The day after our official public holiday commemorating the momentous life and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King, the Chattanooga Times Free Press ran an article about a speech on gangs from the following Friday delivered by Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond in which he was quoted as saying:
"We need to run them out town, put them in jail or send them to the funeral home."I hardly have to stretch my imagination to understand who exactly Sheriff Hammond's words are directed at. Hamilton County has a long history of using "law and order" as a justification for brutalizing already marginalized communities - none so more than the highest ranking Constitutional Officer in Hamilton County.
Sheriff Hammond's words reflect the underlying violence that our social order is founded on. This violence is felt most acutely in our most marginalized and vulnerable communities: poverty is violence, hunger is violence, ignorance is violence, they all contribute to a process of grinding dehumanization that is a daily reality for many people living in the city of Chattanooga. Hammond's comments about what the official policy of The White Men With The Guns is towards violent members of our community is deeply revealing - they are to be disappeared. Either they leave, are fed to our prisons (which are an international scandal), or can choose to die. His remarks are further proof of the process of dehumanization that is being orchestrated in the established order of things.
In response to Sheriff Hammond and in the wake of our national holiday commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King and his lifelong commitment to non-violence and the Beloved Community, I would like to offer the following: What would it look like for the Sheriff of Hamilton County to be quoted by the press as saying the following?
Good evening my brothers and sisters. Thank you all so much for coming out here today to spend time with me as we collectively seek to develop real concrete solutions in response to the recent tragedies that are destroying so many lives and, I know, breaking all of our hearts. I am the Sheriff and as the highest ranking Constitutional Officer in Hamilton County I feel more acutely than many others the deep weight of personal responsibility that accompanies the epidemic of violence that is sweeping our communities.
The violence I speak of is not only the kind that tragically visited our city on the night of Christmas Eve. The violence I speak of is broad and deep and is having a profound impact on the lives of our County's most vulnerable and defenseless members every day. I am speaking of the violence of hunger, the violence of homelessness, the violence of poverty, the violence of ignorance. I am speaking of the violence that is done to children who grow up without resources and in environments that do not reflect their own inherent self-worth. Too many of our children are raised in dilapidated housing, in food deserts, with limited to non-existent transportation, educational resources and life opportunities. As a society we do not invest enough in guaranteeing that all of our people are provided for and have ample opportunities to freely grow and develop and to pursue their own inherent talents. We are failing our children and we are failing one another.
That is why I am seeking to make the example. I am telling the poor, the unemployed and the underemployed, I am telling the working people of our County who are struggling to get by: you are precious. For far too long Hamilton County has left you in the cold, forgotten and silenced. Now your pain is our pain. We feel together and in our feeling we can reform the bonds of community, of trust and respect. We will restore dignity to every neighborhood, housing complex and apartment high-rise. When confronting lawlessness we will push back with love. We will replace gangs with schools. We will replace guns with jobs. We will dismantle the tensions of unemployment and underemployment, the tensions of hunger and ignorance and violence, all the tensions that have been a feature of daily life for far too many for far too long and we will replace them with life, with community, with a commitment and a resolve to make certain that all of our children have an opportunity for the good things in life.
That is why I am implementing a program of required trainings in non-violent conflict resolution for all Hamilton County Sheriff Department Officers. I am also urging the Hamilton County Commission to make a deep and serious financial, political, and moral commitment to working with community leaders from our most impoverished areas of the County to develop social policies to address gentrification, unemployment and underemployment, food access, housing and education. We will seek to eradicate violence in all forms from every corner of our county - and we will do it together. Through the strength and power of community the gang members of today will be the leaders of tomorrow. Because gang members are precious people too.
UPDATE 1.18.2012: Clay Bennett had a wonderful cartoon today in the Chattanooga Times Free Press regarding Sheriff Hammond's remarks:
UPDATE 1.19.2012: Apparently Sheriff Hammond isn't backing down. He says he is sticking by his statements. While the Chattanooga Times Free Press has a public poll showing ovewhelming support for Sheriff Hammond, his response has aroused frustrated condemnation from a broad range of sources, from Napoleon "Donut" Williams to Joe Lance.