The sun had only just risen over tornado-ravaged parts of North Nashville and East Nashville as a frustrated sentiment started emerging from the devastated neighborhoods: Don’t come over here without a chainsaw.
The message was meant literally. Downed trees were blocking roads and houses, and they needed to be cut and cleared. But there was a deeper, figurative dimension too. If you’re not here to help, don’t be here.
The March 3 tornado has revealed the beautiful impulse in so many Nashvillians to donate their time, money and effort to neighbors in need. But it has also stirred up some unseemly responses that fall at various points on a spectrum from understandable-but-unhelpful to grossly exploitative.
A common urge to head out and see what happened quickly turned into meandering and gawking that left residents of affected areas feeling strangely observed in their own neighborhoods. The way social media has turned us all into online content creators was immediately evident; soon the destruction was being used as a backdrop for selfies, one Nashvillian’s crumbled home serving as the setting for another’s unusual Wednesday. Not surprisingly, The Basement East’s “I Believe in Nashville” mural — incredibly left standing while much of the venue was wrecked — quickly became an iconic image of the disaster. It seems likely that its popularity, among social media users and local news outlets, contributed to the way North Nashville (unlike East Nashville) was largely overlooked in the immediate aftermath of the tornado.
Further down the spectrum, some saw the havoc as an entrepreneurial opportunity. With the scope of the damage just starting to become clear — and the death toll across Middle Tennessee still climbing — a great deal of URLs were quickly registered for possible use in capitalizing on the tragedy: NashvilleRiseUp.com, RiseUpNashville.com, PrayersForNashville.com, IBelieve-InNashville.com, BelieveNashville.com and many more.
As volunteers signed up in droves to help with cleanup and honest repair crews offered services, ill-intentioned scammers began circling affected neighborhoods as well. A March 9 community meeting was organized by The Equity Alliance to give information and resources to North Nashville homeowners reeling from the tornado. There a Metro Nashville Police Department detective from the fraud unit warned of “con artists” moving through the neighborhood offering services and trying to get down payments in cash. The primary impetus for the meeting was the influx of investors and developers seeking to prey on distressed homeowners by offering lowball cash offers for their property. In the wake of the storm, multiple homeowners shared with the Scene text messages they received from investors expressing abbreviated condolences before inquiring about whether there was a deal to be made.
It’s not an unfamiliar dynamic to residents of North Nashville, a historically black neighborhood that has been battered by the winds of gentrification and displacement for years. But with the tornado doing demolition work and creating an easy opening, that dynamic was heightened.
It’s a troubling irony that two of the areas hardest hit by the March 3 tornado — North Nashville and East Nashville — have histories that are inextricably tied up with the way capitalism rushes in to fill a void left by cataclysm. The origin story of today’s East Nashville involves a similar disaster in 1998, when a tornado ripped through the community and cleared the way for the start of the revitalization that overwhelmingly changed the area. In North Nashville, the forces of change have more often been racist and man-made — redlining and the imposing construction of I-40 to name a couple. A natural disaster threatens to exacerbate the rapid change and displacement already underway there.
If longtime residents and the mark they make on their communities aren’t swept away with the debris in the coming months, it will undoubtedly be because of the tireless work of activists and organizers who are rallying around them. At the North Nashville meeting hosted by The Equity Alliance at Lee Chapel AME Church earlier this week, Stand Up Nashville’s executive director Odessa Kelly spoke forcefully about that goal.
“The purpose here today is for us to come together and give dignity to people who are living here,” she said. “To not just make them a commodity, an opportunity on someone’s spreadsheet, an opportunity to put more wealth into pockets that are already lined.”
