They're movin the strut?

[Bob]

So it seems..
so my question is will pins be required for the strut this year?



*** article here ***

A news release by Friends of the Festival states the group will take on the tradition of the Strut at the City of Chattanooga's request, but the details are still being worked out.

"We value our partnerships with the City of Chattanooga and Hamilton County and realize change strengthens the need for flexibility," Friends of the Festival Executive Director, Chip Baker says.

Sources tell Channel 3 it is likely the Bessie Smith Strut will take place along the Riverfront for the first time this year.

[JC]

Good. The BST has b been the most dangerous part of RB for years. Maybe now they will require pins fir the march and that'll keep the thugs out!

[Police Moderator]

Good. As long as they keep the same 'theme' (Great music, artists and food), I am cool with it.

[gridbug]

If it is moved to the river then it ain't the Strut.

[Babs]

It's the only part of Riverbend we went to. I liked the atmosphere of MLK. We won't go this year.

[Justin Thyme]

I agree with Gridbug on this. If it isn't on MLK it loses its ties to its roots. I know the city would like to erase the past of 9th Street from MLK but in doing so they will remove a part of the heritage that makes Chattanooga Chattanooga.

[Half-Tard]

LITTLEFIELD = ZIMMERMAN HE HATES BLACKS....

[gridbug]

I can already see that I won't be the only one having a good time on MLK on Strut night. I hope all of you come join us and let's make our own Strut!

[Babs]

If Felix is out of the hospital, we'll see you then, by golly!

[Half-Tard]

boycott Liverbend. See ya at MLK for the real strut. Please Littledick your a fucking embarrassment just go the fuck away. WORST MAYOR EVER>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[SunnyKC]

the only ones I have ever been intimidated by were the cops!! I'll see you on MLK on the 11th!

[JC]

See question of the day: www.wrcbtv.com/?=#WNPoll117761

I will not be there with you folks. I cant afford a bullet proof vest...

[TNBear]

Crap! At this point in time I do wish I was a resident of the City of Chattanooga so I could really get in Ronnie Boy's face on this. I see it as him attempting to pretend the black community does not exist. In the 16 years I have lived in this area many of the best times I have had at Riverbend have been at the Strut.

[Bob]

the strut was actually dangerous for people with mobility issues or wheelchairs. Not any different than any large crowd stuffed into a narrow place with 10" curbs.

[gridbug]

the only ones I have ever been intimidated by were the cops!! I'll see you on MLK on the 11th!

I will not be there with you folks. I cant afford a bullet proof vest...

I personally agree with the former statement, but as for the latter one, have any of you that attend the Strut ever felt unsafe there?

[Babs]

That's why I avoid Riverbend. The pushing and knocking into people and the rednecks are scary. MLK feels safer to me.

[Kordax]

9th Street & it's historical Black businesses, Black restaurants, Black clubs & juke joints have almost disappeared from the street completely; UTC coveted the realestate between McCallie & MLK & now they control vast stretches of vacant land where houses & businesses once stood.

Where were the Black "stakeholders" (NAACP, Urban League, Black ministers, civil rights leaders, and Black-owned businesses/Black people who own nearby real estate) when the conversations involved shutting down the Strut BEFORE any public announcement was made? I thought Chattanooga always empanelled stakeholder steering committees whenever a core city real estate was impacted in any way......

[coffeeshooter]

If the mayor and LE suggest it isn't a safe location then it is probably best to read between the lines on this situation. Sad for our city though.

[TNBear]

Which begs the whole question of what is "safe"? Quite frankly I have often felt "safer" at the Strut than at the Riverfront. The drunken redneck population is significantly less during the Strut.

As I and others have stated, it's just another step towards disenfranchising the black/minority population of our city. A population which adds so much value to chattanooga.

[saldo1981]

I saw a post saying that moving the strut because it is too dangerous when student housing is right there sends the wrong message. I lived there for almost 2 years an never really felt unsafe and I'm a frequent visitor of Champy's and I use to go to The Local when it was where JJ's is now.

[cityemployee]

Read between the lines people.
It was a Littlefield order not city council.
How many of the recall effort are involved in the MLK area and possibly FOF?

The man has pretty much defied the wish of the people in the recall effort, , he in all sense has lost the effort to "consolidate city-county government", this is his last year. Folks, we have just grazed the iceberg.

What does he have to loose getting payback the next 12 months?

[JC]

Yup, just a bunch a racist red necks wanting to keep the black man down.

Far as feeling safe goes - how many here felt safe downtown on Xmas eve?
No one is saying that the area is unsafe. But this one single event brings in all walks of life. Whites, blacks, red necks, gangs, good, bad, whatever. And it's the gangs that have made this event unsafe for years.
Yes, that's right, folks. Gangs have cars and bus passes, too. And they could care less how "safe" you feel, for they go where the fun is.
There's a good reason cops have beefed up security at the Strut in recent years...

[Police Moderator]

Roy Exum: Who Shot Down The Strut?
Friday, March 30, 2012

For many years I have adored the Bessie Smith Strut, once the supremely-wonderful night every June when Chattanoogans - their race and color blending in splendid unity - joined in laughter and colossal merriment on what used to be “Big Nine.” But times have changed. Ninth Street became Martin Luther King Boulevard. The legendary bars like “The Stack” and “The Whole Note” and my beloved childhood haunt, “Reuben’s Shoe Parlor,” closed down. Worse, in more recent years the “soul” of the place has sadly seemed to evaporate away.

Today there is the Bessie Smith Hall, that money-gulping albatross of a political mistake that is seldom used, and, aside from the phenomenal Champy’s Chicken, nothing much ever happens on MLK anymore except on that one day a year when the “Strut,” which we had always hoped would forever be a permanent fixture of our music festival, is celebrated.
Now it, too, is dead.

On Thursday officials of the sponsoring Riverbend Festival and the city of Chattanooga announced the Strut has come to a stop. Oh, the night of jazz and blues will continue but now within the much-safer and better-secure venue on Riverfront Parkway. Why? Let’s take a “real” look at why that happened.

First, look at what else has changed. In the first three months of this year we’ve had approximately 25 shootings inside the city of Chattanooga. All 25 victims have been black and all 25 assailants have been black. So when our black leaders - men I admire - wear long faces and cry “Racism!” as cause for the venue change, they should first review the police blotter. Get this right: Blacks with guns shot down the Bessie Smith Strut and to say anything else would be a downright lie.

Read more: chattanoogan

[TNBear]

No, young, for the most part, black men have been shooting others like them, or attempting to do so anyway. While i do not consider many gang members as intelligent, I am sure they are smart or cagey enough to know that if they did cause big trouble at The Strut the 10,000 lb. shithammer would come down on them.

Of course there is always the fact that Ronnie the Little is closing the barn door after the horses have gone. If he and other city leaders had faced up to the gang problem years ago things could be very different.

[Police Moderator]

Don't kill the Bessie Smith Strut

Mayor Ron Littlefield emphasizes that his surprise and controversial decision to move the Bessie Smith Strut from Martin Luther King Boulevard to the Riverfront, where it can be staged in the more secure confines of the well-policed Riverbend perimeter, is being done to make it safe -- or safer.

Our fear is that such a mistaken move will kill the Strut by killing what it stood for: a symbolic, abiding effort not just to celebrate our cultural diversity and common heritage, but simply to share fun, funky, get-down times together in the African-American community's old Ninth Street neighborhood-- and to keep building on that.

Littlefield says his unilateral decision is not a surrender to the young black gangs whose increasingly frequent and frightening gun battles over turf could mar the Strut. Rather, he says, it's a recognition of the city's financial and moral liability for permitting a convenient venue for violence, and the moral responsibility to avoid that.

Yet it feels like a surrender to the fear of violence. It also reflects a seeming lack of determined effort to enlist help from black community leaders and neighborhood groups to ensure safety at the Strut; and just as importantly, to avoid the dismantling of the iconic cultural asset that the Bessie Smith Strut has become.

Read more: times free press

[Police Moderator]

Source: times free press

[zodiacman]

How is the Strut the most dangerous part of Riverbend? 9 years ago somebody gets shot a couple of blocks away about an hour after the strut ends and now it's all of a sudden too dangerous? This is not just a part of Littlefield's ignorance regarding the black community, this is part of his total disdain for the Chattanooga Police Department. The CPD has been doing an excellent job keeping order at the Strut for many, many years now all of a sudden he thinks they can't handle it? What a jackass.

[TNBear]

I'm waiting for little Ronnie to declare himself mayor for life. A dipstick of the first magnitude IMHO.

[Police Moderator]

Strut move, proposed Westside development both products of "assumed superiority"
By Chris Brooks • Published Friday, March 30th 2012

One of the hallmarks of Southern white supremacy is its characteristic paternalism: White slave masters and plantation owners claim that they are actually benevolent caretakers of persons of color who are incapable of making decisions in their own best interest. Plantation owners throughout history have claimed that they were not subjugating and denigrating human beings by enslaving them, but were actually educating, uplifting, civilizing and Christianizing a race of people who were incapable of self-rule and self-government. Thus, the position of dominance enjoyed by the slave master and the institution of slavery was given a false veneer of benevolence.

Similarly to the plantation owner, racist attitudes within city government have resulted in the orientation and organization of our city’s policies and programs in ways that reflect those attitudes and maintain unequal status and superiority of some over others. The current position and relationship between City Hall and low-income communities of color is a clear example of this. The mayor has invited Purpose Built Communities—a nonprofit founded by a billionaire, Wall Street hedge fund manager and the largest land developer in Atlanta—to Chattanooga for the ostensible purpose of following their blueprint for public housing, but this will displace residents, demolish our dwindling public housing stock and subsidize local land developers in the construction of market rate condominiums (while allowing a small percentage of residents to return to their newly gentrified living space using housing choice vouchers). The line coming from City Hall toward the Westside residents who have publicly voiced deep concern about these plans and expressed resentment at being excluded from decisions that directly affect them has been, “You just fear change, we know what is best, do not worry." City Hall has not intentionally reached out in a meaningful way to explore what the persons who call the communities considered for demolition home think about this program and its clear consequences for our city’s current housing crisis (a crisis that does not affect all communities equally).

The same tune is being played now with the Bessie Smith Strut, and the local black leadership has been quick to call out City Hall for whistling “Dixie." City Hall is issuing the hollow lines about how the historic Bessie Smith Strut must be moved behind the Riverbend gates for “safety” concerns. Like the Purpose Built Communities plan, a false veneer of paternalistic benevolence is being given to a decision that is really just about old-fashioned Southern racism and greed. Land developers are chomping at the bit to have the Westside’s land. City Hall wants to beef up Riverbend with another night of vendor fees and tightly controlled Riverbend tokens.

Behind the attacks on housing and the attacks on the cultural heritage of the black community are institutions and powerful people that harbor white supremacist beliefs—they clearly believe that they know “what is best” for the people of color living in public housing and that they do not need the input nor the consent of that community before making decisions that will directly affect them. What could be more disempowering to a community than excluding them from government planning and decision-making that will have a direct, material effect on their lives, in essence denying that community its fundamental right to determine its own future? Can a belief in one’s own authority to determine what is in the “best interests” for communities of color, without their input and much less their consent, be based on anything other than his assumed superiority to them?

Read more: nooga.com

[ssmynkint]

Great post. But don't forget how the Black community has been co-opted and sold-out by some of it's "leaders", as evidenced by the incompetence and corruption in CHA and the Multi Cutural ClusterF, the overall passivity and silence RE: Black-on-Black crime, etc.