see all of us."

Bassam Issa, a member of the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, said the violence "falls heavy on Muslims' hearts." He wanted people to know: "Islam does not stand for that. There's a verse that says, 'He who kills a soul, it's as if he killed all mankind. This man on Sunday killed mankind 50 times over."

Marcus Ellsworth, president of Tennessee Valley Pride, a non-profit that celebrates diversity in Chattanooga, recalled the growing pains of coming out, how it happens piecemeal, how he initially confided in a high school teacher, then college friends, then finally his parents in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

As the rain began to fall, harder and harder, Ellsworth, 32, stood under a tent, reading off the names of the victims. The wind picked up, rain spilled off the tent, it splashed on his shoulder. Ellsworth continued reading: "Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37," he said. "Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26. Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 "

By this point, the rain had extinguished everyone's candle but D'Angelo Davis. Then his went out, too. He bowed his head, he closed his eyes. He leaned over and kissed his partner on the shoulder.

Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at 423-747-6347 or zpeterson@timesfreepress.com. Follow @zackpeterson918.

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