by Rod Williams, August 1, 2023- On the Council agenda tonight is a resolution to appropriate $750,000 to Gideon's Army for the purpose of providing "violence interruption services." The resolution is SUBSTITUTE RESOLUTION NO. RS2023-2295. It is on the "consent agenda." A piece of legislation is on "consent" if the committee to which the legislation was assigned votes unanimously to approve the bill. All resolutions on consent are lumped together and pass by a single vote. There will be members of the Council voting for this tonight and not even know what they are voting for unless this is pulled off of consent.
Gideons Army has been described by some as thug enterprise. Members of the organization have themselves been involved in criminal and violent activity. If you talk to police officers and people who know what is going on, they will tell you Gideon's Army is itself engaged in criminal activity. Given the reputation of the organization it may even be dangerous for me to post this commentary. Gideons Army does not need to be receiving city funding.
Time is short to act, but if you are reading this, please contact your councilmember or all councilmembers and urge them to pull SUBSTITUTE RESOLUTION NO. RS2023-2295 off of consent and then vote against it. Even if this passes, we need to know who voted for it and who did not. You can find your own council member's phone number and email address at this link. It you do not know who your member is, you can look it up here. There is way to email all Council members at the same time but unfortunately, I cannot locate that link at this time. To contact all council members at one time, follow this link. In step 2 when it asks you to select from a drop-down box the council district, select "Entire Metro Council."
News Channel 5 has reported on Gideon's Army and a shootout in the public housing project nicknamed "Dodge City" where a member of Gideon's Army was seen with an AK-47 style assault rifle and seems to be a participant in the violence. For more on this see: What was an employee of a non-violence group doing in the middle of a shoot-out in North Nashville with an "AK-47 style" weapon?"
For my previous reporting on Gideon's Army, see the following:
Thursday, December 30, 2021
Gideon's Army 'violence interrupter' pleads guilty, faces four years in federal prison for firearms charges
by Rod Williams, Dec. 30, 2021- Charles Brooks, convicted in 2006 on state charges for voluntary
The shoot-out occurred at the Cumberland View public housing project where Gideon's Army was supposedly working to end violence. This housing project has long had a reputation as one of the worst and is sometimes referred to as "Dodge City," or at least it used to be referred to by that name back some years ago when I working as a social worker in the area. My understanding is that it has continued to be a violent neighborhood. Gideon's Army had claimed it had completely eliminated violence in the neighborhood before the shoot-out involving their 'violence interrupter' occurred.
Gideon's Army is a favored political activist organization among Nashville's progressive elites. Despite exaggerating their success in ending violence and despite anti-White racism rhetoric and calling Meharry College president a "house nigger," the white-guilt-ridden progressive of our city love them. They have received city funding and their views are taken seriously. As this incident was unfolding the organization was mounting a public-relations campaign to get over $1 million in Metro funding included in the city's 2021-2022 budget for violence interruption. I will not be surprised if they still do not get funded.
The above story comes from Channel 5 reporting by Phil Williams. Thank you Phil Williams for bringing this to light. To see a video and read more follow this and this link.
Below is my previous blog post on Gideon's Army see below:
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Gideon's Army tells the public that it's all about justice, peace and harmony. But, buried among social media posts by some of the group's front-line leaders, NewsChannel 5 Investigates discovered a controversial side of the politically connected group that most of the public has never seen.Those posts include descriptions of white people as being a "pestilence" accidentally unleashed on the world by an ancient scientist, suggestions that police should be made to fear going into Black neighborhoods, even descriptions of Meharry Medical College's highly respected president, Dr. James Hildreth, as a "house n****r." (Read more)Related:
Many may be mystified that white and middle or upper-class people kowtow, romanticize, and fund radical violent activists, racist thugs. This is nothing new. The current era is much like the era of the mid 60's to mid 70's. At that time Hollywood elites and other hip new leftists, what we would now call progressives, did the same thing. The radical Black Panther Party was a favorite of that era's new leftist. For an interesting and entertaining work addressing this phenomenon read Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolf.
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